KitchInspiration

My sinkipoo!

The time has come, my little ones, to talk of other things. Namely, inspiration... make that kitchInspiration. Too cheesy for you? Not me.

We are ready to go with the kitchen. Dad is building cabinet frames, the floor is down, I bought a 30 inch, single basin, fireclay, apron front sink! I adore it and can't wait to do dishes in it... STRIKE THAT.... can't wait to watch Bran do dishes in it... STRIKE THAT... can't wait to watch Bran put the dishes in the dishwasher from my lovely sink.

But still, I don't know what I want to do with the cabinets, backsplash, hardware, etc. Many decisions to be made, and not terribly much time to make them in. I am picky. Very picky. Since we are on a super dooper incredibly tight budget, that makes it ever more difficult. In a kitchen, I'll go for function over form. However, aesthetically, I love or am inspired by elements of these kitchens:

Love the inky blue cabinets with the farmhouse sink. These are concrete counter tops. I'm not sure I'd brave no upper cabinetry, but it does make it feel very open.

Again with blueish cabinetry. I love the pop of teal and the farm sink! The owner of this kitchen mentioned that the backsplash was not installed. They went with white subway tiles.

How gorgeous is this kitchen (esp that last shot!)? I love the copper touches. I feel like this kitchen is just begging to have a redhead cook.

These two look similar, with the mini white tiles. I tend to like the first one a little bit more, but the jury is still out on these tiles. I feel like they will really date the kitchen (what, blue cabinets won't?)

Not totally my style, but I can appreciate it's classic beauty.

I like the mix of marble and wood here with the white subway tiles.

So that's it for now. Lots to think about!

Kick off your shoes!

Our modest entry way has been begging to be made over. This little room (8ft wide and 4 feet long)has seen many transformations throughout it's nearly 100 year history. It once was a porch. Then, it was a cement slab covered by carpet with wood paneling on the walls. Now, it is a lovely slate entry way (soon to get gussied up for company).

Let me help you get situated as to the layout.


When you walk up the brick entry, do you see that teeny tiny little room? Yeah... that's the entry. Not a lot of space, but the plan above is actually the layout of how the house used to be. When you walked into the house, you had a choice to go right into the bedroom or straight into the living room. This didn't make sense to us, so we changed that 3rd bedroom into a dining room, closed up the wall to the immediate right of the entry, and made a 4 foot opening from the living room into the dining room. You have already seen some of these changes.

This is the view from the dining room, through the entry, and out the front door. This was after we took out the closet and took down the wallpaper and took off the paneling from this room. See the awkward layout?

Another view of from the dining room, showing where the closet was taken out and the opening into the entry way.

And eventually went to this...

And then into this:

Both the new and old doorway are framed in.

And then this!

And here it is wallboarded (fully painted pics are coming soon!).

Another angle from the living room into the entry before:

And After:

So not only were the walls a mess in terms of layout, they were also a mess in terms of structure. At one point, the entry was the front porch. That means the walls were made of stucco, just like the outside of the house. Well, what has the theme been throughout the other parts of the house? If the wall is messed up or just plain ugly, PANEL IT! So of course, they did these here! Once we took the panelling off the walls in the entry, we found stucco!

From the entry into the living room...

So, we did some manual labor (and by we I mean Brandon).

So now, back to the floor!

First things first... I layed out the slate on the floor in a pattern that pleased my eye. The slate that we bought has a varied sized of slate that go into a specific pattern. We bought 4 boxes of 10ft each and mixed up the stones from the boxes to get a more random and not clustered look. Since the natural slate has so much variance, I wanted to make sure that it looked abundantly random, but not too much so.
After it was all layed out, we measured out the exact dimensions of the entry and positioned it so that the most visable/ higher traffic areas got the full pieces of slate. To do this, we used chalk to outline it. We marked which pieces would need to be cut.

Then we got down to business.


The cement pad under this section of the house was not fully level, so dad created a little sub floor system and topped it with plywood. We secured cement wonderboard to the plywood so the slate had a nice rough surface to adhere to.

Dad and Brandon then got to mortaring. We put it on in sections and backbuttered (spread thinset/mortar on the back) each tile.

This is not a great picture of it because the colors don't come through like they do in person and especially in natural sunlight, but it really is a beautiful tile pattern. We realized that we will probably put on a light gray grout because there is some space between the tiles, and then we'll seal it, but for now, I absolutely love it!



PS, check out how awesome the plaster looks!

Dad is Great

My dad. Just to tell you, he literally worked until his fingers bled. Even though I insisted that he stop, he refused until all of the plastering was done. It took only 10 days and an awesome guy named Oscar (if you are looking for a wall boarding/plastering guy in the LA area who works his tail off and is very good at what he does, email me for his number), but my dad covered an entire house full of wallboard or just plain crooked walls. I wish I had better pictures of the project, but let these suffice for now...

We went from this kitchen window (can be seen here as well)...

How amazing does my kitchen window look!?!


Remember my dining room?

Check it out now!

How about the infamous 3 layers of wallpaper found after we took off the paneling?

Now a beautiful, stench free, blemish free wall!

The walls look absolutely fabulous. Dad and Oscar took the walls from scarred, slanted, and downright scary to ridiculously gorgeous in a little over a week. How is that for a quick turnaround?

Best plasterers ever

I could never thank him enough for everything that he's done for me and Brandon and this house (not to mention a zillion other things). I appreciate all of his help so much that it sounds cheesy and overemotional, but there are no words for how much I am grateful for having him as a general contractor and father. I love you, Dad. YOU ARE GREAT!

peace, love and refinishing the tub (and sink)

I am a hippie at heart. In middle school and the early part of high school, I used to wear a peace sign, plaid bell-bottoms, a head band... the whole shebang. My 9th grade health class asked required us to keep a journal with teacher led questions every day. The one that stands out is "If you could live in one decade, which would it be and why?" My not so wise or worldly 9th grade self answered "I would have lived in the 60's. I really like hippie clothes, peace, and VW's. Plus, marching in protests would have been fun."

Earth to 9th grade Cori! The reason for these protests were war! The US was internally in a state of peril and strife. I am embarassed that I ever said this, but like I said, I am a hippie at heart, and I knew that before I ever fully knew the reasons behind it (thankfully, I have gained much perspective and wisdom in the last 14 years).

So yes, I tend toward the bohemian, hippie, free spirit "inspired" decorating in my home. That doesn't mean I want the remnants of these relics to be left behind in my bathroom. Remember the old bathtub from the house:


Those little flower power buggers were an absolute nightmare to deal with. They were already chipping in many places, so they couldn't be left on. I tried just about every cleaning product to get them off the bottom of the tub: goo gone, simple green, ZAP (which works fantastically to clean the grout), bleach, acetone, etc. etc. etc.


I ended up really roughing up the bottom of the tub, but I beat the decals. I win.

Once I knew the decals were completely up, I talked with my dad about having the tub resurfaced. He said that it would cost somewhere around $500. Unfortunately, that is not in the budget right now. He also mentioned that there are epoxy kits to resurface the tub at Home Depot for about $50. Much better! This way, we were able to treat both the tub AND the sink!

The sink before

The sink drain before

The kit includes two identical aerosol containers of the epoxy, steel wool, tsp, and rubber gloves.


The steps are as follows:

Clean out the tub with the TSP dissolved in warm water
Wipe dry
Scrub, scrub, scrub with the steel wool
Rinse
Wipe Dry.

Repeat 2 more times (for a total of 3).

Tub after scouring

Once you are done with these steps, tape all around the tub and use either butchers paper or plastic (plastic is probably ideal, but we didn't have any) to shield your lovely peach tile from the spray. Make sure to tape off all of the chrome bits at the bottom and faucet level of the tub.

We only did the basin of the tub, which worked out just fine.

Once we did this, we pulled in the big gun (aka my dad) to do the actual spraying of the first layer of the sink.


Once he showed us, I did the rest. The first coat should be really, really light. Let it dry for 15-30 minutes, and repeat. With two cans, we did the sink and the basin of the tub with plenty left over.

The sink looks much better, although definitely not perfect. We are installing a new faucet, which will cover most of the chipping in the bottom of the sink, although the handles are not quite large enough to cover the outline. I think it will still look A-OK.


The tub turned out great. We ran into a little bit of a problem when I applied the epoxy a little bit too thick. It does this strange orange peel things, so we just wiped it up really quickly and let it dry, then applied the second coat.

Party foul

Worked like a charm

Tada!

When you are all done with the spraying, you need to leave the blue tape on for 3 full days before the full reveal. I don't know how this epoxy will wear, but I read that I should not use bleach on it. I am just happy that those heinous flowers are gone! I am super happy with how it turned out.