Kitchen Update - Round 1

Now, obviously since we're starting our food truck, Grind in the Spring and doing Kickstarter to get it ready we're not really in a position to keep updating the house as rapidly or as costly as we were this time last year.  When we realized we were going to have to wait to remodel the kitchen I was inspired by this post from the blog Young House Love about painting your cabinets as a low cost way to update a kitchen without spending a lot of money.  Now I know this is not revolutionary information, but I was convinced that our nasty 1954 cabinets were far too disgusting to even bother trying to do this but when I realized it would be at least another year before we could replace them I figured they really couldn't get any worse with a couple coats of paint.  I mean, look at this...

The picture from the realtor listing

Now look at this!

I mean, so much better, right?  And the best part?  We used paint we already had.  I know, more craziness.  This entire project cost me $25.  I already had the primer and 1 bucket of the paint from the living room.  One more bucket of paint and it covered all of it.  That's one coat of primer and two coats of paint on both the inside and outside of the cabinets as well as the bottoms and tops of the shelves.  I even used a color we already had to accent the insides of the cabinets from where we removed the doors.

We used Glidden Gripper to prime, Glidden Silver Birch as the main color and Glidden Olivewood for the accent.  We completed it over the course of 2 weeks with the majority of it being done over 1 weekend.  It took forever to get all the cabinet doors and shelves done because you have to wait for both sides to be completely dry before flipping but I think all the effort was totally worth it.  Since we don't want to invest on replacing the back splash right now we have this master to plan to coat it in industrial floor paint to give a thick shiny texture.  In our heads it sounds great but as of right now we have no idea how to do it.  See below for more pictures of the before, during and after.

Removing doors and clearing out the cabinets

So much stuff...geez

Busy, busy

First coat of primer

More primer

and more primer

So much brighter!

Love the stainless against the white

Redone cabinets meant we could clean off and organize our kitchen rack

The sellers had already replaced the hardware so that saved us even more money

Pig lights!

Oils and tools at arms length for Jesse while he's cooking

Grind Updates and Kitchen Remodel

So our kitchen was pretty busted when we moved in. We removed some cabinet doors and added a stainless steel table to make it a little easier to cook in but it still just wasn't cutting it. Jesse had to go out of town for work a couple weekends ago so I got crazy with some paint we had here in the house and painting the cabinets. They're completed but I need to to a little touch-ups before I take pictures so I'll hopefully get those up this weekend. Trust that is looks awesome. Like, really awesome.

In Grind news, we're making some serious progress on our Kickstarter progress and have gotten a lot of amazing press. We've even booked a couple events for this summer and we're not even open yet! I don't want to announce until everything is confirmed but seriously, this sh*t is getting awesome. Good things is, since most things are on holidays or weekends we'll both be able to keep our jobs and pursue this craziness we've taken on! We'll be busy but it will be worth it. Let's hear it for hard work. In light of hard work I leave you with a little Daft Punk to tide you over until those awesome kitchen pics this weekend.

Chickens!!

The unseasonably warm weather here in Kentucky has meant the chicken are getting a few good days to get out and run around.  They're so happy about it their laying has even increased.

Jesse won a raffle!

I haven't won anything since that Walkman in the 6th grade so Jesse must be the good luck charm because we won a raffle with a pretty decent cash prize. What does this mean? This means we get to start on the food trailer interior sooner then we imagined! Yay! This also means that since J and I made an agreement that he wouldn't start working on the truck until the living room wall was completed. Yes, this living room wall that we've been distracted from completing in an acceptable period of time since April. That it will now be completed by the end of the weekend. It's amazing what the incentive of a giant, industrial griddle purchase will do to a man, eh? More pictures and update later. It's going to be freaking awesome!  AND, I'm pretty sure we need to start getting some more house and truck stuff up here.  I can only write about other people's restaurants so much, right?!

Best. Basil. Ever.

As some of you will remember we dove into the whole 'indoor garden' thing a few months ago. Well, look how far it's come since then:

Jesse is pretty handy when it comes to 'making do' with what he's got to get good results.  Those are Steralite containers that he's modified.  Pretty cool, huh?

Peppers, green beans, black cherry tomato.

Dill, romaine lettuce and our giant and completely amazing basil plant.

Close up of the black cherry tomato plant.

Lettuce, brussels sprouts and a tomato starter.

Who's going to have fresh vegetables in the middle of December.  That would be us.  Woot!  We tried to grow herbs outside this year and while the oregano and thyme did well, the basil and dill just never quite could hang and what we've grown indoors has far surpassed it in both growth, quality of plant and flavor.

Finally more drywall pictures!

We've been slacking a little (ok, a lot) on the drywall situation but are now forcing ourselves to get it done before Ms. S. arrives in a couple of weeks.  Here's how it started and some demo shots - here.

Fast forward one long, dusty Saturday and this is what we ended up with:

It sat like this for a while.  I long while until eventually we realized we were living in a construction zone and got our sh*t together and at least went and got the drywall.

And then it sat like this for a while:

It sat like this a while too - but no longer!  Here's what it looked like as of last night.

Amazing, right?!  Ok, maybe it's only amazing to us, but I'm pretty excited.  Not only does this mean we'll be able to reclaim our living room, we can put the pole back up and start decorating and making it look like a real house.  The whole place feels like a nondescript rental but that mortgage payment every month is a pretty effective reminder that we need to get this finished.

Oh, and yes, I am aware he's wearing a sweatband.  I can't make him stop.

What. A. Mess.

Before

Living like college kids.  Very poor college kids.

Hello, telephone wall-hole thing.  Hello, light fixture I hit so hard with my head you cracked.

After

The Remains

The other half was in Jesse's chest hair and my lungs.

Poor corner cabinet.  You were dirty and gross.

So, a rabbit and a pig walk into a bar...

I had a stoke of inspiration last night.  We need hooks in different areas of the house but just can't seem to come up with something that is juuust right (to quote Goldilocks of Three Bears fame).  A blog I had been scouring (which of course I can't find the page now) had these great white ceramic rabbit heads going down their hallway.  They were the perfect size for hooks.

After a quick google search I came up with a place in the UK that makes something similar but a little more modern, which should fit it well with where our decor is going.  The best thing, is that they also make pig heads in the same style.  Yay!  As some of you will remember, our wedding topper was pretty unique.

photo by melabo on etsy

Our friend Sunshine found the artist, Melabo, on Etsy for us and knew it would be perfect.  Why pigs and rabbits?  Well, I collected rabbits when I was younger as well as owning the deadly departed Benny, while Jesse has an obsession with all things bacon.  Well, all meat to be honest, but mostly bacon.

Either way, I found these great hooks at Rockett St. George.

So while I'm not completely sure where we'll put them yet or even really when we'll order them, I am pretty smitten.

This sh*t is bananas...

Just a teaser shot for now - but seriously, the whole freaking wall is missing!

Getting closer...

One door hung - three more to go.  Plus, Jesse even got the oiled bronze door knob in and after fighting with the old door that stuck and then wouldn't close all the way, it's nice to have one that closes smoothly.  I'll post a picture of the whole shebang after all the doors are up, painted and the ceiling is done.  Fingers crossed to complete the hallway (minus decor) SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY!  <---to be read in your best Monster Truck Show announcer voice.

Liz & Jesse

Getting rid of this wooden trim.

Since the house is older and has been owned by the same people since it was built, not much has changed in it since 1954 when it was built, 1970 when the kitchen was remodeled and 2011 when the seller did a 'slap together' job re-doing the kitchen and bathroom.  This did not include removing or refinishing the heavily (HEAVILY) varnished wood trim throughout the house.  Obviously, we either wanted to replace or paint it) not really into the natural wood trim look), we decided to paint.  We chose Behr's Popped Corn.  It's a sharp white from the orange collection to is has just a hint of a warm undertone.

Wood trim in hallway.

Wood trim begone!

We sanded the varnish and then applied a primer by Glidden called, Gripper.  It didn't work as well as we had hoped and was pretty sticky, but it did the job.  The dark wood though, required three coats.  We did the trim in Popped Corn in a semi-gloss finish and the walls are the same color in an eggshell color.  The doors will be replaced with standard, paneled doors but we'll be finishing those out with a slight twist.  I won't share it now, but it should add a little architectural interest to an otherwise overlooked part of a house.

The dark trim in the living room was also making an already pretty small room feel even smaller so we did the same to the trim in there as well.

Living room trim before.



Living room trim after.

After finishing the trim around the door and windows, we realized the door looked dingy, so it got a fresh coat of paint as well.  Since the carpet is getting pulled up next weekend and the wall between the living room and kitchen is being opened the next weekend, we didn't bother do do the base trim.  We'll have plenty of time to do that before we have the floors refinished.  If you look closely, you can see the swatch for the living room color taped to the wall.  It's Glidden, Olivewood.  It looks like it might be a little dark, but witht he trim and a lighter back wall, along with the extra space of it being more open to the kitchen we think it will probably work.

Oh, and pay no attention to those lovely sheer curtains.  Since we don't know exactly what we want to do with the picture window, we bought the cheapest thing Meijer had so at least we wouldn't feel like we were living in a fish bowl.

Gag me with a spoon

I would like to thank the previous owner for leaving a closet full of dusty, cob-webbed, junk for us to clean out in the bathroom.  Something you may not know about me is that I take my bathroom accoutrements very seriously.  Between this and my love of doing laundry (I know, I'm a weirdo), it's about as domestic as I get.  Either way, once I saw the closet during the inspection, I knew that was going to be my first project.  Gross.

Before

After

I just could not put all my clean towels, sheets, cosmetics, etc in this dirty, stained closet so we pulled out all the existing shelving and wiped down the interior.  Since the shelves were solid wood, we'll be able to use them on another project too which is good.  Reduce, reuse, recycle, right?  A few coats of paint, some Closetmaid shelving from Home Depot and a Sterilite container we already had and we have a completely refreshed linen closet.  We also have some lovely bronze doorknobs but are contemplating replacing the closet door since it seems to have some sort of oil-based, dingy yellow paint on it that isn't taking the new paint very well.  So we'll see how that second coat sticks when we do the hallway.

So I looked around and I noticed there wasn't a chair

We suspected hardwood floors but weren't completely sure.  Kris, and friend of ours suggested we pull the carpet up in at least one of the rooms before moving all the furniture just to see what was going on under all that mess.  Luckily for us the floors are in great condition.  While we haven't refinished them yet, we're planning to do that when we can do the entire first floor at once, we did get them cleaned up and looking decent.  Oh, and pay no attention to the enormous mess of crap on either end of that hallway.  I won't lie, a lot of it is still there, but not as bad.  We had the bathroom closet emergency of 2011 that had to be taken care of.