Part 1
I love my home. I have immense gratitude for this humble 1952 brick ranch with coved ceilings, oak floors and 12′ picture-window framing the huge maple in my back yard. It was love at first site back in 1991, but as women often do, I fell in love firmly believing in the power of transformation…I lived with the flaws until they became intolerable, and one-by-one, as money permitted, I began the process of chiseling out my dream.
When my then husband and I moved into this home in 1991, I had to turn a blind eye to the hideously ugly kitchen. Battered white-painted cabinets with peeling chrome handles, yellow and pea-green plastic tiles covering most walls, the blue & white 1970’s “Ducks wearing blue bow-ties” wallpaper insulting my dining nook. The kitchen sink was scarred from years of abuse, and no amount of bleaching could rid it of the gray cross-hatching, black cast-iron pockmarks in the porcelain and orange rust spots.
Ugly Old Kitchen 1
One side of the galley kitchen had the stove set on one side of the wall with the refrigerator about 4ft. away from it…a 4ft. expanse of floor and plastic-tiled wall with no counter top.
Ugly Old Kitchen 2
So, the first order of business was to install a dishwasher (for me a necessity rather than a luxury and this house didn’t have one) and the cheapest counter top and small cabinet to go under it. Of course I thought this was just a temporary convenience…surely we’d be doing a total kitchen remodel in a few years time! So I thought.
Before we could put in the new dishwasher, we had to upgrade the aged electrical system to 220v…Ka-ching! Redo the plumbing…Ka-ching! Then the water heater died…Ka-ching! So I had to put off replacing the kitchen sink.
I had to prioritize, and over the last 18 years, the kitchen came last…after the deck to cover the mud-paddy in front of the picture-window, the bathroom remodel (another story), the garage door to replace the broken wooden one, a busted sewer plug in my crawlspace (ugh…it was a world of shite that took 2 hazmat companies to clean up), emergency replacement of the main sewer line that led to the replacement of 40′ of fencing after a section of it blew down in the wind from being weakened by its temporary removal during the excavation of the sewer line, new lighting (this place was DARK!), new roof and gutters, new furnace and AC, new storm doors, painting and all sorts of general and much needed (usually emergency) maintenance including an $1800 rotor-rootering from hell that took 3 days.
So, the kitchen had to wait. I planned and dreamed, kept wish books and samples, devoured kitchen remodeling magazines and HGTV…but it seemed an illusive dream.
I still entertained friends, I love to cook, but I was so embarrassed by the state of my kitchen! It was a joke among my friends that once I got my new kitchen, I would reach Nirvana.
Well, in spring of 2008, after doing some major manifesting meditations, I refinanced my home, got enough to pay off my credit debts and a wad of cash to remodel my kitchen…or so I thought.
I picked out my cabinets and got the plans drawn up at Home Depot for $125 (refundable if you use their contractors for the actual remodel). I even bought the kitchen sink! A fantastic Pegasus sink made of some sort of granite resin…in black. I paid for Ubatuba granite countertops. I picked out paint chips and bought a black LG French door, bottom-freezer refrigerator on sale, they would even keep it in storage until the remodel was complete! Whoo Hoo! Nothing was going to stop me now! I’d waited 17 years and didn’t want to scrimp on any detail for the kitchen in which I would most likely cook my last meal.
But then the recession and eBay’s “new & improved” modifications hit me…big time. While I’d had my Soul2Soul Treasures store running since 2005, about 3/4 of my business was thru eBay, a sad fact for most small online business owners is you need the traffic that eBay can provide…and you pay the price in ever-growing fees and ever-changing regulations and modifications that can drive your traffic and sales to a halt.
That’s what happened in the summer of 2008, after I’d rented a Rat Pack storage pod for my driveway to store the contents of my garage and excess household stuff while the garage held my new kitchen cabinets, sink and various things of construction. My house was packed to the gills, but the money I’d earmarked for construction was quickly dwindling away just to pay the mortgage, bills and costs of living. Yeah, I was in a bit of a panic.
I hoped I’d be able to recover, get back on my feet and commence with construction in the following Spring, but before Thanksgiving of 2008 I got my first warning from the city of Denver…a neighbor had complained that my storage pod…parked on my private driveway, was impeding her view of traffic. WTFudge? I knew immediately who this neighbor was.
The summer of 2006 is known as my Summer in Hell. A couple of realtors bought the modest-sized ranch home next door to me and proceeded to demolish it to build what looks like a Hyatt Regency…yeah, one of those million dollar McMansions. After I told them of my concerns about the noise…I work thru the night most of the time, and my housemate/ex-husband (yeah, another story in itself) works the night shift at UPS, they promised to find some sort of sound barrier to make the construction a little more tolerable. Never happened. The only times they contacted me were to ask for permission for some phase of construction…like tearing down a part of my fence.
So, it was about 6 months of constant ear-splitting construction noise, from 7am to 9pm. With both my bedroom and my office situated on that side of the house…I couldn’t even hear myself think I couldn’t take calls or do readings. It got to the point I was crying from the constant noise and lack of sleep. At one point I was nearly thrown off my bed by the violent pounding that shook my house, and peered out my bedroom window to see the full-moon arse-crack of a construction guy on some huge pounding machine inches away from where I slept.
I would have thought a fruit basket, a thank you card, or a gift-certificate for some headphones or a caribbean cruise would have been a classy way to make amends and thank me and the rest of the neighbors for our tolerance. Instead, she’s made herself “The Queen of the Neighborhood” as one city inspector put it. The last time she’d spoken to me was to make an offer on my house…it probably ticked her off that I laughed her off.
She’s taken it upon herself to report every slight infraction…including trying to cite the woman to the north of her of having “an unsightly brown Ford truck.”
This is a sweet woman who’s lived here longer than anyone I know, and she caught this “Queen of the Neighborhood” spraying her ornamental bushes with herbicide, then was forced by the city to remove her well-trimmed hedges because of a “neighbor’s complaint”…the hedges had been there since the 60’s, so go figure who complained. It wasn’t enough that this 2-story “castle” now blocked most of the sunlight from her gardens.
Anyway, after many trips to city hall, appeals and talks with inspectors and the council woman of my district (all during my busiest pre-holiday season), they all agreed that my pod posed no danger, that the citation was frivolous, and after writing a detailed appeal I had the citation rescinded. Then I got hit with a citation again at the start of 2009…this time it had to be removed within 2 weeks or I faced a $500 fine. At that point the best I could do was beg them to give me a month’s extension. There was no way I could have the pod moved, I had china and artwork sitting on shelving inside of it…I hadn’t planned on this being a long term storage solution.
With trepidation and a lot of faith, I took out another loan. I talked to a wonderful kitchen guy named Brian at Home Depot who took pity on me and who told me I could probably save some money by using a independent contractor who Home Depot often used to fix the boo-boos their own contractors made. Thus, I found Nathan at Compass Construction and their crack-team of professionals. The construction cost was considerably less than Home Depot’s estimate. I had to reorder the Ubatuba granite since the warehouse couldn’t hold it until 2009, and I ended up saving about $150 on that too.
So, on February 16, 2009…during the cold tail-end of winter, I watched with utter delight as my old kitchen was demolished by a crew of way-too-cute construction guys.
So, I’m cultivating an attitude of gratitude for this “Queen of the Neighborhood” who through her nastiness and control issues, managed to light that fire under my keister to finally manifest my long-held dream.
To be continued….
The Kitchen Story, Part 2
The Final Product
My home is decorated in an eclectic mix of Japanese, Mission and contemporary stuff…with a predominate mix of red, gold, green and black…I wanted the kitchen to reflect the same feeling of serenity. I kept a “Dream Kitchen” file for many years, adding to it, making changes and also getting inspiration from Better Homes and Gardens and the HGTV.com site and TV show.
I also wanted to utilize Feng Shui principles in the design. The old kitchen had a bad aspect with the dishwasher, stove and refrigerator on the same side…mixing fire and water elements so close to each other is a no-no. The new design has the stove (fire element) on one wall with the sink, frig and dishwasher (water elements) on the opposite wall. Also, red is an auspicious color for a kitchen, symbolizing vitality and health, so I definitely wanted red accents.
I’ve never been a fan of the popular stainless steel stuff…reminds me too much of hospitals and morgues, so I knew I wanted my appliances in black…some would have tried to deter me owing to the smallness of my galley kitchen, but I actually think it makes it look larger. I’ve always been drawn to golden metals…and I felt brushed brass details would be perfect and quite Japanese in combination with the black and red accents. I gathered my inspiration from Japanese lacquer ware, the glossy red bowls with the outer glaze of black, delicately painted with golden cranes, leaves or flowers.
The demolition of the kitchen was swift, the ugly plastic tiles came off easier than expected, and the ancient built-in cabinets were quickly ripped off the walls. The “ducky” wallpaper peeled off like a banana skin once the walls were sprayed down with the WallWik solution…and for any trivia buffs, it turns out that blue & white bow-tie wearing duck pattern is called “Aunt Rhody.” The funniest thing was the color of the paint under all that wallpaper…it was the exact same golden cornflower shade that I’d picked out for the remodel! I thought the construct crew must have had an exceptionally fast painter!
Ugly Ducklings
Kitchen Tear-out
The biggest surprise was the ugly vinyl tile flooring…it wasn’t just covering the original flooring…there were FIVE layers of floor that needed to be scraped off! It was like an archeological dig as the crew scraped off decade after decade of vinyl and linoleum. The original layer was a pattern of yellow and green that mirrored the plastic back-splash tiles. After the last layer was removed, the sub-floor had to be patched and repaired in places.
The walls were refinished with drywall over the massive amount of left-over glue from the tiles. I had planned on Glidden “Sweet Corn” color on the longer walls, and “Drumbeat Red” on the two smaller end walls and garage door. The contractor’s painter did a great job one the long walls and ceiling while I did the red walls (still need to do the garage door!).
Then in came the cabinets that had been living in my garage for a year. I had chosen the cabinets from Home Depot’s American Woodmark Townsend collection in Maple Spice. This is a moderately priced line with nice luxury touches like full overlay doors. I knew I definitely wanted a pull-out pantry cabinet and pull-out drawers for my pots and pans…I LOVE it!
Installation
The Cute & Competent Crew
As the crew were busy installing the cabinets I stained the wood floor moldings to match the cabinets, an outdoor job…luckily we were blessed with unseasonably warm weather throughout this construction.
Once the base cabinets were installed, the granite guy came to make templates for the counter top…it would take about 21 days for delivery and installation. So we had to live without the kitchen sink for nearly a month and used folded cardboard boxes over the cabinets as a make-shift counter top.
Ubatuba in da House!
I wanted simple, yet elegant cabinet pulls in black, and had spent several months ordering samples online. It turned out that Lowe’s Home Center had the perfect pulls in-stock at their store for $.97 apiece the larger ones were $4.90! This also made it very easy when I had to exchange some for a longer size.
Love the floor to ceiling pull-out pantry!
A great place for cookin'
I found the perfect brush brass one-handled faucet from Faucets.com and bought the matching sprayer, disposal flange and sink strainer. My main demands for the faucet was that it be brushed brass, one-handled so it could be turned on with the back of my hand if I’d been making a meatloaf or handling a chicken, and needed to accommodate my Rejuvenator Water Ionizer. I also found a great automatic soap dispenser online.
Love my Pegasus sink!
I splurged on brushed brass wallplates from wallplatewarehouse.com. I really hate the cheap plastic wallplates that yellow and crack, these babies will last forever!
I wanted to finish off the top of the cabinets over the kitchen sink with small glass cabinets to store my small collection of pottery and crystal. I wanted it lit with recessed xenon pucks and paid extra to have the cabinets finished on the inside to showcase the lovelies. Unfortunately, the electricians talked me into putting the pucks in the sides of the cabinets and I foolishly agreed. Once they were done, you could see the wiring, and the pucks looked ugly sticking on the sides. Only then did they admit that they’d never done in-cabinet lighting before! So, I scratched my plans for clear glass inserts and went with a sandblasted matte glass. It actually looks very nice…calling to mind Japanese shoji screens. The crystal reflects interesting shadows when the lights are on too.
In-cabinet lighting
The xenon lights were suggested to me by another Home Depot associate, he told me they last longer, burn cooler, use less electricity and were cheaper than halogens…and you didn’t need to wear gloves to change them. They also don’t have that ghastly blue cast of fluorescent lighting. I immediately went online and found the best price for under-cabinet and puck lighting from PegasusAssociates.com, they also had the most helpful and informative website…I was pretty clueless about xenon lights, but this site answered all my questions.
I spent a lot of time daydreaming of new flooring while trying to ignore my permanently scuffed, “whitish” vinyl floor tiles all those years. I even had great plans to do tile with a “river” of Balinese river rock running down the length of the kitchen…think Japanese garden. But I realized that;
- It would be expensive to buy and install
- Tile is really hard and cold on your feet when you’re standing around the kitchen cooking and cleaning for hours, and
- A dropped plate or glass has zero chance of survival.
While the rest of my home has the original ¼” oak flooring, I knew that wood would not be a good option for the kitchen either. Then I found a great alternative with Armstrong’s premium “CushionStep” vinyl sheet flooring in Golden Oak.
After ordering a sample I was amazed at how real it looked, and how comfortable it was underfoot. It blended with the rest of my home very nicely. I didn’t want to ruin the illusion of real wood flooring with a cheap aluminum threshold, so I bought two oak thresholds from Home Depot to complete the look.
Unfortunately, the granite installers at Stonemark had to move out the refrigerator during their installation of the counter tops, and in doing so, they left two gouges in my floor…I couldn’t believe they didn’t use any padding or protection! Stonemark was supposed to fix it, they even sent out a floor guy to have a look…and he was amazed that it wasn’t real wood. He had to get down on his hands and knees to check it out. They realized that it wasn’t a matter of putting in a patch…this was full sheet vinyl…I didn’t want any seams after having to live with that nasty vinyl tile that would sometimes bubble up after a good mopping.
My poor abused floor!
The last I heard from them they were going to replace my floor…that was months ago and life got too busy for me to pursue it. Perhaps I should give them a call…it just turns my stomach that my perfect floor was scarred before the kitchen was even finished.
Darth Refrigerator
My old washer was awkwardly taking up space in the kitchen that I felt the perfect place for the frig. My dryer was in the unheated garage, which made laundry day pretty miserable in the winter. So, I moved both the washer and dryer into the unused “eat-in” nook in the far end of the kitchen. This necessitated new plumbing, electrical and an air vent that was routed through the garage and then through a foot of hard brick. I really pitied the sub-contractor…a big, friendly bear of a man who spent the better part of the day trying to hammer through that wall…hurting himself several times in the process…not that I learned any new words. 
I finally had a little chat with him, I could tell it was more than the project that was getting him down. He confessed that things had been going really miserably since he started his own business, underestimating bids, losing money…his family was in major stress and he felt he just had really bad luck. I felt compelled to tell him about The Secret, and how I was finally able to manifest my dream kitchen after finding that “zone” of gratitude and letting go…allowing the Universe to deliver. He was very interested so I gave him a copy with the suggestion that he “pass it on” to someone else once he was done with it. I hope it helped.
Now, with this gorgeous new kitchen, I certainly didn’t want to use those ugly old aluminum blinds, but knew that wood would not be a good choice for a kitchen. I found the perfect solution at Blinds.com beautiful Bali Fauxwood Economy blinds. I could not believe the price, they were a fraction of the price of the real wood blinds I had installed in my bedroom a few years earlier, and the first freezing day of winter they proved their superiority in blocking out the cold. I was shocked when I put my hand to the closed blinds and felt absolutely no coldness coming through. The aluminum blinds would practically freeze, and the real wood blinds in my bedroom still let the chill in. These blinds are fantastic!
2" Fauxwood Economy Blinds
Tips for Kitchen Remodel
- Before starting a kitchen remodel, make sure you have a plan for your “camp kitchen.” I kept my old microwave on the dining room table along with some dishes and utensils, coffee maker, cups and paper plates. We washed what plates and utensils we did use in a dishpan in the bathtub…not a fun chore. Luckily, we had another refrigerator in the garage for food and containers of water.
- Be aware that construction is MESSY! Even with precautions like plastic in the doorways, you’ll still get a fair amount of dust EVERYWHERE.
- Know that there will probably be unexpected expenses, I got to know most of the staff at the Glendale Home Depot on a first name basis after this project was done. There were extra filler panels, moldings, nails, stains, rags, primer, paint and such to order and buy that I would sometimes be at the store twice in one day. They are such a wonderful and helpful staff!
- Have your plans double-checked! The original designer planned for the cabinets over the refrigerator to be attached only to the right bank of cabinets and the wall…the contractor and Brian at Home Depot caught that mistake in time…a floor to ceiling panel was needed on the left hand side of the refrigerator to stabilize the cabinets… the added benefit is the frig looks like a built-in unit. Also, more space and a filler panel should have been planned for the over-the-stove microwave/fan…the cabinet doors on either side rub up against the microwave when opened, but there’s nothing that can be done about it now. A good designer would know these things in advance.
- Go with your heart. I had some people try to talk me out of the granite counter tops, that I would get tired of them, the new laminates were just as nice and cheaper, they weren’t worth the expense, and even that the granite I picked out was too dark for so small a kitchen. Well, I have to say I do not regret it one bit! My entire kitchen is a giant trivet, I can put a hot pan anywhere. The first time I had to roll out dough for dumplings it was a pure joy doing it directly on the (thoroughly cleaned) counter top…no sticking, no sliding cutting board. When I gaze into the dark natural stone and see the glittering flecks of bronze and silver, I’m transported into another universe…yeah, I’m lovin’ my Ubatuba.
- Spend your money on things with lasting value and classic beauty. Sure I paid extra for trivial things like brushed brass accessories, but how often do you change a faucet and switch plates? I bought an $89 garbage disposal instead of one for 3 times that price because I knew the lifespan on both would be the same.
- The internet is your friend! There are so many great kitchen design planning tools for free out there that can give you a great head-start in designing your dream. Frankly, I don’t know how people even started a remodeling project before the internet era!
- DO NOT ATTEMPT A REMODEL WITHOUT PROFESSIONAL HELP, ok, unless you are an actual construction type person. I remember back in the 1970’s when my mother drew out the plans to build a kitchen/dining room addition to their house, she believed she was better than any “professional” and knew exactly what she wanted. Well, it turned out that she had designed the kitchen utilizing the outside dimensions instead of the actual indoor space…there were cabinets that could not be opened because they butted up against the stove…she was too hard-headed to listen to the contractor or pay for a professional design.
A few other websites that I found helpful or fun:
Better Homes & Gardens, the Home Design Tools are fabulous!
Susan Jablon Mosaics – I LOVE to play with the Custom Blend Tile Designer
Natural Pebble Tile – I love the natural look of these.
My kitchen is still a work in progress, I had planned to do a metallic gold textured glaze backsplash when I found the time…and just to tide me over until I can afford either the gorgeous Susan Jablon Mosaic glass tiles or the Natural Pebble tiles. Maybe I’ll need to have a poll. 
I often wonder about the trends of the future, I certainly hope this love-affair with stainless steel would go away and be replaced by appliances of brushed brass or warm metallic golds.
I hope this long blog can help someone with their own small kitchen remodeling project.
Bright blessings!
Harusami
