Saturday, July 12, 2008

New doors and a kitchen I love

We've been at it again...another remodel that was long overdue. It all started a couple of weekends ago with a set of shitty sliding glass doors in the dining room that didn't slide worth a damn and were NOT secure at all. We were both sick of it, but The Hub had his fill when he bumped the door and the pin that locks it fell out. He went to a building supply store here in town and got a set of French doors. We put Gracie in Breeze's room and began demolition. Since we live in a "midget house", none of our exterior doors are standard size, and we had to cut a bigger opening for the new door to fit into. I've still gotta stain the casing, but I LOVE that both doors open!


With that redo, we decided to repaint the dining room. We went from "Shrimp Toast" to Kilz' "Cinnamon Apple", and it looks like a completely different room now.

Once that was done, looking at the kitchen was just depressing. We priced unfinished oak cabinets, countertops, etc. and decided to keep going. We ripped out the old kitchen, painted, installed all new cabinets, countertop, sink, faucet, electrical, etc. Now I LOVE my kitchen! I still have some minor things to finish up, but for the most part, it's done. The only thing that wasn't replaced was the floor I did last year and the appliances I bought when we bought the house.

Just in case you need a reminder of what we started with a year ago, here it is.

And I've despised this ugly-ass sink since Day 1.

Out with the old, and in with the new!
We still need to get the stainless backsplash up behind the stove, and I have to sand and paint around that outlet, and we're doing away with that phone jack over the stove.


And I finally have a REAL pantry!! We still didn't have enough room for a dishwasher, so our portable one rolls out of the way when we need to get to the pantry.

Here's a closeup of the backsplash we chose. I think it just ties everything in together so well. We went with "Labrador Granite" countertops (Formica), a black sink, and a Moen faucet with a satin finish.


We weren't even finished with the kitchen when we decided that our front door just had to go. The glass in it wasn't tempered, and it wouldn't take much to break one of the panes right by the lock and get in. There were also gaps underneath and on the side, so we were losing a ton of energy and allowing a place for bugs to potentially come in. You guessed it...we took great pleasure in ripping that old thing out and replacing it with a steel front door. Just like the back door, we had to make a bigger opening, so that's why there's an unpainted drywall patch up there above it. I have to sand that down, paint, and then The Hub will get the top of the casing put up.