I probably won't document the entire process here since it's already on flickr, but I'll do a better job of tying the two together.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Kitchen Remodel '010
I've been taking and posting pictures of the kitchen remodel to flickr when I a) have time, b) have internet access, and c) can actually get in the kitchen.
I probably won't document the entire process here since it's already on flickr, but I'll do a better job of tying the two together.
I probably won't document the entire process here since it's already on flickr, but I'll do a better job of tying the two together.
Monday, January 04, 2010
Kitchen Remodel '010
The November / December wrap up post I promised is going to have to wait. We’re remodeling our kitchen right now and it’s infinitely more entertaining than a bunch of shit I made up to rationalize November.
We hadn’t actually planned to remodel the kitchen this year. Honestly I’m not sure how it happened. I remember talking about getting a new kitchen table? One that doesn’t have eight hundred small round indentations bored into the top from when Randy's little kids used to press open their Push-Up pops on it? One without a bench because we’re not Amish? One that isn’t so covered in assorted waxes and oils, both cleansing and meal-based, that it actually attracts slime and is completely immune to any and all efforts to clean its surface? I don’t even try to clean it anymore, I just pour muriatic acid on it every couple of months and press a crucifix into the top while it hisses.
But then something happened and without taking the time to fruitlessly attempt to connect the dots for you, now we’re completely gutting the kitchen. Cabinets, counter tops, appliances, flooring, we’re vaulting the ceiling from eight feet to like fourteen feet, we turned a window into a door and a door into a window, we’re highly committed. And Randy is on a roll; this morning—the morning we’re scheduled to demolish half the house—Randy strolls into the room and goes, “Hey, I think we oughta vault the laundry room, too.”
“Well yeah, duh,” I said. Obviously we should. “You’re just lucky I sold an Edward zombie this week to pay for all this.”
And then he gave me a fake checkbook and a kindergarten pencil to keep me out of trouble while he took a shower.
Back when we were still in the incredulous speculation phase of this whole project, my mom had a pretty fantastic idea for the house. It's a little hard to explain if you've never been to my house, but if you have been here then when I tell you what we did you're going to go, "Oh thank GOD, that was SO WEIRD before, why was it like that?"
Our family room and our kitchen are essentially one room, right, like a lot of homes. But the family room is a step down from the kitchen. A literal step, not a figurative step. We don't like the kitchen more or anything, it's just that when you want to go from the kitchen to the family room you have to take a step down off a ledge.
And it just so happens that the exterior door in the family room is placed precariously near this step, okay, and it's weirdly positioned on the wall, so if you want to use that door you have to skate along this odd ledge like a tightrope walker.
(All of these pictures are on flickr in a set that makes sense, FYI.)
We have three of these steps in our house. Babies in this family learn what "STEP!" means real quick; we've got the only ten-month-olds in town who will immediately stop what they're doing and evaluate their footing if you holler "STEP!"
Not to mention my mom. My mom who lost one of her eyes and now has zero depth perception. Every time she comes over and almost falls into the family room it's like someone's taking tweezers to my heart. One of those times, after I acted as her personal step buffer for the nine zillionth time, she looked hard at the room.
"You know what you guys should do, you should turn this door into a window, and turn that window, "she said, pointing at a picture window on the kitchen wall, "into French doors."
Huh. You know what? We damn well should, that would be amazing. And normal. And would cut down significantly on lawsuits.
So we did. We turned a window into a door and a door into a window. One of the things about the original door-- or the original door wall, to be accurate-- was that it had a small window to begin with. I did a poor job of capturing it here, but hanging from the top of that window on a small hook you can barely make out a single ruby red crystal ball on a loop of fishing line. It was a gift from one of Randy's ex-girlfriends. I just typed that and now I'm trying to figure out how that crystal managed to slink out of my path during the period of our relationship in which I routinely peed a circle around the property and set things other women might have purchased, picked out, or briefly touched on fire.
Curious.
In any case, the crystal has hung there for more than ten years. I like it. It's red. It's glittery. I'm essentially a raccoon so if something is shiny and/or brightly colored there's a fair chance I'm going to snatch it up in my tiny human-like fist and start licking it. I'm not joking-- when I was two I took a bite out of a round glass Christmas tree ornament. I have more jewelry in my lower intestines than you have in your entire body, and shit, we can't even have glitter in the house. But somehow the crystal and I forged a working relationship based on admiration, maturity, and the fact that it's not at eye level.
This is funny: Randy was on the phone once a couple years ago with the woman who gifted him the crystal and I quietly asked him to mention that said crystal is still hanging in the window. Which he did. And then, I'm not kidding, this chick launched into no less than a fifteen minute dissertation as to how the crystal should be cleaned, about power and energy and full moons and salt water... I just watched Randy as his eyes rolled further and further into the back of his head. I felt like I was watching their entire relationship completely replay itself inside of a twenty minute phone conversation, it was hysterical. Anyway. I squirted it with some Fantastic and wiped the gunk off so we're good to go.
Okay, so part of the "door into a window" schematic meant that the tiny window would have to be popped out in order to make room for the big window. Meaning the crystal would have to come down. And I like it and everything, right, but it's sort of hard for me to rationalize putting this big beautiful new picture window in the house only to drill a hole in the ceiling so Randy's ex-girlfriend's glass globe can continue to not bring us psychic harmony or universal empathy or a big stack of sweaty cash.
So the crystal came down. And I could tell you that I'm still looking for the perfect place for it, but you and I both know I ate it.
Right now Randy's reading this and he's thinking, "I can't believe we just ripped two enormous holes in the house solely because she's 'tired of babies falling' and all she can talk about is that stupid crystal snack."
He's got a point, my hypothetical Randy. So yeah, we hired some fantastic masons to come out and modify both the door opening and the window opening; despite how it looks here, "modify" was actually a lot more complicated than "beat the shit out of it with a hammer". This house is too old to match our particular block, so the masons had to carefully extricate all of the extra block from underneath the original window so they could then use it to build up the wall where the original door used to be.
It worked beautifully, I think they had six blocks to spare.
Here's the door. I love it in theory but the door guy actually made a pretty big mistake here; the door they installed is about five inches too short. You can see how they had to frame down the opening to get it to fit. Randy came home that night, all excited to see it, and then he banged his head on the door frame.
"This isn't going to work," he said. "We need a taller door. If this was our mistake somehow it's going to cost a fortune. Can you live with this?" he asked, ducking a little as he walked through, "What do you think?"
What do I think? I think I just wrote a giant fake check to the Empress of Unicorns for 39$779.5104 and dated it "Summer Solstice ", man. I am not qualified.
In the end it wasn't our fault and the new, normal person sized door is on order.
The window turned out really nicely, I think. It lets in so much more light, it's great to be able to see out onto the patio from the family room, and I can stop greeting guests with a four-page liability waver.
Of course, every time I look through it I'm struck by a distinct feeling that I'm suddenly more distanced from the universe and I feel sort of like my psychic abilities are receding, but I'm sure that will fade.
We hadn’t actually planned to remodel the kitchen this year. Honestly I’m not sure how it happened. I remember talking about getting a new kitchen table? One that doesn’t have eight hundred small round indentations bored into the top from when Randy's little kids used to press open their Push-Up pops on it? One without a bench because we’re not Amish? One that isn’t so covered in assorted waxes and oils, both cleansing and meal-based, that it actually attracts slime and is completely immune to any and all efforts to clean its surface? I don’t even try to clean it anymore, I just pour muriatic acid on it every couple of months and press a crucifix into the top while it hisses.
But then something happened and without taking the time to fruitlessly attempt to connect the dots for you, now we’re completely gutting the kitchen. Cabinets, counter tops, appliances, flooring, we’re vaulting the ceiling from eight feet to like fourteen feet, we turned a window into a door and a door into a window, we’re highly committed. And Randy is on a roll; this morning—the morning we’re scheduled to demolish half the house—Randy strolls into the room and goes, “Hey, I think we oughta vault the laundry room, too.”
“Well yeah, duh,” I said. Obviously we should. “You’re just lucky I sold an Edward zombie this week to pay for all this.”
And then he gave me a fake checkbook and a kindergarten pencil to keep me out of trouble while he took a shower.
Back when we were still in the incredulous speculation phase of this whole project, my mom had a pretty fantastic idea for the house. It's a little hard to explain if you've never been to my house, but if you have been here then when I tell you what we did you're going to go, "Oh thank GOD, that was SO WEIRD before, why was it like that?"
Our family room and our kitchen are essentially one room, right, like a lot of homes. But the family room is a step down from the kitchen. A literal step, not a figurative step. We don't like the kitchen more or anything, it's just that when you want to go from the kitchen to the family room you have to take a step down off a ledge.
And it just so happens that the exterior door in the family room is placed precariously near this step, okay, and it's weirdly positioned on the wall, so if you want to use that door you have to skate along this odd ledge like a tightrope walker.
(All of these pictures are on flickr in a set that makes sense, FYI.)
We have three of these steps in our house. Babies in this family learn what "STEP!" means real quick; we've got the only ten-month-olds in town who will immediately stop what they're doing and evaluate their footing if you holler "STEP!"
Not to mention my mom. My mom who lost one of her eyes and now has zero depth perception. Every time she comes over and almost falls into the family room it's like someone's taking tweezers to my heart. One of those times, after I acted as her personal step buffer for the nine zillionth time, she looked hard at the room.
"You know what you guys should do, you should turn this door into a window, and turn that window, "she said, pointing at a picture window on the kitchen wall, "into French doors."
Huh. You know what? We damn well should, that would be amazing. And normal. And would cut down significantly on lawsuits.
So we did. We turned a window into a door and a door into a window. One of the things about the original door-- or the original door wall, to be accurate-- was that it had a small window to begin with. I did a poor job of capturing it here, but hanging from the top of that window on a small hook you can barely make out a single ruby red crystal ball on a loop of fishing line. It was a gift from one of Randy's ex-girlfriends. I just typed that and now I'm trying to figure out how that crystal managed to slink out of my path during the period of our relationship in which I routinely peed a circle around the property and set things other women might have purchased, picked out, or briefly touched on fire.
Curious.
In any case, the crystal has hung there for more than ten years. I like it. It's red. It's glittery. I'm essentially a raccoon so if something is shiny and/or brightly colored there's a fair chance I'm going to snatch it up in my tiny human-like fist and start licking it. I'm not joking-- when I was two I took a bite out of a round glass Christmas tree ornament. I have more jewelry in my lower intestines than you have in your entire body, and shit, we can't even have glitter in the house. But somehow the crystal and I forged a working relationship based on admiration, maturity, and the fact that it's not at eye level.
This is funny: Randy was on the phone once a couple years ago with the woman who gifted him the crystal and I quietly asked him to mention that said crystal is still hanging in the window. Which he did. And then, I'm not kidding, this chick launched into no less than a fifteen minute dissertation as to how the crystal should be cleaned, about power and energy and full moons and salt water... I just watched Randy as his eyes rolled further and further into the back of his head. I felt like I was watching their entire relationship completely replay itself inside of a twenty minute phone conversation, it was hysterical. Anyway. I squirted it with some Fantastic and wiped the gunk off so we're good to go.
Okay, so part of the "door into a window" schematic meant that the tiny window would have to be popped out in order to make room for the big window. Meaning the crystal would have to come down. And I like it and everything, right, but it's sort of hard for me to rationalize putting this big beautiful new picture window in the house only to drill a hole in the ceiling so Randy's ex-girlfriend's glass globe can continue to not bring us psychic harmony or universal empathy or a big stack of sweaty cash.
So the crystal came down. And I could tell you that I'm still looking for the perfect place for it, but you and I both know I ate it.
Right now Randy's reading this and he's thinking, "I can't believe we just ripped two enormous holes in the house solely because she's 'tired of babies falling' and all she can talk about is that stupid crystal snack."
He's got a point, my hypothetical Randy. So yeah, we hired some fantastic masons to come out and modify both the door opening and the window opening; despite how it looks here, "modify" was actually a lot more complicated than "beat the shit out of it with a hammer". This house is too old to match our particular block, so the masons had to carefully extricate all of the extra block from underneath the original window so they could then use it to build up the wall where the original door used to be.
It worked beautifully, I think they had six blocks to spare.
Here's the door. I love it in theory but the door guy actually made a pretty big mistake here; the door they installed is about five inches too short. You can see how they had to frame down the opening to get it to fit. Randy came home that night, all excited to see it, and then he banged his head on the door frame.
"This isn't going to work," he said. "We need a taller door. If this was our mistake somehow it's going to cost a fortune. Can you live with this?" he asked, ducking a little as he walked through, "What do you think?"
What do I think? I think I just wrote a giant fake check to the Empress of Unicorns for 39$779.5104 and dated it "Summer Solstice ", man. I am not qualified.
In the end it wasn't our fault and the new, normal person sized door is on order.
The window turned out really nicely, I think. It lets in so much more light, it's great to be able to see out onto the patio from the family room, and I can stop greeting guests with a four-page liability waver.
Of course, every time I look through it I'm struck by a distinct feeling that I'm suddenly more distanced from the universe and I feel sort of like my psychic abilities are receding, but I'm sure that will fade.
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