The Kitchen Redo
Wall by wall...
The kitchen has been an ongoing project. Because of its fundamental role in our hungry lives, we have tackled it in pieces. One wall, one part of the wall, one cupboard, seemingly one inch at a time. And finally, we have ALMOST completed it.
Just don’t look at the ceiling. The restoration of the rusty tin ceiling will be a project for warmer weather, when we can throw open doors and windows and ventilate whatever Rustoleum-style chemical products necessary to halt the progress of the rust, and then repaint.
And don’t look at the countertops — which are waiting on that maple log that got hauled from our backyard by an island guy with a mill. So no, not finished, but for now, we are celebrating a milestone in a long involved process.
Some of you will remember the Summer Kitchen Cupboard Removal and Rehang — moving a wall cupboard from the Summer Kitchen into the Kitchen, in the first in a multi-part series documenting the Herculean tasks involved in bringing our Kitchen, Summer Kitchen, and Pantry back to life...
Also part of this saga, was the adventure when we went to re-install one of the kitchen windows I had painstakingly restored the summer of our arrival, and I noticed some powder spilling out of the top of the window frame. On inspection, this was the telltale sign that the wall would literally crumble into dust, down to the sill. The only thing to survive in that wall was a letter addressed to us from the prior owners of the house — which I describe, along with all these antics, in the post “The House Sprite and the Magic Letter”.
And, let’s also remember an entire post about my reconciliation and relationship with the Youngstown Kitchen sink.
Bit by bit, we have wrestled with this space — with a conviction that this is the right pace to figure out how we use the space, and how to make the most of it. The elements are finally coming together, fully created out of upcycled pieces of the house, or things we had to hand in the barn — which includes Beau’s collection of architectural bits and bobs that came with him from Oregon. As much as possible, we are using what we have, and what’s been part of the house.
After the initial wall cupboard installation, we built some dish shelving to hang over the sink, upcycling a curved bracket and shelf that I had salvaged from the collapsing pantry. We built on this, using wood we found in the barn, to create the dish shelf. For any of you who love home improvement videos, you can geek out on this video I made when we made this improvement over the summer. I recommend you switch off the music!
Once that was complete, we upcycled some drawers and old cupboard doors from the summer kitchen setup (for any of you curious about the summer kitchen, the Summer Kitchen - Part 3 redo is here), painting them the same green as the dish rack — and the woodwork in the summer kitchen.
Never mind that the upper half of the wall was by no means solved, but we were happy with the base cupboards. I am currently on the lookout for a stove built before the times of chips, so it has less chances of a tech breakdown, but for now this one works.
The great news is that we finally got round to solving the top half of the wall last weekend! We had been putting this off for some time now, worried about what we might find. There was an old pie tin covering the stove pipe hole into the chimney, which must have leaked at some point because the plaster was cracked and bulging. We feared the entire wall could be rotten. I had covered the pie tin with a mask I got in Nepal, partly so we wouldn’t hear it rattling in the wind, but also to give us courage. Beau is the master of bright orange tape, and we owe that method of securing the pie tin to the vent, to him.
This time, though, when we got to work scraping, mudding, and painting the wall, there were, miraculously, no nasty surprises. In a single weekend the wall was repainted, and could once again stand with self respect. Beau even sprayed over the rusty stove pipe hole — he is on a learning curve with all things Rustoleum (in preparation for the ceiling. I applaud him).
A coat of paint, and it was finally time for something I was very excited to hang over the stove: a pot-rack we wanted to build using some heavy carved wall brackets and a decorative board from Beau’s collection of “stuff” in the barn — and 4 wrought iron hooks we got at the Common Ground Fair over the summer.
Ok, it’s not just the ceiling that needs painting still. I also have to paint the shelf white, and we have wiring waiting for some task lighting. The countertops are temporary. Inch by inch though…
And now for the living room. Stay tuned!
Awesome Sauce