Search Results for: dining room
the cork test: results
Three months ago we purchased a box of Vida cork flooring and installed a test piece in our bedroom. We soon moved the test area (3′ wide by 5′ long) to the kitchen to be sure it received not only paw traffic but foot traffic as well.
The results? We’re sold! It’s hard to tell from the photograph, but the cork has held up really well. Plus, it’s easy to clean and feels great underfoot.
The current plan is to install it in the future kitchen/dining area, but there has also been discussion of putting it over the oak floors in the future living/bedroom area as well. Because we will be opening up the floor plan quite a bit, we’re worried about transitions of materials between spaces. Would it look better if the flooring was the same throughout the “great room” area or should we try to keep a bit of the history of the house by keeping the oak floors (but maybe staining them a tad darker to better match the cork?). These are the type of quandaries that we still have to figure out and we may not make a decision until demo is complete and we can get a better sense of the new spaces.
But for now, we’re excited that the cork has passed the 3 month indurance test with flying colors and can’t wait to rid ourselves of the linoleum.*
[ * note – we love linoleum and think it’s a great green product, but ours was not maintained properly over the years and is now a dry and brittle dirt sponge.]
bright ideas
So we found this great chandelier…oh wait. No, that’s the horrendous thing that came with the house. But really, is it not glorious? Fake plastic dripping wax and real burn marks on the ceiling? What style would you even call this, neo-modified medieval revival?
[Don’t worry, we replaced this beauty long ago.]
In the living area and flat-ceiling portion adjacent to the kitchen we’ll do simple recessed cans from Halo.
So that’s about it. Actually, let’s add one more:
In the event that we find about $700 lying on the ground we’ll pick up this guy for the living room. The bigger, much taller brother to our bedroom Tolomeo sconces, this would be a lovely addition to that BoConcept sectional.
kitchen sketchup
During the last week or so, we have been updating our sketchup 3D model in order to study our ever evolving design ideas for the kitchen. While we had worked out the general cabinet layout and “what goes where” in autocad, we wanted to see how the materials and colors were coming together. As a result, we did a good deal of tweaking. We then went to IKEA to more closely examine colors, sizes, and door and drawer operation. Then, more sketchup tweaking. We’re pretty happy with where things are at, but will likely continue to adjust things here and there in the next couple of months. [click on images to enlarge.]
The bluish-gray base cabinets are IKEA Abstrakt as are the upper white horizontal cabinets (both have a high gloss finish similar to our bathroom vanity). The darker base cabinets provide some visual grounding and will show less dirt/food splatters/etc. White upper cabinets (and maybe countertops) will help the space feel light and bright. Since the kitchen will be part of a larger great room, we’d like to express the different components as a cohesive, built-in cabinet. To achieve this, we’ll build two infill boxes out of fir, one over the fridge and one to the left of the white cabinets and then wrap the entire composition in fir plywood.
The range shown above is the actual range we bought yesterday(!) and the refrigerator and dishwasher are what we currently own. For the range hood we’re thinking of going with a simple and clean model from vent-a-hood. We bought a sink on sale a few years ago, though we’re considering swapping it for a single, deep basin. We have yet to pick out a faucet, but will be looking for something that’s modern with a pull-out spray nozzle.
Here’s a view standing at the dishwasher looking back at the dining and living area. The island will be constructed of two drawer units and a shelf unit, with the opposite side and back wrapped in IKEA end panels. The shelf will hold the microwave and Bailey’s bowls (hence the cutouts). For the countertop, we’re thinking IKEA’s beech butcher block or lyptus. We really want the island to be a large, open work surface that can accommodate several people [attention future dinner guests, you will be put to work!].
We had originally planned on chocolate brown paperstone countertops, but with the darker base cabinets we’re now thinking of something lighter – maybe either ecotop or a quartz material. We’re also still mulling over the backsplash at the range. It could be an opportunity to introduce some color (mustard yellow?) without being committed to that color forever. A few ideas include back-painted spandrel glass or just a really high gloss paint.
This bird’s eye view shows the overall layout and the connection to the adjacent dining area. The back door and windows are part of the work we did this past fall so at least we can already check off one thing from the list!
We’re also assembling a collection of material samples and will share those once we decide on potential countertop materials. We feel like we’ve made some good progress and it’s exciting to see things come together. In addition to finalizing materials, there are still a few design decisions to be made including finalizing our lighting plan [and selecting the fixtures] and deciding if we want to add any skylights. Before demo can begin [March, we must make ourselves wait till March!], we need to do some work in the attic so insulation does not rain down upon us once the ceilings come down.
Oh, and we still need to finish the porch/mudroom. Blerg.
a new view
So much for priming and painting last weekend. The rain and drizzle were almost constant, but between short bouts of blue skies we were able to get 3 windows primed and painted. Fortunately, rain does not prohibit other activites…like demo and framing!
Even though the kitchen won’t be moving into the back porch till at least next year, we decided to go ahead and do the exterior wall part to save ourselves from having to paint now and then redo later.
The new wall to the right is where the old aluminum screen door used to be.
The siding needed to be cut back at random intervals so the new siding could be slipped in without looking obvious after it’s all painted and done.
New back door (old porch steps relocated), new integrated attic hatch above.
Old electrical “panel” on the right…the two holes to the left were boarded over but originally were screened as part of a natural ventilation food storage system (kitchen is on the other side).
In order to install the future kitchen window, we needed to demo the wall between the porch and the old bathroom/current bathroom ante room.
Framed rough opening for the new (future) kitchen window! I am standing approximately where the future kitchen sink will be.
Since the current kitchen window will eventually be eliminated, we decided to go ahead toss it and frame in the opening. We will probably put in a new window in the future dining area, but this will be located partially behind the existing kitchen cabinets to the right and we didn’t want to rip those out yet.
We found this old electrical permit in the “panel” on the back porch. It’s a permit for an electrical install from 1925!
The old porch and kitchen window are enclosed and ready to be re-sided!
The old back porch will, for the time being, become part of the pseudo mudroom/bathroom ante room. We might remove the old bathroom door and old back door to get a little more light into our now dark kitchen.
Rain or shine, we have to get this project done! New siding will be patched in next and then the last of the paint shaving, prepping, etc.
Friday, Saturday and Sunday are supposed to be warm and sunny which means we have to get some serious priming and painting done!
Design
the plan
After the intial quick fixes that came with moving in, we spent our first winter (2006) thinking about design and trying to come up with an overall plan for chezerbey. In addition to making some much needed updates in every part of the house, our primary goal was to come up with a design that would maximize our space as much as possible. We went through at least 10 different floor plan ideas and ultimately decided on the drawings that you see below [click on the images to enlarge].
basement before
The basement was sort of finished. There was wall board, a cedar wardrobe, some carpet remnants, and of course the “Indestructo” furnace. The L-shaped stair had been added at some point, though inconveniently built around the exhaust chimney. The “retaining wall” between the basement and crawl space was wood and needed to be replaced.
basement redesign
The structural part of the basement remodel has been completed (new concrete retaining wall, new beams, new posts, new slab in the crawl space to create the “short basement” storage area). The furnace and hot water heater are gone (the new furnace is in the short basement, the tankless hot water heater is outside). The old wall board, carpet, and wardrobe are gone and we insulated and completed a seismic retrofit to the exterior walls. With all of the unglamorous work complete, the next step will be to finish the space. Right now we’re in the process of dividing the space into a laundry room and bathroom on one side and a media/den/guest room on the other. Fortunately, with the entire short basement portion for storage, we really don’t need to dedicate any of the full height basement for that purpose (yay!).
main floor before
This was the floor plan when we bought the house. We’re pretty sure they weren’t building walk-in closets in the early 20th century so our thought is that the whole back of the house may have been porch space of some sort (since the presence of a bathroom in 1910 is questionable too). Also, as many have commented, our kitchen was a good size, but the FIVE doorways made it pretty inefficient. Also, since it was essentially the hallway of the house, it made it impossible to do any type of center island. We think that there was also a wood burning cooking stove where the stair is now (the stair was definitely added at some point). (Before we tore the chimney out, we noticed an outlet that faced the kitchen.) The “fake cabinet” was added to provide head clearance for the L-shaped stair below. If you lifted up the counter, you saw straight down to the basement.
We’re not really sure what the living/dining layout was meant to be. It made sense to do dining closer to the kitchen, but then you’re left with this odd shaped living space (hence the couch straddling the framed opening).
main floor redesign
The main floor redesign required a few drastic measures. Fortunately, we were able to phase the work by doing the bedroom and bathroom first (2008) and then the rest of the floor (2010). The new layout is a much more efficient use of the space and adds a second bedroom (now the nursery) that we didn’t have before. During the second phase, we also added a 200 SF loft above the living room and nursery.
