Catching you up

Hello all. Sometimes your favorite TV show will run a "best of" or "clips" episode to tide you over or cleanse your palate between the main storylines. That's what we're doing here.

When last we left our new kitchen island it was big, white, and electrified. The first thing we had to do was to make it green.

Then we added matching green doors and new hardware.

If you haven't tried this at home, one of the many "That shouldn't take long but always does" part of a kitchen or bathroom renovation is installing the hardware. Forget "measure twice, cut once" it's more like "measure five times before drilling" to ensure you center and align the knobs. Then there are endless fine-tunings to the doors to make them level. Finally, we also changed where the drawer fronts (which we'd taken off the make painting easier) attach to the drawers to make sure the heights and gaps are consistent with all the other cabinets.

When last we left our second bathroom it had painted walls, a floor, and the beginnings of a new cabinet. As above, the first task was to paint and then install everything related to the cabinet to finish it. Then came adding all the necessary little elements such as towel racks, which are another of the "Why is this taking so long?" parts of a renovation given all the measuring, leveling, etc.

Until next time.

Furniture reclamation project

Hello all. When we removed the 36-inch vanity from the second bathroom it was still in pretty good shape. After all it was less than 20 years old and even manufacturer's grade is solid. What could we do with such a piece that might fit into our mostly empty house? Every modern house needs a TV stand, right?

The first thing we did was to supplement the back. After all the existing one had holes cut out to fit around the sink drain and water supply lines.

Next we repurposed some of the bead board that we decided not to use on the bathroom walls. They give a nice look to the sides and make everything flush (the cabinet face always extends a bit wider than the side of the cabinet).

Here's how things looked at this stage. The clamps in the corners are to hold in place some scrap pieces we glued onto the little triangular braces that come with the cabinet. We planed to drive screws up through them to secure the top and the spacers would help by filling the gap.

Speaking of the top, we bought a small butcher block piece to keep in the theme of the kitchen.

We trimmed it a bit to fit in the same way as the kitchen tops and clamped it as we locked the top in place.

Now it's primed and ready for painting. We have a color picked, but how would you finish it?

Until next time.

No kitchen is an island

But every kitchen needs one. Hello all. We bought the place with an island and knew that we'd want to replace it. It had only one side of storage plus two bar-type seats.

Not bad but not exactly what we wanted. The kitchen/dining area could to support a bigger island, for instance.

With it roughly in place we could start to get serious such as ensuring it's level (adding shims if not) and screwing into the floor to secure.

Then we could turn to finishing the sides. Remember that bead board we planned to use in the last bathroom? We found a use for it.

In our post on the kitchen floor we noted the stray (live) wire in the center of the room. The previous island had been electrified, and we wanted the new one to be as well. We threaded the wire through a small hole we made in the bottom of the new cabinet.

Then we had to identify where we wanted the outlet to appear on the island.

Ok, ok. It was a tad more complicated than that. We picked a very shallow electrical box and put it as far back as we could in the cabinet to ensure we had clearance for the drawer (we also tested the drawer).

Zip-zap and press you have an outlet!

Add and secure a butcher block top to match the rest of the kitchen...

The last step is to paint it green so it fits in with all its cousins.

Until next time.

Three floors in a fountain...

Hello all. With the momentum from the kitchen floor, we turned back to finishing the living room to complete the look. Here's where things stood with one side of the threshold finished and the other not.

As with the kitchen we did one light mopping with water to clean the floor and raise the grain. Then we applied two coats of clear sealer with sanding in between. See if you can see the difference between the original matte before...

and semi-gloss after...

No? Let's try again. Before...

and after...

Here's the final after photo:

Until next time.