Finished Kitchen

So here's one set of before and after pictures and the rest of the after pictures (although we haven't decided on new window treatments yet). We're thrilled with how it all turned out. It was definitely worth doing over Christmas to get the whole thing done so quickly!

Kitchen Booth

I've always wanted an eat-in kitchen and especially a booth if possible. It was a tight fit, but we managed to squeeze one in!

I had a surprisingly difficult time finding good pictures and advice on dimensions, but I ended up finding this picture and some great advice in one of Sarah Susanka's Not So Big House books.
And then I found this picture on a blog, which was extremely helpful, but unfortunately I have no idea what blog it was.
So I drew up these plans for the contractor, and everything worked out beautifully.
(Click on these links to view full-size drawings of the end view, side view, and top view.)

First they created a frame with 2x4s.
Then added plywood.
Stained the wood to match the cabinets.
Built a post and added a piece of wood to the wall to support the table top.
The finished booth:
We eat all of our meals here, and the kids love sitting here to color and work on craft projects. It's been a big hit in our family! And when the kids have friends over they usually end up squeezing 3 in on each side.

Kitchen Remodel

Our dumpster was delivered on 12/16. We sent the kids to my mom’s house for the day and tried tearing up the floor ourselves to save a little money. We only made it through some of the tile and a very small portion of the plywood, linoleum, and old hardwood before we finally called our contractor and admitted defeat - we decided we'd gladly pay to have the workers remove the rest of it!
Two days later Ray, Sunshine, and Carlos started work. They quickly removed the rest of the kitchen floor, the dishwasher, and some cabinets. The next day they removed the stove, sink, countertop, and the rest of the cabinets.
Next they began opening up walls and working on electrical stuff.
The first big problem we ran into was that the floor joists above the kitchen are only 4x6's, so the remodeling can lights they had planned on using wouldn't fit. They're going to need to use new construction can lights, which are shallower but require a significantly larger opening to install. So they had to increase all the small, 5" diameter circles they had previously cut in the ceiling into large rectangular openings - not an easy task when you're working with a plaster ceiling.

Our living room was the holding area for our new cabinets, appliances, flooring materials, and light fixtures.Our appliances were delivered on 12/22, and we began using the new refrigerator in our temporary kitchen that we set up in the dining room. We had a microwave and toaster oven, and we used mostly paper plates and cups and plastic utensils.

Ray and Sunshine continued to work on the drywall.
After a final sanding Louie started installing the new hardwood floor.
Ray and Sunshine started installing cabinets on Jan. 4 while Louie continued to work on the floor.

The tile for our backsplash was delivered on Jan. 11. It took three weeks to get here from Spain, and it was the wrong tile! It took several calls, but I eventually got a rush on the correct tile, and it miraculously arrived by the time we needed it!

Sunshine, Ray, and Louie finished up the booth and cabinets (trim pieces, crown molding, baseboards, and knobs and pulls), installed the under-cabinet lights, booth light fixture, dimmer switches, and all the appliances.

The granite countertop was installed on Jan 17, and we love it! We had a really great experience working with Top Resources.

Ray and Sunshine began installing the backsplash tile the next day.The kitchen was completed on Jan. 20 – it took almost exactly one month! We've really been enjoying the booth, and it was great "moving back in" to the kitchen.

Kitchen Selections

We worked with a "kitchen designer" at Home Depot Expo. This wasn't a very good experience (I'll just call her "C"), but here are the cabinet designs she came up with:A lot of people had a hard time envisioning what we wanted to do between the kitchen and dining room where the closet used to be and where the stairs go to the basement, including C, but she did end up coming up with a good solution, and the upper corner cabinet was her idea.

Since we picked out a granite counter top we were able to get an undermount sink - very cool.

We had a really hard time deciding between these three light fixtures for over the booth. We ended up choosing the one on the far left from Pottery Barn.

We also had a really hard time choosing tile for the backsplash, but I'm so glad we took our time with this decision. We ended up choosing a simple square bisque tile for the majority of the backsplash and this border tile:
We knew we definitely wanted hardwood floors in the kitchen, but choosing the exact flooring was a little tricky. This is the original wood flooring that we have in the rest of the downstairs:
We ended up choosing this pre-finished cherry flooring from Home Depot Expo that's a pretty close match. And if we ever end up replacing the rest of the flooring downstairs, we'll use this.
I was so happy to replace another one of those huge, ugly heating registers, this time with a flush mount grille from Reggio Registers. It came unfinished so we were able to stain it to match the new floor perfectly.

Kitchen - Before Pictures

This is pretty much how the kitchen looked when we bought our house in 2000 except the walls were originally a weird peachy color. Again, I'm embarrassed to say that I picked out this wallpaper, but at the time it seemed like the best way to compliment the awful cabinet color. The only other option was to paint the cabinets. In hindsight that's probably what we should have done, but you live and you learn.

So when you walk into the kitchen, this is what you see to the right:
Straight ahead:
Another idea we had when we first moved in was to open up the closet on the left (which is where the stairs go to the basement) so you could see into the dining room. When we had the dumpster here for the downstairs bathroom remodel, we had them go ahead and open up the walls and patch up the drywall. So it looked like this for quite a while. We called it "the throne".This is the view looking back into the living room. Another idea we thought about over the years was removing this closet so we could have an eat-in kitchen.
So we also had the bathroom guys remove the closet walls. Unfortunately that left the tile torn up, so we couldn't even put a table and chairs here while we were waiting to remodel the kitchen.

Upstairs Bathroom

In October of 2006 we found out we'd be having company stay with us for Thanksgiving. We'd been thinking about remodeling the upstairs bathroom, so this seemed like a good time to go ahead and do it. Compared to the exterior remodeling (2 months) and the downstairs bathroom (2 weeks), this was a pretty quick project (4 days).

Here's a before and after photo. Again, this bathroom is so small, it's really hard to get any good pictures.
As you can see the biggest improvement was the shower door. We replaced the old door with a beautiful, clear, frameless door. We also replaced the shower surround with a base and tiled walls, and replaced the floor tile and baseboard while we were at it.

Even though I wasn't crazy about the tile we ended up using for the downstairs bathroom, we decided to use something similar in the upstairs bathroom to keep them consistent with each other.

Again, we kept the existing toilet and vanity to save some money, we just replaced the cabinet hinges and put new caulking around the vanity top.

Downstairs Bathroom

When we remodeled the exterior of our house we asked the siding guys to remove the downstairs bathroom window which was in the shower area. At the time we thought we would eventually re-tile that area ourselves. Two years passed, and that never happened, so we called our contractor and asked him for an estimate.

He came over to take a look at the bathroom, and as we were talking about it, we decided to have him remove the old cast iron bathtub as well. And as long as we were doing that, we might as well also re-tile the floor. And install a recessed medicine cabinet. And a fan. And update the electrical. And replace the baseboard and heating vent.

It's really hard to take good pictures of this tiny bathroom, so here's a drawing to give you an overall idea of the layout:
Now for the "before" pictures. I really hate to admit this, but we actually put up this wallpaper and border (!) ourselves in 2000.
I hated this heating register!
And this white tile floor:
Here's a picture of where the window used to be. Oh yeah, and notice there wasn't a real shower head, just a hose going from the bathtub faucet up to a handheld shower head. Lovely.
After removing the old tile and the bathtub, they ended up taking down almost all of the walls to the studs.
Then they put in lots of insulation on the exterior wall where the bathtub is so our bathwater won't get cold so quickly in the winter.
Once the bathtub was in and the new drywall was installed, they started on the tiling:

Luckily the spot where we wanted a recessed medicine cabinet was already framed for it, so the installation of that went really smoothly.
The grout is finished and the plumbing is all in place.
Now for the after pictures:

If I had it to do over again I wouldn't choose this tile, but at least it's a nice, new bathroom!

A real shower head!!
And a lovely wall register! Yea!