Before and After: The Kitchen

And now on to the visible progress! Urgent basement priorities aside, I'm aiming to do as many of my home improvements as possible in a "green" way. (Actually, the basement isn't excluded - another early project was to stuff insulation all along the rim joists where chilly winter air was pouring in, which I hope boosts energy efficiency a bit.) In the rest of the house, that means experimenting with some products I won't find at Home Depot...but it also means simply reusing as much of the original material as I can, rather than tearing out and starting over with new resources. Also a more economical strategy, luckily.

So the first project I tackled was the kitchen cabinets. They're original to the house, I presume, and very spacious. I liked the red paint that had been applied sometime in the recent past, but it clearly needed another coat. And upon closer inspection, I found that sanding was in order first. Well, that turned out to be a monumental task. By the time I peeled off layers and layers of old shelf paper (every pattern imaginable, from red-and-white checks to flowers to brick-look to faux-wood grain), unscrewed all the knobs and hinges and catches and took off all the doors, broke in my new palm sander (and then some, using about a zillion sheets of sandpaper) as I sanded down the doors and the frames, painted everything with a coat of primer and three coats of "Wild Current" red paint, sanded the inside shelves a bit and added two coats of paint, coated the wooden knobs with umpteen layers of black paint, then spent the better part of a weekend putting the doors back up with new hinges and assistance from my dad, I had a good three weeks invested. In the meantime, I decided to leave the doors off the cabinets on either side of the sink, making them into open shelves. Bill and his crew, after they finished the beams downstairs, put plywood backs and sides in to make them presentable on the inside, and I painted them yellow to match the kitchen walls, where I'd painted over the mint green with a cheery shade of "Sundance." I also put several more coats of off-white on the beadboard walls, sprucing them up a bit. Here's what it looked like before I started deconstructing, and then mid-project.








The kitchen has also benefited from an appliance upgrade. A gas range was high on my wish list, so a bit of shopping around resulted in a shiny new black one procured cheap from the "scratch and dent" wares at Chuck's Appliance in Petoskey. They also had shiny black fridges among the scratch and dent markdowns, so I added an Energy Star fridge to the package, to replace the old one that was here. Chuck's even delivered to TC. The two guys who made the trek seemed quite pleased with the change of pace. One had never been to Traverse City before, and they were both looking forward to lunch at Bob Evans. Anyhow, with the spiffy black appliances and the black knobs and hinges on the newly redone cabinets, it all came together. Ta da! Check out the new look! Still on the agenda: 1) Figuring out what to put in the hole above the window, which apparently once had a kitchen clock wired into it. 2) Replacing the counters, which are the original, well worn Formica. But a paint scraper in the crevices took care of the worst layers of grime for now.

The opposite corner of the kitchen turned out to be the perfect location to hang a shelf I'd bought from the local building salvage store, Odom Reuse Company. It cost me $10 and quite a few hours of sanding and refinishing; now it'll be just right for cookbooks and whatnot. The smaller shelf on that side also cost me $10, at the Reston Community Yard Sale last year. It's got a lovely tile in it, and its previous owner was glad to see it going to a home where it would be appreciated. Wish she could see it in its new residence! Eventually I'll find a little table to put here, finishing off this side.