The Kitchen

So, for a few months, we lived as we had, enjoying our new well, keeping our 3 and 5 gallon water bottles filled with our own water, cooled to perfection on the water cooler. (I strongly recommend getting one if you don't already. It gave me a much better attitude about drinking water, which we all need to do more. We got ours for less than a hundred bucks)

But it was just a temporary break from inconvenience and we knew it. We knew we were going to move, and we also knew we had to sell our house. That meant transforming it from eye caca to eye candy. More or less prioritizing areas of needed work, we began with the kitchen.

There were several areas of concern. First of all, it was cramped. It seemed two people couldn't work there simultaneously without bumping into each other. Second, the cabinets were old and torn up. Made chiefly of pasteboard, they were designed to endure only gentle hands, not the hands of children so desperate to play on swings, they were willing to use cabinet doors as substitutes. A few of the doors were totally missing, and many others were held together only negligibly, by screws in stripped particle board. Third, the dishwasher was non-functional, filled almost to the brim with lime sludge, caused by years of hard water use. (The water from the new well was no less hard than the old had been) Fourth, the floor was old, scarred linoleum, needing replacement. Fifth, the stove and other appliances were barely hanging on. Sixth, the ceiling had been lowered, increasing the claustrophobia to almost panic level. Finally, the room was too dark.

The only good news was, my son was wiling to come and help us. He is a skilled finish carpenter, and had good experience with some of the other needed tasks as well. His assistance (mentoring would actually be a more accurate term) in the kitchen set a precedence of excellence for the remainder of the house. It also gave me confidence I could do the rest. (In all truth, before I was finished, I came close to cursing the standard he set. Maybe I'll go into a little more detail later)

He started by ripping out the ceiling. On December 15, I came home from work, and there was rubble lying all over the place in a lightless kitchen, (the lights had come out when he took out the lowering suspension) but I could immediately feel a lessening of the claustrophobia. With some enthusiasm, mitigated by the fact that I would have to crawl into the cold, itchy insulation-filled attic to run the wires, we opened the boxes of the three new four foot florescent lights. (It turned out one of them was a different style from the other two and had to be replaced later)

With only minimal grumbling, I donned my warm coveralls and climbed into the attic. I nailed in a switch box where I attached, with red wire nuts, the individual wires of each light to the switch wire, and fed the light wire through holes drilled in the sheetrock. With little difficulty, I came down, we screwed in the light fixtures, attached the wires of each one, (white to white, black to black, wound the ground wire around the green screw, tightened it, installed the bulbs, flipped the switch, and voila! We had a brilliant bank of lights, illuminating the rubble.

I think doing the lighting first was a good idea. Every project seems more cheerful, more possible, if it's well lit. It also allows for more attention to appearance details during the rest of the project.

It was really fun after that. Every day, I'd come home from work to find more work accomplished. The day after the lighting, I found the cabinets gone, leaving only more rubble (if you plan on redoing any part of your house, you will have to count on lots of it) but lots more space. The cabinets had defined the borders of the kitchen, separating it from the family room. Now there was one big room with no cabinets except the one holding the sink, which we took out as soon as I turned off the water. (With all his cleverness, my son never figured out how to do anything having to do with plumbing. He left that entirely to me) For several days, we had to do without a kitchen sink and a stove, but we had a microwave and a hot plate, and we could always get water from the bathtub.

The same night, we took out the linoleum. My son decided it would be easier to do the floor all at once, rather than do it in pieces. Then we cut and placed backer board, a concrete pasteboard designed to make the floor more solid, and screwed it down with electric drills.

For the next two days, I learned how to do tile, mostly by watching my sons. We used a grey ceramic tile speckled with a rust color (to match the dirt outside) which we found at Home Depot, costing about two dollars a square foot, that we could have cut with a scoring blade alone, but my son had borrowed a tiling saw from his brother-in-law, so we used it instead. We had to hook it up to water, which cooled it while we cut, making a glorious mess, but doing a fairly good job. He had my other son measure and cut while he called out measurements. This worked very well. We mixed thin set mortar mix, specifically designed for tile, using a stirring blade attached to our electric drill, spread it out, placed the tile and wiped off excess mortar. It went quickly, which is always gratifying. I found out later it is more efficient to apply the mortar to the back of each tile individually, but either way works fine. We let the floor dry for a day, then mixed the grout and applied it with a trowel, then sponging off the excess. After we let it dry another day, we rolled a liquid sealer over it three or four times to keep it waterproof.

The floor looked magnificent, but the grout between the joints ended up being a different color than what we planned. It looked almost pinkish, but it ended up matching quite well. I would advise anyone that cares about the color of your grout (I don't because I'm a minimalist like I said in the beginning, and once it's applied I love it, and I don't think about colors ahead of time, but my wife does) to mix a little before you actually apply it, mix it, let it dry and see how you like the color. Experiment with different amounts of water when you mix, because that affects the final color.

Grout comes in all sorts of hues, so you can drive yourself crazy finding the right one. I, of course, choose to stay sane and be happy with whatever I apply. For any women who might be reading this, I strongly recommend you don't let your husband pick out the grout, if he's going to be the one installing the tile. Don't believe him, even if he has a good eye for color and you don't. He'll pick the first color he sees and defend it to the death. If you need to, find a girlfriend with a good eye for color matching, (or even one who claims to have a good eye for color matching and can argue her point assertively) to take your side.

Tile looks great, but it has some disadvantages. It's cold on the feet for one thing. You can fix this by planning way ahead, usually before you build your house, and placing heating coils on the subfloor, then installing the flooring over it. (This is a delightful, if not costly and labor intensive task, but it does make for quite luxurious living). Also, though it seems silly to point it out, tile is very hard and brittle. If you drop something on your floor that's weaker than the tile (glass jars come to mind), it'll break. If you drop something that's stronger than the tile, like a wrench or hammer or something, the tile will break. It's a never ending job replacing tiles and trying to match grout (of course, I don't care about the latter, but of course my better half does) if you're a little bit of a butter fingers, which my wife and I both are, and if I had to do it over again, I would get a high grade linoleum, or find rubber tile.

The cabinets came next. My son installed them, and did a beautiful job. Later on, I did a few, and found out my son had used a level liberally, along with screws, clamps, glue, and shims, because, especially in an older house, you cannot assume the floor is level. We (that means my wife and an insensitive lout that wanted to take the first thing we came to) picked them out at Lowe's because they were the only ones who had unfinished cabinets, which are cheaper, and allow the installers to choose their own finish. We elected not to have hanging cabinets, which cut down on our overall cabinet space, but was worth it, because it kept the kitchen open, and gave the illusion of much more spaciousness.

After the cabinets, my son installed granite tile for the countertops. We got this at Home Depot, who had it in stock, for five dollars a square. The granite tiles are grey, about half an inch thick, and have to be cut with the tile saw rather than the scorer. They are strong and very attractive. We grouted with a dark brown grout, which we sealed five or six times, that brought out the color of the floor tile and grout. (You can tell my wife is coaching me here) When we were finished, even I could tell the overall effect was very good.

I strongly recommend granite counter tile. The only thing that's better, in my opinion, is if you buy a single formed granite countertop all in one piece, which is a lot more expensive (forty-five dollars a square foot is a good buy) but even more attractive. (and that's saying a lot) Granite is strong, it's totally heat resistant so you can put hot things directly out of the oven or off the stove on the counter without a hot pad, and it cleans up beautifully. If you've sealed it well, and made the grout joints flush with the tile, they don't collect dirt. Again, to any woman, if you get it, I promise your friends will be jealous.

My son left holes in the cabinets for the sink, dishwasher and stove, as well as a space for the refrigerator. It didn't take much to push the refrigerator and stove into place (the stove is electric) and plug them in. The sink (we bought it at Lowe's) slipped in place without trouble, and I silicon caulked it like crazy. Some have told me I was somewhat of a spendthrift in my caulk usage (meaning I used way too much of it) but I do not claim to be a professional caulker, and do not aspire very much to that position, so like it or lump it. I bought our faucet at our local Ace Hardware, which is a little more expensive than Home Depot or Lowe's but has every thing under the sun, with much less walking. It is simple to install, but is very elegant. I got the type where the sprayer is built in to the main faucet, and pulls out conveniently.

Our dishwasher was the last thing I put in. We bought a Whirlpool in the mid price range, moderately quiet with some nice features. It also went in very easily, needing only two connections (water supply and drain) to make it functional.

I knew when I put in all our plumbing things, that they would last a year or so regardless of the softness of our water. But I also knew it wouldn't be honest of me to doom all of our plumbing to early failure by not putting in a water softener. So, when I put the dishwasher in, though my lazy part wanted to tell me that was all I was going to do, deep down I recognized I would have to put in a softener, which was going to require major plumbing changes. I'll tell about it next time. See ya.