Finished Kitchen
Posted by Wayne
Kitchen Before
Kitchen AfterÂ
Quite an improvement, huh?
Replaced garden window, replaced countertops, painted cabinets, new appliances, new sliding glass door, installed wood floor, new pantry door, new ceiling lights, installed undercabinet lighting, tiled backsplash, replaced outlets
Total cost: $8000. Total time: about 120 hours (that’s my estimate and I’m sticking to it). Most of the work was done in random 3 hour shifts over about 5 months.
Tiling a Backsplash
Posted by Wayne
I had been looking forward to tiling the backsplash ever since I had installed the under cabinet lighting. I knew it was going to look really good.
Before
Installing Granite Countertops
Posted by Wayne
My original plan was to install 12×12 granite tiles over the existing laminate countertops, however our cabinets turned out so nice that we felt obligated to go for the gold and upgrade to solid granite countertops if we could afford it.
My wife found a place that sold standard countertop depth pre-cut sheets with a finished front edge. These sheets are 30 inches deep, 8 feet long, and cost about $400 each (give or take, based on the granite type). We needed two sheets to cover our counters. Installation and cutting the hole for the undermounted sink was not included in the price.
I wisely decided that attempting to install these sheets myself would not be a good idea, and the granite seller has an installer that they frequently work with that they recommended. We decided on ‘absolute black’ granite (my wife is the interior designer, so I didn’t argue). We paid for the granite up front and would pay for the installation after it was completed. Our total for the granite (with the sink hole cutting/polishing and tax) was about $1000. The installation would cost an additional $900.
Updating the Kitchen
Posted by Wayne
Before
Oh boy, now we’re getting to the fun stuff. As I write I am in the process of finishing the kitchen updating. As you can see from the picture above, we started with your typical 1980’s kitchen: honey oak cabinetry, laminate countertops, linoleum flooring, ugly bay window, ugly sliding glass door (just outside the picture to the left), etc. If I go upstairs now and look at the kitchen, I can’t believe it’s the same space.
For this project I’d be painting (hopefully) and installing hidden european hinges on the oak cabinets, tiling or installing granite countertops with an undermount sink (and all the plumbing that comes along with it), adding in some sort of tile backsplash, replacing the appliances, replacing the lighting, replacing the bay window, replacing the sliding glass door, tearing up the linoleum and installing wood flooring, and replacing the pantry doors (not seen just to the right of the photo). This is a big job. Probably not so start-from-scratchish as the office space I completed, but there was just as much work to do here.
I read a while back that the absolute minimum cost for upgrading a kitchen is $15k. I knew for a fact I could do this for $5k, with all brand new nice appliances, and people wouldn’t believe how good it looked. Tune in again to see how I did it and how it all turned out (or come to our unveiling party March 1, invitations to be sent out soon).
Entryway Tile
Posted by Wayne
Fairly soon after I had completed work on updating our fireplace, I began a couple of projects in the small entryway of the house. The front door, the door to the garage, and a coat closet are all located in this space.
The ceiling in the entryway did not have the acoustic texture, although this was of little consolation considering the several weeks of hell I had recently endured scraping it off the ceiling in in several other areas of the house (see my entry Scraping Popcorn). The entryway was, however, ripe for several easy improvements.
The first area of improvement was the flooring. As this is the entryway to the house, naturally the area should have a waterproof surface that is easy to clean because people are constantly coming in with dirty feet. The builders or perhaps later residents of our house decided on a pretty ugly linoleum pattern that we couldn’t wait to replace. We decided to replace it with 12″x12″ travertine to match the travertine we used around the fireplace.