Perfectly Disgraceful

French doors

We have a big window in our kitchen, which used to be even bigger until some previous owner bricked up the bottom half. Your old school South Philly types are not fans of big windows. Or trees. Trees make dirt. I bet you didn't know that, did you?

 

So we want to have that big window turned into French doors. And the door, which doesn't open all the way thanks to a previous owner's not-so-clever placement of the stove, will be turned into a window.

 

I wish the back wall could look like this picture from At Home At Home.

 

Sink

Look at this sink! We have something very much like that, though not quite that large, living in our basement. Ours is all sink, no sideboards. I'm not sure where it came from, possibly it was always down there? Or maybe Rex collected it from the same place as the marble sink in our bathroom? The sink doesn't look like much now, covered in debris and filled with the sort of things one dumps in a damp basement. But apparently it's in very good condition and still has intact porcelain legs. It also solves my backsplash issues and some of my cleaning issues. No water collects and sits and breeds around fixtures that poke out of the wall. Yes, they'll still need to be cleaned, but it will be so much better than the current fixtures and tile. Have I mentioned how much I hate the tile?

 

 

 

Our sink even has intact fixtures, though I think I want something shiny and new. We were also discussing buying nice garbage cans to hold trash and recycling and keeping them under the sink, but look how cute these stools are. And I will need a stool to reach all the new high cabinets. From Desire to Inspire.

The all-consuming kitchen

This week I've thought of little besides kitchen design. I've spent hours doing layouts on the Ikea planning tool, which has really been beyond valuable. I've considered several different layouts, and thought I was set on a new layout, but now I think I'm back to reusing my current layout, with a few changes. I'm concerned, though, because the Ikea tool seems to fit more things into my kitchen than I thought possible, but I keep measuring and remeasuring (granted, with a 48" long yardstick, where are the three measuring tapes we own?) and it comes out right every time.

This Plexiglas (Perspex?) is an interesting backsplash option (from Apartment Therapy). Have I mentioned how utterly opposed I am to tile? This is due to my experience with disgusting grout on my current kitchen counter and previous experience with bathroom tile. However, I just noticed that the grout on the backsplash tile in the kitchen is just fine, even though it never gets scrubbed. I may have to rethink my total opposition to tile. I wonder if grossness would collect behind the plexi?

More house thoughts

We're probably going to do a wood counter in the kitchen, whenever we get around to exorcising the hideous tile counter. I like how this looks, but in my experience, a gap between the sink and counter gets gross no matter how well caulked. I am torn between what looks good and my hated-of-cleaning-based desire to have some sort of seamless modular kitchen with a drain in the middle so that it can be hosed down.

House thoughts

Being away from the house seems to have energized us to do something about the house. Or maybe we are just well-rested from the vacation.

Big plans are afoot this summer! Sanding and repainting the floor of Eleven's room. Some fresh paint on the walls and hopefully a reduction of stuff in that room. We've been meaning to paint the floor, walls and built-in bookcases in the Younger Child's room for quite a long time, possibly with the intent of rooming both girls in there, but that seems to be slightly on hold.

Open shelving

I have been looking at a lot of pictures of kitchens over the past few months. I see a lot of stuff I like in Door Sixteen, Decorno, and Design*Sponge's sneak peeks. One thing I am always drawn to is a white kitchen with open shelving. Like this one from the NYT.

 

Love. However, I have dismissed the idea of Rex and I being able to have open shelves for two reasons. We do not have a cabinet of simple white dishes, we have at least four different patterns of dishes, in addition to the plastic crap you seem to need to have when you have kids, and all the various stuff we don't throw out for some damn reason. The second reason is that we are disgraceful housekeepers and I envision all that open-shelved stuff soon covered in a nasty blend of kitchen grease and dust.

But maybe we can do it? Maybe we could just get some white dishes from Ikea for everyday use and house all the other plates elsewhere? Maybe I could just toss all the plastic crap? Maybe if we did shelves like the ones in this pic they wouldn't end up coated in dusty grease? Maybe we could have open shelves on one wall and cabinets on another? Anything is possible, right? And shelves would certainly be a lot cheaper than cabinets.

My other concern is that five years from now this white kitchen open-shelved thing will be horribly dated. Like avocado and gold kitchens. But maybe I won't care. Maybe I'll just be resistant to the vagaries of style and hold onto my open shelves forever. Hmmm.

Kitchen

Remember this? Yeah, it's still happening. Very slowly. It looked like this a week after it was started.    

Five months later the ceiling is almost entirely covered in new wood, except for about five inches at the very end. Apparently the first half was cake and the second half was a slog and that last five inches could take days.

We thought we'd see see if we liked the natural wood on the ceiling and then decide whether to seal it or paint it. I'm opting for paint. A glossy-ish white, I think.

Work on the kitchen has totally stalled, thanks to the economic meltdown. Rex was taking off time to work on the kitchen, but now that no one is buying books (go buy some books and bring your friends!), we have no money to pay employees to work at the bookstore while he works on the kitchen. So our plans to convert the large back window into french doors are on hold. At one point we thought that would be done before it got cold. Ha. The next step was to rip up the very gross old floor and put in a new wood floor. I think I want wide plank wood stained a very dark brown, to contrast with the orangey maple on the rest of the first floor.

I've been looking at kitchen pictures obsessively to get ideas. I find that I love open shelving, however, it's totally impractical for us. We are a dirty housework-avoidant people and open shelving in our house would soon become covered with disgusting dusty kitchen grease. But I still want it! I love this picture:

 

(Found on Door Sixteen - Mette Antero Kjaaer's kitchen from this house tour.)

Maybe we could do a little bit of open shelves, like in that picture, just two shelves, with hanging pots, which we need anyway. Really what we need is a giant purge of all our stuff. Who wants to do that for us?

I also really like the spice rack. We have a lot of spices and actually use them.

Now that other plans are on hold, potentially forever, I'm back to thinking about house projects, but there are so many I feel a teensy bit paralyzed. I want to paint the risers on the stairs black, I even have the paint, but there is sanding to be done and.... The bathroom also needs a second coat of paint (in addition to other work that requires a plumber), but there is more sanding to be done first.... The girls should have been moved into the large bedroom months ago, but we can't find affordable cute matching twin beds, and the floor needs to be repainted and the walls need to be painted and the built-in book shelves need to be painted. The third floor, which is in some sort of unhappy indeterminate state between bedroom and attic, needs a thorough cleaning and decluttering. And then that floor needs to be painted, as do the walls. There is so much to do and I am so lazy and there is so much else to be done, Christmas shopping, cooking, laundry, fixing the damn virus-infested computer, and oh, yes, playing with those children I wanted so much.

Kitchen Reno

Now that we're down to one bookstore, we thought we should find something to fill our scads of free time.  Even though the 20-year-old drop-ceiling in the kitchen looked really good, we thought we'd pull it down, just for the heck of it.  And when I say we, I mean Rex.

This is the old ceiling fan, and the old ceiling, which was underneath the drop-ceiling.  The large white patches are new drywall filling in the sections where the plaster was destroyed by water damage.

A close-up some of the water damage, yuck, especially considering it's in the kitchen. 

And the new light, about $30 from Ikea.  $30 means we won't care if it gets knocked around during the reno.  Next up in big fun reno on the cheap, Rex installs a wood ceiling.  He's at the Home Despot right now picking out the planks.

When choosing a husband, I highly recommend one who can both cook an excellent steak au poivre and install a new ceiling. It's even better than bringing home the bacon and frying it up in a pan.