Modern Vintage Kitchen Makeover Fall ORC: Week Three

Week Three ORC: Fall 2020

We are at the halfway point of the One Room Challenge and I’m ready for a vacation. (To see previous weeks, click below)

Week One I Week Two

Okay, I was a ready for a vacation prior to the start of this. But now I’m extra ready.

My husband is as well. He’s making a dent on this bottle. But really I wanted you to see a close up of the new tile.

The crazy part thing is, that it’s going to be way busier the last few weeks because we’ve done almost everything we can do until our windows go in on Nov 2/3rd. Then it’s going to be a race to finish everything in time for the end of the challenge.

Not to be all cynical, but I honestly don’t know if we’ll make it for the initial “reveal” date of Nov 12th. (but technically we have an extra grace week, but my husband doesn’t know that and he doesn’t read my blog, so don’t tell him!)

So! What we’ve been doing in the past week!

The husband has been hard at work doing the tile backsplash in the kitchen.

All of you who think he’s just the best husband ever to do all my dirty work….not only does he get paid in sex as I mentioned last week, but the real reason he’s been working so hard is so he can go on a climbing trip this weekend with his friends.

Sex as payment was a distant 2nd place prize when compared to a climbing trip. So, don’t you be feeling bad for him.

We’ve done as much tile as we can do until the window on the right side of the wall is removed and drywalled over.

We’ve come across a little snag in this tile job as the ceilings in our 100 year old house are extremely out of line….to the tune of 3/4” unlevel in only a span of 5 feet of ceiling. We’re going to have to get creative how we address the top 6” of space for tile.

But creativity is the name of the game around here. Sadly, I might have to do dark grout instead of light grout like I was planning. The white will only high light all of the level issues…we shall see!

I’ve started the painting process for the cabinets. Stay tuned for a cabinet painting tutorial.

I hate hate hate the sanding and prep process. I managed a crystal glass finish on the table I painted for the spring ORC, so fingers crossed I can do the same for the cabinets.

I’ve also got the bottom part of the wall under the chair rail painted with a winning color. (Which is black…what a shocking surprise coming from me, I know.)

I really tried to do something different but I am not cool enough to pull it off.

Originally, when the cabinets were going to be green, I was going to do the lower section a shade of green different than cabinets. But then I changed to yellow cabinets and I definitely didn’t want to do the lower wall yellow.

So I picked out a color from the wallpaper and got some samples with ‘beige’ in the title and thought that I was going to bring back beige.

Newsflash. I will not be bringing back beige. That will have to be someone else’s job. It could’ve worked if the floors were very dark, almost black or a gray. Definitely did not work with my floors.

So I went with what I knew…which conveniently was in my basement, and that was Sherwin Williams Black Magic (the same color as the exterior of our last house).

The color makes my heart happy, which says a little something about the color of my heart. (I got real excited about the addition of the black heart emoji on my phone).

Doesn’t it make you feel better too?

Stay tuned! We have all of this coming up!

Still to do:

• Banquette bench installation

• upholster bench

• paint bench

• new windows

• Tile over old window location

• hang open shelving

• wallpaper.

To follow along with all of the other guest participants doing the One Room Challenge, click here.

The featured designers are doing some pretty cool virtual stuff here!

Fall 2020 ORC Week Two: Modern Vintage Kitchen

Fall 2020 ORC Week Two: Modern Vintage Kitchen

It’s only week two of the One Room Challenge and my husband is already wishing his covid-related paid leave from the airlines was over.

He was living his best life this summer…road tripping…vacationing…and then we got home and he became my tile guy. And my electrician. And my plumber. And my carpenter.

Despite being paid in sex, he still thinks he’s grossly underpaid…especially when it comes to dealing with dark grout.

In case you are just joining….The One Room Challenge is a Bi-annual event hosted by Linda from Calling it Home and Better Homes and Gardens (thank you guys!) Designers from around the country/globe have 6 weeks to transform a room…documenting the whole process.

To see our design plans and all the before pictures, see our Week One post here.

Background on Design

I forgot to mention last week - While we own this house, we aren’t planning on staying in it forever, and will probably rent it out in the next few years. Hence, we are trying to update the spaces without ripping everything out, because A) that’s a lot of money & B) the kitchen is brand new…so it seems pretty wasteful.

Update

We got a lot done this week (by we I mean the husband, the tile guy).

The half bath off the kitchen is almost done…..still waiting for some wallpaper to go up in there and I want to paint the faucet, but may not because I’m lazy.

The husband has spent the last week tiling the floors and walls of the bath- he’s just putting the sink and toilet back in place as I type. Fingers crossed the toilet doesn’t leak.

“Whose idea was it to do black grout? I would charge 3 times as much to do this. This is ridiculous.” he complains.

The husband is not a fan of my design asks.

The cutest tile guy in the world right here. He just wants to play with all the sharp tools…he’s never happier than when walking around with something that could dismember him or poke out his eye.

Sooooooo….about those design plans I mentioned the first week? The whole “painting the kitchen cabinets green,” thing? Well, I got a bunch of samples…and while I absolutely loved every shade of green I picked out…I didn’t love it in the space.

Sooooo….I did a 180 degrees and decided to go the yellowish-gold route for the lower kitchen cabinets.

The trick is the floor which has yellow/orange/honey tones in it and I don’t want the cabinets to be an extension of the floor. So I got the wallpaper out, my paint decks and went to town.

And then I picked up 49 yellow paint samples to try to get an idea of which route I wanted to go. I’m pretty sure the paint store people thought I was nuts.

And they wouldn’t be entirely wrong.

I very easily cut 4 of the colors out of the running, and kept two in my kitchen for the last 5 days staring at them morning and night and deciding which I liked better.

After painting the top two contenders on some large cardboard and keeping those in the kitchen, I decided to go with the darker yellow on the right- Benjamin Moore Renaissance Gold.

The yellow on the left is Benjamin Moore Hollywood Gold, and I liked the name of that one better…but alas, I’m not a hollywood girl so it only makes sense.

What are your thoughts? Are you disappointed I didn’t stick with the green?

Stay Tuned next week for week 3 of the One Room Challenge.

Don’t forget to check out all the featured designers and the other guest designers and see some really cool fun stuff!

Modern Vintage Kitchen Makeover: Fall 2020 One Room Challenge

Modern Vintage Kitchen Makeover: Fall 2020 One Room Challenge

It’s here. The Fall One Room Challenge.

Is here.

And as I sit and type, I can’t help but think, “OH MY GOODNESS WHAT AM I DOING SIGNING UP FOR THIS I’M TOO BUSY!”

But, the best way to get something finished is tell a few thousand of your friends you’re gonna do something and then you have to finish it, because if you don’t they’ll throw eggs at you and call you a liar. (okay maybe not the eggs…but you see my point).

If you were around this spring, you’ll know that we just moved into a new house, and we did our living and dining room for the spring ORC. It was my first time ever participating and I had a lot of fun.

And I’ve got a kitchen that needs some flair (and more importantly, some more storage and functionality). So here we are trying to make this very very small kitchen in our very, old, house work for our boisterous family of 5.

Oh, also?

Because I don’t know the definition of “one”, I added on the half bath and the mudroom. So here we are…starting the Three Room Challenge.

Honestly, the kitchen isn’t bad…it was replaced before we moved in due to a kitchen fire, and they could’ve done MUCH MUCH worse.

But it is extremely boring and extremely gray (just like the rest of the house was) and needed help.

So we’ve got some plans…we are gonna tile, built a banquette bench (with storage, yay!), and of course I found a super fun floral wallpaper which will pretty much ensure my husband will never, ever, say the words, “I don’t care what you do to this house” to me again.

Because I’m nice and thoughtful, and sometimes like to give my guests eyes a break from color, the bathroom is going to be plain ol’ black and white.

The worlds tiniest bathroom.

I didn’t really feel like spending a lot of money on the bathroom, so I am re-using leftover black hex tile from a previous project for the floor and some leftover square subway tile for the walls. My big splurge is the wallpaper. (YES! MORE WALLPAPER!)

Last, but not least is this mudroom that is attached to the kitchen. Once I realized I knew the contractors who would be putting in our new windows (we have original 100yo windows), I asked them to take down this barn wood wall (sacrilege, I know), take out the window, and install some floor to ceiling Ikea cabinets.

CAN WE SAY MORE STORAGE??!

Follow along via Instagram and my blog to see how it all pans out and see if the husband does a better job tiling than I did this spring.

To see all 20 featured designers- click here

To see all of the guest designers- Click here

Thank you to Linda of Calling it Home & Better Homes and Gardens for hosting this!

Built in Bar or Appliance Garage Hack With Ikea & Semihandmade Kitchen Cabinets

Built in Bar or Appliance Garage Using Ikea & Semihandmade Kitchen Cabinets

Have you seen some really sweet appliance garages on Instagram or Pinterest and you want your own but you don’t have 78 million dollars to make it happen? You are in luck friends of mine.

DIY your ultimate dream kitchen

I have finally….after like a year of people asking me on Instagram, gotten around to writing down the instructions to build your own Built in Bar or Appliance garage with Ikea or Semihandmade cabinets or doors.

(You can do all Ikea or combine with Semihandmade- it works the exact same).

Built in Bar with doors closed

Below is what the cabinet looks like from afar with the doors closed.

Instructions to DIY Ikea/Semihandmade Built in Bar or Appliance garage

It’s actually really easy for you to do if your handy or for your contractor to do if your not handy (like myself). Your contractor may complain about doing it…but I’ve given this design to many contractors, and they can figure it out.

You need to get special hinges- the ones that we use are from Accuride- they have all different sizes, so it depends on the size of your doors and the depth of the cabinet will dictate which hinges you will need.

Hinges will take up a few inches of room depth wise (there is a diagram with specific dimensions for each size) so if you have a standard 24” depth kitchen cabinet it is VERY IMPORTANT that you do not go with doors wider than 18” or the doors will poke out too far from cabinet when they are recessed and be in the way.

If you have a deeper cabinet, then do whatever you want that fits in with the specs listed on Accuride’s website.

Appliance Garage Sitting On Counter

The above appliance garage was an Ikea/Semihandmade Combo. The interior box is a modified Ikea Wall Cabinet and the exterior panels and doors are Semihandmade.

It is VERY IMPORTANT to note: this appliance garage is only 15” Deep, yet is 36” wide, which means for the doors to not extend further and be in the way, a space was made past the drywall so the doors could recess further.

The pictures above and below show this countertop appliance garage with the doors closed. It is also important to note, that you will lose a few inches for each side for the door pockets, so you don’t want to have a cabinet with a small width or you won’t have any room for items.

For reference, for the flamingo cabinet that was 30” wide, we had about 24-25” of actual storage space. For the below cabinet that is 36” wide, we had about 30” of actual storage space.

Also, in case you were curious- in the below picture, the cabinet that is sitting on top of appliance garage is just a normal wall cabinet and stacked on top.

Let me know if you have any questions about any of this and I’ll answer below or edit the original post!

Extra Information for Ikea DIY Built in Bar Hack

The glass shelves were from Home Depot, and the wine racks were from Wayfar. Countertop is Silestone Pulsar.

To wallpaper bar, unscrew doors from hinges, wallpaper interior of doors (I used spray adhesive on the doors as they were shiny and I didn’t think wallpaper paste would work). On interior MDF cabinet, I used normal wallpaper paste and wrapped wallpaper around edges.

Before & After of a Vintage-Modern Kitchen in Grand Rapids, Michigan

Before & After of a Vintage-Modern Kitchen in Grand Rapids, Michigan

This was a project we finished last summer in the city of Grand Rapids.

The house was built in the early 1900’s and had been refinished (rather poorly might I add) by previous owners a few times to create a hodge podge of finishes. 

It still retained some of it’s amazing vintage charm and had so much potential. 

Before View- Keep an eye out for that brick pillar to get your bearings in the afters.

Multiple doors coming in and out

The owners really really wanted an island, and an open concept kitchen/living space.  It was pretty tricky, but by being creative and breaking a few kitchen design rules, we made it happen. 

Recognize that brick pillar??

The biggest rule we broke was the width of the kitchen walkway between island and stove.  A walkway in the kitchen should ideally be 48”, but 42” for smaller kitchens is perfectly acceptable and feels spacious.  In this kitchen, after discussing it extensively with our clients and warning them about the fact that it might feel cramped with more than one person in the area, we cut the walkway space down to 36”. 

They felt the trade off for being able to have an island was worth giving up that extra space for maneuvering. 

The other ‘sort of rule’ we broke was depth of the overhang.  We did a 9” overhang, which is the ABSOLUTE minimum overhang you should do if you want people to be able to sit comfortably.  14-15” is ideal in a perfect world, and we’ve done up to 18” overhangs in houses with tall people. (Imagine a tall persons knees on an airplane and then imagine them trying to sit at an island with a short overhang comfortably). 

We needed a range with a down draft vent, so we could put the range in front of the window.  While a window isn’t ideal for a range, it works -- I refuse to put a range in an island as it a complete and utter safety hazard and if people had ever taken care of kids with grease and hot water burns, they would never do it either.  Off soapbox.

We did cupboards all the way up to the ceiling and an appliance garage to the left of the stove. 

Overall, we (and more importantly, our clients) are super happy with the way it turned out and the way it functions.  Beautiful kitchens are always great, but if they don’t function well…well, ain’t no one got time for that. 

In a few weeks we’ll be sharing all of our sources for this kitchen, so keep your eyes open!