Kitchen Mini Reno, part 1

FYI - my computer has been wigged out for uploading pictures so I have had no pictures to blog and what is a blog without pictures? OK, still a blog, but not as fun. But Steve got me going again. Thanks Steve!

Just think...a week from Sunday we will be hosting Easter Dinner.

Right now I am not so sure...

Tall breakfast bar. Dislike. It feels like a cubical. Things get knocked off and spilled all the time.

I practically have to lift Kate over my head to put her in her "rocket seat."

I dislike not being able see all the way into the family room. And this is the ledge where everyone piles their...crap.
(And that faucet is all kinds of broken. And so is the dishwasher.)

Steve and I decided to finally do something about all this - if we were replacing dishwashers and faucets, we may as well do all that has bothered us. We could change the levels but new counters would now be required to do this. I got 2 bids for laminate. Both around $1400. A friend suggested a granite fabricator that had a great reputation and their price was right. The bid for fabrication and installation was $1500. The two stone slabs would be another $450-$800. (In a certain price range - it could be way more if I had way expensive taste but I stuck to this price range to keep a reasonable budget.) This seemed like a no-brainer to us - go with the natural stone.

I looked several times over a few weeks and this is what I finally chose - Santa Cecelia. Warm tones of black, brown, cream and amber, but not too yellow. (this picture does it no justice.) Honestly, I love dark dark counters but we are so dusty here, being surrounded by a fair amount of farm land, I just couldn't deal with dark polished stone showing every speck of dust.

This one is closer. But still not accurate.

Months ago I found these bar stools at Goodwill (anticipating that some day we would do the kitchen) that were pretty close to what I wanted for the new bar height. For $15 bucks each I snatched them up and stored them in the garage. Our old bar stools were left here by the precious owner 8 years ago!!

Wednesday I started to rip up counters and Glen, our neighbor and a contractor, would come later that afternoon to cut down the bar and pony wall in preparation for the granite installation Friday. (which turned into a bigger job than anyone anticipated but more on that later.)

Glen comes over to help do the real job of cutting it down.

Turns out there is some unexpected plumbing in the part of the wall that is going bye bye and some weird electrical stuff. (This ends up getting fixed Friday night but causes more problems.)

That afternoon/evening I call the granite fabricator so I can confirm the time on Friday and so I can schedule my plumber.

"Oh, didn't I call you? We had some machinery break down in the shop and we are 2 days behind schedule. Did you make plans for Friday?"

"Yes, because that is the day you scheduled the installation. But, it is a good thing because we found some things that need extra tweaking during my demo. A later install day will be fine."

Glen agrees to jerry-rig the sink so I can keep it working for what looks to be another 6 days.

This left me Wednesday night with a kitchen that looks like this.

Which looks like this during a spring break day with friends over. But at least I have a sink and dishwasher!! I threw a piece of scrap wood over the top of the peninsula to give me a little prep space.

But then Friday night something goes terribly wrong. Turns out my faucet, which we knew was "all kinds of broken" really busted on us during the process of fixing the vent pipe on the reverse side and I had water everywhere.

Which meant Steve got sent to Home Depot for some parts and we had to temporarily install my new faucet on the old jerry rigged sink. With a fan trying to help dry it all out. I have a fair amount of water damage under there - turns out said crummy faucet has been leaking underneath for years and we didn't know. But look, it is such a pretty faucet. And it works properly which is more than I can say about my old one.


Here is the faucet. Final install will be with a stainless under mount 60/40 sink.
Delta
Leland Collection
Brilliance Stainless
I was having a hard time deciding which faucet I wanted but saw this one in Leslie's kitchen renovation and loved it.

Tomorrow we hope to start on a board and batten wainscot/paneling to wrap around the bar and peninsula, paint it, (and the cabinets too) and I hope to continue the panel treatment into the kitchen nook. Who knows...it may keep going and going. But for now we do the bar.

Here's to the new and improved kitchen!!! We spend a lot of time in there, it may as well function how we want!