Kitchen Update: Doors & Wine!

So, we’ve worked hard this week and added the cabinet doors AND took up all the Ram Board so we can finally see the gorgeous floors!! (FREAK OUT!)

Are you just dying? I’m dying. And, let me show you a little secret on the other side of the cabinet: a built-in wine rack.  This was just a spur of the moment decision – we had a skinny opening that we were planning to just close off and not use for any purpose at all. And, well, that sort of waste of space just does not fly in a small older house like mine! So, I went into my closet and grabbed an empty bottle of wine (I’m not a wino who has empty wine bottles everywhere, I promise. I just use wine bottles to stuff my tall boots so they don’t fall over in the closet).  The empty cupboard was the perfect size for a wine cabinet – truly meant to be.  What do you think? Adorable, right?

Next post I will show you the new counter tops –  We are getting there!

Kitchen Update

We started the cabinet installs this week!  We chose to have our wonderful carpenters Ben and Ken build the cabinets for us, which honestly ended up being on par cost-wise with buying already done cabinets. And, this way, we were able to perfectly fit the cabinets into my unusually shaped kitchen. Next week – granite!

And, as far as the colors…Last weekend, my mom and I spent all day Saturday and Sunday painting the walls in Martha Stewart’s Endive – very pale green.

Then, we will paint the lower cabinets in Behr’s Arabian Veil:

And the top cabinets in Behr’s Moonrise:

I am pretty excited about the two-toned cabinet look – I think it will be modern and fresh, and I think that the dark lower cabinets will bring in some depth of color without making the entire room dark or closed-off.  The light walls and white upper cabinets will create that breezy, open feel we all want!

The search for the fireplace mantel

We ended up having to totally restructure the fireplace, which was sad but has led to two good developments in the project:

1) We are going to repurpose the old mantel and use it as a decorative piece on the front porch – so excited.

2) We are going to use an unfinished-edge piece of vintage lumber as the new mantel!!

We started thinking about the possibility of using a vintage piece last week, and my brilliant mother knew exactly where to go: Woodstock Vintage Lumber. After wandering through the yard without any pieces really speaking to us, the owner Brent got a funny look on his face and disappeared. He then came back with the most unbelievably gorgeous piece of Tennessee Red Cedar. It was the perfect size, shape and color for the mantel! Here is what it looked like before sanding and planing:

It was love at first sight, so we purchased the piece. Billy, one of the Vintage Lumber geniuses, took the piece and planed one side so it would fit against the wall and sanded the whole thing. Here he is showing off his handywork:

And a closer look at the finished mantel:

And my cute mom (who hid from the camera), holding the piece over the unfinished fireplace:

So thrilled about this find!!

Kitchen Renovation: Update 2

We installed the Acacia wood floors this week from Lumber Liquidators and promptly covered them up with Ram Board!  But, I managed to sneak a few photos of the floors before they disappeared.

Sadly, we weren’t able to save much of the old fireplace – once we pulled the mantle off, the rest started to crumble right before our eyes. But, our trusty carpenters are busily working on the new fireplace mantle as we speak! The plan is to use subway tile around the fireplace and have an unfinished-edge mantel above.

And we keep marching on!