The Mushroom Factor

As I’ve mentioned, we’re in the midst of a big kitchen project.

We’ve been at this project for more than a year and may easily be for yet another. People are often horrified to hear this, but really, it’s not been that bad. It’s tolerable for two reasons. First and foremost, it’s not like we’ve been put out of a kitchen for a year. For the past twenty years, we’ve used our pantry as the kitchen and continue to do so during this project. Secondly, we’re pretty easy-going people. This is pretty important! Patience is a virtue, my dears, one will worth cultivating during home renovations.

An old house kitchen in its original state, such as ours is a rare find. To a kitchen designer, it’s a blank palette waiting for the first splash of renovation. To the layperson, it’s a bit of a challenge!

Neither of us are professional designers. While we did consult one initially, for the most part, we’re winging it on our own. We’re hoping our artistic and technical abilities are enough to carry us though—here’s where input is welcomed!

Our kitchen before

Our ideas: They’ve been evolving…

Our ideas have been contingent on two things: original design and budget. We want to maintain the simplistic, Craftsman style to which the house was originally built and, for budgetary reasons, we need to do the whole project ourselves with a minimum of purchases.

But, hey, we’ve been planning this project for twenty years! We want it to be good! I guess that makes three contingencies: design, budget and quality. Is this a feasible combination? We shall see.

Our kitchen: Our plans for after

1. Bring the cooking and storage into the kitchen where it belongs. Convert the pantry into a laundry/pantry room.
2. Combine the walk-in closet and sunporch into a breakfast nook—still to be called the sunporch because it’s such a cheerful, sunny room.
3. Keep the existing windows (they’re only ten years old and of original size). The counter underneath will have to be 1-2 inches less than standard height, but that’s okay because we’re short people.
4. Build a china cupboard on the kitchen side, a similar cupboard on the dining room side, and a pass-though opening in the wall between.

So this has been our project. I’ve been documenting it in greater detail at this site. But be warned, like our kitchen project, it’s usually running a bit behind.

We’re pretty easy-going people, don’t forget!

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It’s winter here in Wisconsin—and a good, old fashioned winter at that. We’re getting record snowfalls, below zero temps and an occasional rain shower. Put this together with a poorly ventilated attic and you’ve got the inevitable ice dam. 

Can something so beautiful cause so much damage? Well, apparently so.

The University of Wisconsin Cooperative Extension describes an ice dam as “a mass of ice forming at the bottom edge of a sloped roof. The ice results primarily from heat escaping to the attic from the house, causing a warm attic.”

With all the snow we’ve been getting, it’s accumulating heavily on our roofs. If this roof is warm, the snow melts, runs off the roof and into the eaves where it then refreezes. The real problem occurs when water backs up under the shingles and works its way into the house.

And so, here in Wisconsin, where we haven’t had to deal with this in years (global warming, don’tcha know), we’re working off the brats and beer by raking snow off our roofs.

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Our current project—one we’ve been working on for over a year—is the renovation our kitchen. In truth, this has little to do with renovation and everything to do with creation.

Our house is 90-years-old and in the course of those ninety years the kitchen was never updated. Yes, it was a very quaint kitchen. But let’s be real, a sink hanging on the wall with no surrounding cupboards—no cupboards anywhere—is not conducive to today’s style of living.

So, as you can imagine, a lot of planning, research and discussion (emphasis on the cuss) has gone into this project. But hey, it’s been fun!

THE BEST ADVICE IS WHAT WE’VE FOUND ONLINE
We’re not kitchen designers. And, judging by the number of times we’ve redone the same soffit, we certainly can’t profess to be designers either. But we’re also on a budget and paying for such expertise didn’t make the cut.

Instead, we turned to the Internet and found more knowledge than we ever imagined possible. Here are a few of my bookmarked links:

gardenweb.com
The Internet’s Garden & Home Community

I’m addicted to the forums on this site. They easily are the nurturing source in the development of our kitchen. The well-organized topics range from kitchens, to appliances, to lighting, to bathrooms to home finance. There’s a lot of conversation and participants, for the most part, are homeowners rather than industry professionals. They readily pass along ideas, recommendations and photos.

Anyone know who sells a good quality stainless steel sink?

Ask such a question on one of the forums and you’re sure to get lots of good answers. Many members recommended Galaxy Tool Supply in Chicago, IL, and sure enough, we found a 16-gauge double sink at a very good price. And, yes, I’m ditching the old cast iron baby. Need an old sink?

hgtv.com
Start at Home

If you love bold interaction and the latest Internet technology, check this out. I could spend hours and hours digging through this site. It has phenomenal imagery and its long list of video clips features interesting tidbits from industry professionals.

The How-To/Online Tools pages are fun and you can design your own room in 3-D. The one drawback, these pages only work with Windows Internet Explorer. What about us Mac people?

behr.com
Explore Color

As a graphic designer, I’m supposed to know all about color. Somehow, though, color on the wall seems so much different than it does on paper! In addition to rebuilding the same soffit several times, I’ve also repainted its walls in no less than three varying shades of green.

We’re not stuck to using one particular brand of paint, but the color site I like best is that of Behr’s Explore Color. It’s user friendly and coordinates your chosen color as a main or accent color.

You can also preview your chosen color on their sample photos or your own. Pretty cool. I really should have tried this before I painted my kitchen!

Next time…

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What better way to work off the over-indulgences of Thanksgiving dinner than to knock down walls the very next day. And so our kitchen project officially begins!

Over the years, we’ve removed plaster and lathing in exterior walls throughout the house in order to add insulation. The job doesn’t get any cleaner with experience, we simply become smarter in dealing with it. Here in the kitchen we laid a tarp to protect the floor and catch debris. As it filled, we dragged it out the door and onto a pickup truck.

Debris gets heavy! Plaster is a type of cement so it gets VERY heavy! We had to unload the tarp often.

Need a kitchen sink? It’s a Kohler.

Lovely, yes?

Hidden Secrets
In 20 years of remodeling, we’ve found apricot brandy bottles and a few old magazines. Other than that, there haven’t been significant treasures.

But remodeling exposes secrets of other kinds; some pleasant surprises, others scary near-misses. As we removed plaster from around the chimney, we were pleased to see it’s Watertown Brick, a locally made cream-colored brick.

Somewhat frightening though, were the charred bricks and burnt lathing around the cookstove’s pipe opening into the chimney. The lining between the pipe and chimney had rusted, leaving a poor fit that allowed sparks to get into the wall.

Wow, God keeps a watchful eye!

Levels and Slopes
We suspect the sunporch at one time was an open, exterior porch. The floor level is lower than the rest of the house, with a slight pitch. The ceiling is also lower and pitched about 2″ within nine feet. Knocking out the ceiling revealed an angled rafter built to provide the pitch.

When it comes to slopes elsewhere, we’re pretty lucky. Our house was built well. Not only is it structurally sound, it’s also accurate. Overall, we don’t have the crooked walls, poorly-angled corners or other issues that often come with old houses

We suspect the sunporch at one time was an open, exterior porch. The floor level is lower than the rest of the house, with a slight pitch.

The ceiling is also lower and pitched about 2″ within nine feet. Knocking out the ceiling revealed an angled rafter built to provide the pitch.

When it comes to slopes elsewhere, we’re pretty lucky. Our house was built well. Not only is it structurally sound, it’s also accurate. Overall, we don’t have the crooked walls, poorly-angled corners or other issues that often come with old houses.

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