Location and vista views aside, one of the things that really drew us to this house was the layout of the floor plan.  As I’ve described before, the living room is large, with a 20-plus foot high, vaulted ceiling, and the second floor is completely occupied by the master bedroom and master bath.  But, the kitchen was also a huge bonus.  I first shared this photo a little over a year ago in one of my first posts.  It shows the L-shaped counter with the 8′ long island.  Also visible, just to the right of the island, was the very small, practically useless, pantry.

As much as we were drawn to the possibilities for this space, we were less than thrilled with several things:

The floor:  The chipped and peeling, self-adhesive tiles were filthy and outdated.

The window(s):  One was obviously broken and needed to be replaced, and they were the wrong size, with the sills actually lower than (and behind) the top of the counter.

The island:  This thing was 8 feet long with a butcher block top.  We didn’t need the extra prep sink, and that disgusting range was beyond salvageable.  The ship lap siding looked bad and it was just really too big.

The cabinets:  These were actually a pretty good quality and made out of maple.  Unfortunately, there were doors and drawers missing and the kitchen had no upper cabinets at all.

The counter top:  This white, Formica counter top was, like the rest of the kitchen, nasty.  It wasn’t installed properly, wasn’t level, and the joint where the two pieces met in the corner was misaligned.

The overhead light:  I’m not even sure how to describe this mess.  Someone either removed a large piece of sheet rock directly over the island, or it was simply never put up.  They framed the opening with basic, construction-grade lumber, and then hung a couple of fluorescent lights like you’d find in your garage in the gaps between the ceiling joists.

The first step, obviously, was to gut the whole space.

We tore up the flooring, removed the unneeded plumbing from the center of the room, borrowed two feet from the right side of the kitchen to enlarge the pantry, and then began putting things back together.

We replaced the three old windows with one larger window, finished hanging the cabinets, built a new island, had the new granite installed, and added two pantry units beside the refrigerator.  We closed up the ceiling and added some new pendant lights over the island and some new fixtures in the dining room.

 

We installed nearly 900 square feet of new, wood flooring.  Much of that was in the kitchen and dining room.  Once that was down, we began the appliance installation.  Fortunately, we had a little help over the Fourth, though from the photo, my son-in-law seemed to be doing more resting than helping.  (I’m kidding, he’s been a great help through this whole project.)

We still have a few finish projects that we’ll need to get to, like installing a tile back splash, tacking up the molding at the top of the cabinets and around the base, and installing the pantry shelves and door.  But, everything works and doing dishes in the dishwasher is far, far, far more convenient that trying to do them in the little sink in the trailer.

 

 

I realize this is a couple of days late, but Happy 4th of July!!!  We hope everyone had a great day celebrating our nation’s birthday.  You know, I just had one of those odd, random thoughts….  who else remembers the huge celebrations in 1976 as we celebrated America’s Bicentennial?  Hard to believe that it was 42 years ago.

Time sure flies!

I suppose that’s as good a segue as any…  After a full year (and then some), we’re getting very, very close to moving in.  Sandi stopped by the carpet place the other day to talk to the owner about coming out to measure the living room, stairs, and master bedroom for carpet.   We’re still a couple of weeks out for installation, but in the meantime, I’ve been working some pretty exhausting days trying to get us ready.

Living Room Lights and Fans: I’m not sure if I’ve adequately conveyed how much I dislike heights in general, or how much I detest being up on a ladder, perched atop a shaky scaffold in particular.  What I can tell you is that I was thrilled, overjoyed, excited, relieved, ecstatic, happy, (you get the gist….) to finally climb down for the last time and take the damned thing apart!

The first level is 6 feet, the second is at 12 feet, and the ladder gives me about four feet more, in addition to my 6’2″ and whatever my reach works out to.  For those who might be wondering, no…  the safety gate at the top level wouldn’t do much good if I had fallen from the ladder, but it did provide a little added stability.  If you look very closely, you can see that the ladder was strapped down to the top deck, and I used four tie-down straps to provide a little bit of cross bracing.  Still, not my favorite.

Unfortunately, the large, gold track lights and the gold fans with white blades seemed too dated and obnoxious to leave up.  I polled my entire crew and not one of them volunteered to switch them out for me and paint the ceiling, so I ended up having to suck it up and do it myself.  For clarification, my “crew” consisted of me, Sandi and our grandson.  Sandi was at work and our grandson is only 8 and just doesn’t have much height to him yet.

To replace the gold, we went with brushed nickel to match the rest of our electrical and plumbing fixtures.  The track lights are half the size, but just as bright, with LED lights that should last a good, long time.  I would dread the notion of having to change light bulbs up there.  The fans are suspended from 4 foot rods now, instead of being installed up against the ceiling, to sort of add some depth and interest.  These blades match the flooring we’re putting in, too.  The pine strip along the peak was added to tie in the ship lap and give us a little stronger base from which to suspend the fans.

Stairwell Chandelier:  As long as I still had the scaffold in the house, we decided to swap out the old chandelier hanging in the stairwell, too.  Again, the old one was large,  heavy, obnoxious, and gold.  With so many little light bulbs, those would have had to be changed periodically, as well.

 

Flooring:  A couple of years ago, we decided to finally have the floors done in our Chehalis house.  The carpet was pretty worn, and we wanted something a little nicer for the house we planned to live out our days in.  We picked a really nice carpet and hardwood laminate and had it all installed at a pretty hefty pricetag.  As the installer was packing to leave, he mentioned that he was going to take the 12, leftover cases of flooring to the dump.  Since we had already paid for it, I told the guy to just leave it, figuring I could find something to do with it.  As it turned out, that wasn’t our forever house, after all, and we ended up moving those boxes here to Colorado with us.

We found a place locally where we could get more of the same style and color flooring.  Due to my consistent inability to accurately plan and schedule these various projects, we’ve had 60 cases of it stacked in the living room since October.  Then, this past weekend, we finally dug into it and started putting it down where it belongs….  on the floor!

For our next post, we want to show you the kitchen, but here’s a sample of the process and how the flooring looks when it’s installed: