What started as "let's tile the kitchen floor" has expanded into a pretty major kitchen/dining room reno for Ted and I.
PART I: Floors & Walls
The first step was tearing out the wall between the kitchen and dining room….and then tearing up the kitchen floor, twice, since there were two layers of old tile floor underneath. The bottom layer of floor ran under the cabinets, so we had to decide: To tear out the cabinets or not?
We chose to go for it….cabinets, floor, wall and all !
Here's the story, in pictures…..from two rooms, to one….with fresh walls and a (long overdue) new tile floor.
PART II: Project Bookcase
Meanwhile, Ted ran across the perfect "floor to ceiling" bookcase for the living room (I'd been dropping 'hints' about wanting something like this for a little while : ) So, we started transforming this 8' tall blue bookcase….and eleven coats of paint later, yes….ELEVEN! Moral of that story: it's hard to completely cover up a blue that blue - we should have sanded ALL of the blue paint off. Lesson learned because this strange greenish undertone shone through the white for the first ten coats of white paint.
BUT. After Ted installed it, adding some simple molding around the top and finishing the bottom with baseboard that matches the rest of the house, it was all very much worth it. I couldn't be happier with the way it turned out.
PART III: The bar.
Where the wall used to be between the dining room and the kitchen, we decided to install a bar that will eventually become the back side of the kitchen cabinets/stove area. We knew we wanted to incorporate some natural wood tones into the kitchen and the bar was the perfect place to start. Ted brought home an assortment of ridiculously neat wood pieces (and some were too big to bring home, so we did a tour at his shop). The 100+ year old cypress (leftovers harvested from a friend's re-model) would become the face of the wall of the bar (the dining room side) and mammoth chunk of Angelique wood (originally destined to be part of the keel of the Spirit of SC) would become the bar top…..Pictures are worth a thousand words, sooo, see below...
More to come soon!
And a special thanks to Ted for being so damn talented and "making things happen" (that's a Ted-quote).
