Thinking of a Master Plan

1 Comment

By the time this kitchen is done, I’ll likely have nothin but sweat inside my hands.

Work has finally begun on the kitchen and at long last, I am seeing my plans come to life.

Over the past decade, my vision for the kitchen has changed several times. After watching Diane Keaton make pancakes in Something’s Gotta Give, I, along with most of America, wanted those white kitchen cabinets and a black countertop. And the subway tile – oh, that subway tile.

But time and plans and budgets change. At one point, I wanted a green, French Country look. Even just 2 years ago, we were very seriously considering doing blue cabinets. It wasn’t until this past year that I even thought about doing gray cabinets. If we did this project just 5 years from now, I’m certain it would look very different than what we’ve currently got planned.

Thanks to the blessing and the curse that is Pinterest, I’ve had plenty of inspiration. My Kitchen Inspiration Board is a myriad of ideas and I’ve combined my favorite bits and pieces to create the design for our space.

After having cabinets priced out at several places around town, I thought I’d look into RTA Cabinets. Several friends have purchased ready-to-assemble cabinets and their cabinets look fantastic, and they swore it wasn’t an impossible task. When I found this inspiration picture, I was sold on the Gainsboro Gray line. They are transitional and timeless.

We are having a custom hood created and the one in the photo above is the inspiration.

The countertops will be quartz. We’ve chosen this subtle Calcutta Ultra.

I thought I wanted to do a white subway tile for the backsplash, but I’m having second thoughts. Once the countertops are installed, I think I’ll finally be able to make up my mind.

For hardware, I’m going with chrome transitional pulls and handles. I cannot wait until these are on the cabinets!


For the faucet and pot filler ( yes, I said pot filler!!!!) we are going country, French country.

This faucet was one of my first purchases for the kitchen. A good friend with impeccable taste and a fabulous apartment in NYC renovated her kitchen and had a bridge faucet. I saw it, I loved it, I wanted it, I copied it.

And yes, I’m getting a pot filler! Let’s be real, I haven’t boiled a pot of water in 8 months, but I believe that this pot filler will be the inspiration I need to boil some water and make some pasta ; )

For paint – it’s all about being subtle and letting the rest of the kitchen shine. Valspar’s Summer Gray for the trim and Sherwin Williams’ Glacial Stream for the walls.

The old floor in our kitchen was covered in perhaps the world’s sturdiest peel and stick floor tile. We never dreamt that it would still be sticking after a decade. I’m ever so excited for the new floors we’ve got planned. Black and white checkerboard. Again, my inspiration came from France – Versailles to be exact.

If it is good Versailles, it’s good enough for South Street!

I have selected a light fixture, but I think I’ll save it as a surprise for my final reveal.

In my next post, I’ll share some progress pictures.

Some Things Never Change…

Leave a comment

My last post was about my family working on our little nest through a 4th of July weekend nine years ago. Some things never change…This past 4th of July, my father was at it again. This time we were ticking off one more project in the living room.

Over 100 years ago, if you had walked into our home, there would have been a wall to your left with just an opening to enter this first room. When we purchased the house, this wall was gone. When you opened that front door, it felt like you were walking right into the living room. It didn’t have a sense of an entry. Here are a few before pics.

My father made a radiator cover that helped a bit and created a little more separation here.

We even gave this cover a little update a month ago with a beautiful marble top.

Gorgeous, but you still felt like you were walking right into the room. I didn’t want to put a wall back up because this isn’t a large room and I didn’t want it to feel even smaller. Solution – a pillar. My father created a pillar mirroring the pillar directly across the room at the base of the stairwell.

So here’s a progress pic…

And now for the final product.

Now It feels more like an entry. My father even added the final bits of applied moulding to the wall next to the door.

Some things never change, I’ve got one 2 more projects for this teeny tiny entryway. I’ll share them on this blog if they ever come to fruition. Maybe next 4th of July : )

Don’t Stop Believing

2 Comments

For this week’s post, we are sharing the work we did in the kitchen. I thought that by now I’d be sharing a kitchen that looked much different. In fact, one week before the COVID-19 lock-down, we had contractors in our home and working up quotes for a complete gut and remodel. We thought that we would have an entirely new kitchen by August. At this point, our dream of a new kitchen this year is slowly burning down in the dumpster fire that is 2020. Here’s to 2021!

Let’s start out like we always do, with some very blurry, poorly lit before photos.

And here’s my blog post from 9 years ago…

This past weekend saw a flurry of activity at the money pit! I think there may have been 20+ people crammed in our house at one point on Saturday!!

On Friday evening, my father and I did a walkthrough and started to create a punch list of “things to be done.” This list is HUGE.  The list grew on Saturday morning when he went through the house once more with Jeffrey.

After a quick trip to Lowes and Home Depot, we realized that we were going to do a down and dirty (emphasis on the dirty) remodel to the kitchen.  So we purchased a cheap countertop that I find not completely offensive, a sink, a faucet, and other stuff that I can’t identify.  Appliances were also arriving that afternoon and we had a LOT to do.

Jeff’s parents, Jim and Sheila, arrived and along with Jeff and my father and mother, they quickly got to work. Work that is difficult, dirty, and sadly, goes unnoticed. Cleaning, running new dedicated lines of electricity, and reworking some very old plumbing.

By 10:30 that morning so much progress had already been made.


With cabinets getting removed, it was time to tackle the countertop.  For months we have speculated about what in the heck the countertop was made of…we never did come up with a viable answer, but one thing was certain – it needed to go!!

Next to go were the appliances. There are no words to describe that that old refrigerator smelled like, but there is a giphy that accurately represents my reaction when I first opened that door…

Out with the old, in with the new!

Jeff and I spent the remainder of the week painting the walls, the trim and the refinishing the cabinets.

It was really starting to look decent in there.

My parents were back in town over the 4th of July holiday weekend and we all spent the weekend, including the 4th working our butts off. New flooring, new lighting and more cleaning. We did a peel and stick floor tile to save a bunch of money, but I did splurge a little on a ceiling medallion and light fixtures. Not our dream kitchen, but it would do for now.

So that was exactly 9 years ago this weekend and not much has changed. We have new fridge and a few years ago, I was on the peel and stick tile train and did a backsplash. Not too shabby for $250 and 3 hours of work. It turned out quite well.

I hope that I’ll be writing a blog about our new kitchen sooner than later. For now, visions of double ovens and pot fillers will keep dancing in my head until they can be installed. I won’t stop believing that this project will actually happen.