79 Cottage8: Behind the Scenes

I’ve been a bit preoccupied this week with all of the buzz surrounding my previous post, swimming in a sea of the best kinds of comments and emails you can get. The kind you only dream of reading. The kind I dreamt about when I was on my knees for three days, armed with a hand trowel and a bucket of Floor Patch, filling in the eight million groves in the old tile of both the kitchen and dining room, in preparation of laying the new floor. For those of you new to my blog, you may want to read this post first to answer some questions you may be pondering about this remodel.

 

 

After I finished putting down the floor patch, we were then ready to install the flooring. We went with Trafficmaster Allure Vinyl Plank Flooring in Country Pine. It’s water resistant, fairly easy to install, wears well, and it’s vinyl. That’s right, I just said vinyl. Let me just tell you that I’ve had contractors tell me they loved my beautiful wood floors, and when I confessed that they were anything but wood, I was given the thumbs up on our excellent choice of product. Best part is, the tools needed for installation are the following: #1. sharp razor or box cutter #2. metal yard ruler or straight edge. And that’s it. (I was so pooped after that Floor Patch, I forgot to paint our baseboards before Adam starting installing the flooring).

 

 

And so the flooring continued on into the kitchen, and into the late, late night. You know the common phrase “A picture is worth a thousand words”. Well the photo below speaks volumes, if not abstract foreign languages. This is how 3am looked in my kitchen that night, during our remodel. Let’s closely exam this photo, shall we: The Floor Patch covered floors lie in wait, the missing space on the far lower right is still awaiting it’s new cabinet, which I had yet to assemble. I still hadn’t finished installing the subway tile, on the upper right. The new french pained window hadn’t been installed yet, we were still missing three cabinet door fronts, with no cabinet hardware in sight, and is that a package of cookies on the counter? Don’t let the appliances and faucet fool you. Three months in, and we were still without gas or running water. But check out that nifty light under the hood. Yep, we had really cool electricity.

 

 

When it came time to have the new windows installed, the contractor we had measure our windows was off by 3 inches on every single window. Fortunately we found a talented installer who was able to build frames inside the window casings to make up the size difference. He even moved this window 5 inches to the left, so that it would be centered with our faucet. 

 

 

Alas, the finished product below: The kitchen

 

 

And the finished dining room, below. Of all the photos I’ve taken of our dining room wall, this one is still my favorite. 

 

 

There’s Adam painting the living room, below. We first did a coat of Kilz primer on every single surface of this house before we even started painting. I was in charge of painting the walls and fireplace, while Adam did all the ceilings. The ceiling and cinderblock fireplace were done in Behr’s Seaside Sand, and the walls were done in Ralph Lauren’s Canvas Natural. The exact same colors were applied to the kitchen.

 

 

Once the walls, fireplace and ceilings were painted, Adam and I pulled up all the horrible old carpet and dragged it outside. Hallelujah. Oh, and that’s the Allure flooring boxes below. It comes in large planks.

 

 

Here is the flooring completed on one side of the living room. Shortly after this photo was taken, I was able to clean all the dusty shoe prints off the new floor. Note: the blue curtains were just a temporary fix, as we often worked into the very late hours of the night and needed privacy from the street.

 

 

Now it’s on to the other side of the living room, and later the hallway and kitchen/dining room for their flooring treatments. Labor intensive, yes, but this sure beat using power tools and dealing with saw dust.

 

 

And finally, the finished product:

 

 

I’ve received so many questions…where did you get this, how did you do that. All topics will be covered and discussed in future posts. But the #1 most frequently asked question hands down was: How did you do that to your refrigerator?

 

 

12 years ago, Adam and were living in a small 900 square foot condo which served as an experimental testing ground for my decorating conquests. Some of which panned out, and others, well not so much. These were the days before blogs, and we didn’t watch any television, whatsoever, for over 6 years. It was a choice that at that time suited us and our lifestyles perfectly. So naturally, I’d never heard of a thing called HGTV. In my own mind, I’d pictured creating a kitchen that looked like it could be from a far away place, such as France, so I hand painted the old floors in a large diamond pattern, did a faux ragging treatment on the cabinets to make them look old, and hand stenciled a phrase above the cabinets in an Old English font. Mind you, the refrigerator was still avocado green and I hadn’t any big plans for it yet.

 

While wandering around the hardware store one day, I discovered this fantastic material they called bead board. As I stood there in the isle, I suddenly had a vision of somehow adhering this paneling to my refrigerator. It wasn’t sure how I was going to do it yet, but I bought several panels of the stuff, as well as some thick trim. First I measured the front doors of my refrigerator, and then proceeded to cut the bead board panels by hand with a small 12 inch miter box saw {Just imagine cutting wood with a nail file}. These were the days before I owned any power tools of course. I then primed and painted my bead board and trim, and pulled out my handy hot glue gun. Wait, does that qualify as a power tool? I used the hot glue to adhere the bead board and trim to the front doors, and then bought a spray can of enamel appliance paint for the sides of the fridge. I finished the look with outdoor fence hinges and pulls and hand screwed them into the doors. Pretty simple really, and effective too. It’s held up all these years. Besides I still get a giggle when someone comes into our kitchen for a glass of water and says “Where the heck’s your refrigerator?”

 

Please join me in a few days when I cover the remodel of our dining room wall, and the process and inspiration behind it.