Kitchen planning: the cabinets

The tiny bit of progress downstairs has me dreaming big again (no, I will never learn). I've been obsessing over planning my kitchen for years now, and I think I've finally nailed down a lot of details and specifics.

First, the cabinets. I'm going to use Ikea. Now, you might associate Ikea with crappy particleboard furniture, but I promise their kitchen components are pretty high quality stuff. They use Blum hardware as their standard drawer glides and hinges, something which is a major upgrade with other cabinet lines. I used their drawers in the girls' room and have been very impressed. Not that my kids would ever abuse their furniture, but let's just say that the drawers easily handle two jumping toddlers and still slide smoothly with both of them in the drawer. Plus they have a 25-year warranty. I did a rough estimate of what my kitchen cabinets will cost, and I came in under $3500 (and that is with the most expensive door options!). And lest you think that Ikea will look cheap, here are a few Ikea kitchens that might change your mind.

This is the kitchen of gardenweb user brickmanhouse. He customized a lot, but he did the whole kitchen for under $20k.

This one from Stately Kitsch is beautiful as well. Again, customization is key.

This one is from blogger duo Aubrey and Lindsey. A bit modern for my own house, but still awesome, yes?

Designer and HGTV personality Sarah Richardson often uses Ikea cabinets in her renovations to keep her costs down. She usually has the doors professionally painted for a custom look.

Sunset Magazine featured this one. Not entirely my style, but it definitely doesn't look cheap.

And last but not least, this is probably my favorite Ikea kitchen of all time, by the gardenweb user oldhouse1. It has already served as a reference point for me on countless occasions. This is what my kitchen wants to be when it grows up!

Moving like a herd of turtles

Unfortunately I can't find my camera, so no pictures, but we are making a little bit of progress downstairs. Don't get too excited - it's just ceiling insulation and furring strips. The strips have a couple of purposes. First, it will make the drywall much easier to install. The joists are not as regularly spaced as modern construction materials require, so spacing the furring strips every 16" will help a bit. I am also able to shim the furring strips individually to create a more even plane for the drywall. The bottoms of the joists are not totally even with each other (with the original plaster and lath construction, they didn't need to be). If you tried to attach drywall directly to the joists without shimming, you'd end up with a very wavy ceiling.

The second benefit of the furring strips is that it leaves enough space to run electrical without drilling through the joists. As we found out running wire upstairs, the 100-year-old framing in this house is practically petrified and very difficult to drill through. But with the furring strips, we can run the electrical along the bottom of the joists and save a lot of time, muscle, and drill bits in the process. We thought the additional cost of the lumber and slight decrease in ceiling height was a worthwhile tradeoff given those benefits. 

NB: The formaldehyde-free R-30 insulation that Lowe's now carries is much improved from the last time I bought it. This stuff is a mottled brown and white color (the older version was bleached white) and looks dirty, but it does not explode in a cloud of fiberglass shards when you touch it. I wore long sleeves and gloves during installation, but no dust mask or goggles. With the previous formaldehyde-free formulation, my skin, throat, and eyes were itchy for a week afterward, even with a dusk mask, goggles, and long sleeves. With the new insulation, I felt none of those side effects. So thumbs up for Johns-Manville for improving their product!

The plan

I think I've come up with a downstairs floor plan that I'm happy with. The room to the right in the drawing will serve as a family room or den for a while. However, we are planning for the possibility of having to care for Tom's parents in the coming years, and the room will be easily converted into an in-law suite. It has direct outdoor access, as well as a bathroom and its own washer/dryer. Even if we never have to take care of Tom's parents in our home, having this conversion possibility is a good idea for aging in place. We are planning for the bathroom to be as ADA-compliant as is reasonable, which is why it is a bit bigger than a typical 3/4 bath, and also why I put in pocket doors where possible.

Preparations

I've been doing some preparations downstairs for serious work, namely cleaning out the back portion of the house. This is what we started with:

Years worth of scrap construction stuff thrown haphazardly back there to be dealt with "later." Well, it's later. Here's the same space now:

I hope you kept your expectations sufficiently low. Most of the stuff was just moved elsewhere on the first floor, but we did get rid of a fair amount of junk, too. The plan is to get the back room framed and install flooring (to free up some room in the front of the house), then keep working our way forward to the front of the house. I think we've already exhausted plans A through Z, so I guess we're far enough removed from the original to just call this plan A again.

My first Ikea hack

I've been working on a wall of built-ins for the girls' room. Their toy box died tragically, and we needed storage stat. Rather than spend a hundred bucks on another toy box they'd outgrow in a few years, I decided to build storage that would grow with them. I still need to sew a cushion for the top (probably using that peacock blue fabric on one of the upper shelves), but the construction is complete. I used two Billy bookcases and two over-the-fridge kitchen cabinets outfitted with drawers. The rest of the project was just finishing touches that make it look more custom, less Ikea. I might eventually write a tutorial about it, but for now I'm happy that this project is done!

Item #104 update

I managed to get the board-and-batten wall primed and coated with one coat of paint over the weekend. I'm doing it all with brushes, not rollers, so it has been a time investment - especially since I've been painting the door trim (the two doors pictured plus one additional door) at the same time. On wood or things that are supposed to represent wood (like the drywall that is supposed to be the "board" of the board-and-batten), I insist on using a brush. It gives the surface a little bit more dimension. I'm probably the only one that will ever notice it specifically, but it really does make an aesthetic difference. One more coat of paint and this project will be totally done. Even though it's a holiday today, Tom has to work for a while, so it probably won't get done until he has a day off.

Item #104

It's been two months since I checked in, which is about 14 years in internet time. I wish I could say that I've been so busy getting stuff done that I haven't had the opportunity. It's more like I've been so ashamed at the lack of progress that I've been in hiding. Between the heat and the morning sickness (yep, having a baby boy at the end of January) and two very active toddlers, progress has been pretty well non-existent. I did, however, just finish building this project yesterday. It's a board and batten wall with a picture ledge on top. The headboard for the bed will be against this wall. Hopefully I'll be able to get it primed and painted this week.