Makeover: Adding Colour and Contrast in the Kitchen

 I am one of the very fortunate women (who are becoming more and more common, it seems) whose husband loves to cook. And I'm not talking about barbecuing, which James also does exquisitely, but the real gourmet stuff. Don't get me wrong, I can hold my own in the kitchen, but since James cooks most of the dinners, it seemed only right that he have a proper kitchen to do it in. And so the kitchen makeover began.

These photos were taken by the folks at Homes in Motion, who kindly gave me permission to use them here, to advertise our house before we bought it. The door on the back wall opens out onto the back patio, and the one in the opposite corner leads down to the basement. Since we don't have the money to tear out any walls at the moment, the basic structure of the room had to stay the same. 

We love how bright the kitchen is, but hated having the fridge all the way across the room from the stove and sink. For financial reasons the cabinets, counters and floors had to stay (at least for now). Lucky for us, James' parents gave us a generous housewarming gift, so we were able to replace the fridge from 1986 (yup, that was the date on the sticker on the back) and the 27" electric stove with miniature oven. (No turkeys or full size baking sheets would have fit in there, never mind dutch ovens full of lamb roasts, which are not unheard of at our house.)

The other important issue for us was the lack of a dishwasher. We had to have one, not least because I abhor washing dishes, but also because it apparently uses less water to wash dishes in the dishwasher than it does to wash them by hand. (That's a convenient rationalization, isn't it?) Since it had to be installed close to a water source and drain, and we didn't want to lose a cabinet and 4 drawers, we opted for a mini dishwasher that was only 18" wide.

The biggest design challenge was figuring out what to do about our stranded fridge. We didn't want to put the fridge beside the stove, not only because having a heat source right next to the fridge isn't a great idea, but also because we didn't want to block the lovely window that's there. But where else could it go? After a few days of mulling it over, James came up with a brilliant solution. We would seal off the door to the hallway (after all, we already have access to the living room from the kitchen), and get a shallow fridge that would fit in the space between the liquor cabinet and the door to the basement. Eureka! (One of these days I'll post about the experience of hanging a 26" door in a 27" door frame that's not square, but that's a story for another day.) You'd never even know there used to be a doorway there now, would you?


We decided on black for the new appliances, since stainless steel appliances are significantly more expensive, and the ones that just look like stainless still seem to cost more than black. Also, we like black. We think it looks modern, and it's easy to keep clean. In order to unify the look of the kitchen given the black appliances and white cabinets, I had the brilliant idea (is it okay not to be modest? I think it was brilliant!) of replacing the white cabinet handles with black ones. 

In addition to jazzing the place up by adding black accents, we decided that the walls needed a splash of colour too. Along with our bright yellow/orange accent wall (which friends who helped us paint were really not sure about at the time), we opted to paint the bulkhead above the cabinets a lovely dark Georgian brick red that matches our banister.

For storage we used shelves that we already had, selected mostly because they fit the space. We also added a fantastic kitchen island that we found for $250! We love having the extra counter space, and it has a drawer and a shelf for added storage too. Best of all, we fluked out and found a mahogany one with the wood of the base stained in a reddish tint, to match our red accent bulkhead.


One of our favourite features of the kitchen was the built-in liquor cabinet, which you can see between the door to the living room and the door to the hallway. We wanted to highlight it as a special feature, so removed the door and painted the inside of the cabinet dark red. James had to use a screw extractor bit to remove the hinges, but once we had the right tool, the job went smoothly.


When it came time to decorate we were thrilled to discover that the faux-window painting that my mum had created for our kitchen wall in Austin, based on a photo that I took while we were travelling in France, was a perfect match with our new yellow wall colour. It now hangs over our kitchen table (you can see it in the photo, above). With a few more little personal touches, like these great canisters with little yellow flowers that match our yellow wall that James' mom brought for us from her house, the kitchen has really started to feel like home. 


I am amazed and what a difference we have made to this room without changing its fundamental structure in any way. It feels modern, bright and fun, which just goes to show what updated appliances, paint and and the right island can do for a kitchen!


Have you ever made a dramatic change to a room in your home without altering its structure? Perhaps you've changed it's purpose or layout just by swapping out the furniture, and updated it with fresh paint. If you have, we'd love it if you'd share your tips and experiences in the comments!

Installing a Laminate Floor - Part III: Finishing!

In case you haven't read them yet, you can click here to read Part I: Demolition & Underlay or Part II: Installing the Floor (where I tell you all the things I wish I had known before we started). In this post I will tell you about some things that didn't go as planned.

So we began laying the floor, and the first challenge was that the boards didn't actually fit together the way that they were supposed to according to the directions that came with the flooring. We were supposed to connect the long side to the previous row, and then just slide the board along and it would snap into place next to the previous board in the same row. Not so, as we discovered.

We solved this problem (as I mentioned in Part II), by linking a whole row of boards together end to end and then attaching them to the previous row all at once. This worked great, until we got to the longer rows that went into the closet. Ultimately we needed to get a pull bar and a tapping block so we could hammer the boards into place effectively. Installing the floor might have been a one day job instead of a two day project if we had known this in advance (or maybe not).

As we worked our way towards the closet, we discovered that since our new floor is taller than the old vinyl tiles, the closet door would not open or close on top of them. In fact, it wouldn't travel over them at all--they blocked the door.

My solution? Take the door off the hinges and worry about it later. Fortunately, James found a really helpful video about how to trim the bottom off of a door online. You can expect a post about that project soon. But for now, no door.

We also had to improvise a bit when it came to installing the "transition strip" that connects the new floor to the floor in the hallway. Instead of using their fancy method of nailing down a little plastic groove for the strip to slide into, we just nailed down the strip itself. Since it's now firmly affixed to the floor, I call that a success.

Here are a few photos of the finished room:

If you really love it, you can stay here, since we'll be renting this room out through AirBnB!

Installing a Laminate Floor - Part II: Installing the Floor

If you haven't read Part I: Demolition & Underlay yet, click here.

Now that the underlay is in place, you are ready to start laying the floor. Start by laying out the first row along one wall, and the row that will run lengthwise down the centre of the room. You'll take these rows up again, but for now the point is to make sure that the centre row looks straight (your room may not be square, especially if you have an older house like we do), and to check that you won't end up with a row that is too narrow along either of the side walls. As far as the latter point goes, you have two options. You can either start your flooring in the left hand corner (advantage: you only have to make lenthwise cuts to your flooring along one wall), or you can start it in the centre and make the space between the last row on each side and the side walls equal (this means you will probably have to cut the boards along both side walls - probably not worth the effort unless you would otherwise end up with a very thin strip along one side). 

As you can see here, we decided to start the flooring in the left corner.

Not sure which direction to lay your flooring in? For us, it came down to wanting your new floor to run the same direction of the existing hardwood on the second floor. For you it might be helpful to know that usually floors are laid lengthwise parallel to the longest wall of the room, or they are laid perpendicular to the window.

Now for the things that I'm glad I knew before I started, and the things that I wish I had known before I started. My Aunt Lori, an accomplished DIYer who has laid more than her fair share of floors recommended a few things, and I will pass along her advice. 

First, the floor manufacturer will recommend leaving a space for expansion between your new floor and any fixed object (i.e. wall, pipe, etc) of 1/4" to 3/8" (0.5 to 1cm), you should really leave a smaller space. That space should be equal to half of the depth of your baseboards. Planning to leave a smaller space will also leave more room for error when you make your cuts. I found that used (or unused) paint stir sticks and the metre stick that I had on hand were about the right depth, and they were easy to lie on their sides between the floor and the wall.

Second, Lori recommended that although we have a (very old, second hand, straight from the '50s) circular saw, we should invest in a mitre saw (aka chop saw) for this project. We decided that it was worth it for $130, since it would make this job much easier, and would likely come in handy for future projects. In retrospect, we're glad that we got a compound mitre saw with the 10" blade (instead of 7"), but we wish we had invested the extra $50 to get a compound sliding mitre saw. With a saw with a 10" blade that doesn't slide you can cut up to 10" deep, and about 6" across. The sliding feature enables you to cut further across, which is useful if your floor boards are 12" across, like ours are. In the end, we made one cut from each side and finished off the middle with a hand saw, which worked out fine.

Our new mitre saw, and James finishing a board with the hand saw.

Third, get a pull bar. This is a tool that you hook around the end of the last board in a row, so that you can hammer it into place. Ours came in a kit that also included 20 or so spacers (that you can use instead of those paint stir sticks I mentioned above), and a tapping block (to put against the other boards and hammer on when you're trying to get them into place--or you could just use a sanding block or other small block of leftover wood, which you surely have, right?).

Pull bar (red) in action!

Fourth, although the instructions that come with your flooring will tell you that your can fit the long side of each board into the one beside it, and then just slide it into place so that the short side meets nicely with the one next to it, this is not true. They only say this because they don't want to be responsible for any damage that you do to the boards when you're hammering on them to get them into place. 

Fortunately, I am not afraid that you're going to sue me, so I'm going to tell it like it is. You have two options. You can link a whole row of boards together, end to end, and then attach them to the previous row all at once. This is quick and a bit tricky, but not difficult especially with two people, unfortunately it is not effective for rows longer than 3 or maybe 4 boards. If you're working on a longer row, you can put the first 3 or 4 boards in place this way, and it will save you a lot of time over installing them all using option 2.

The first few rows were short, so we were able to lay them even without a 

pull bar or tapping block (which we didn't know we needed), using option 1.

Once you've put the first 3 or 4 boards in the new row in place using the above method, you will have to use your handy tapping block to get each subsequent board in place. Attach the long side to the previous row first, then hold your block on a diagonal against the end of the new board, and hit it with your hammer. If you have a friend helping you (recommended!), one of you can hammer, and the other one can monitor the gap between the new board and the row that you're adding to to make sure that you stop once the gap is closed. 

If you've read this far, you've earned a cute puppy picture!

If it seems like your hammering isn't doing anything, take the new board off and check to see if there's anything (like a little piece of the tongue or groove that has broken off) between the two boards that you're trying to attach that is preventing them from meeting completely. Usually you will find that there is. Remove the debris and try again.

With a little patience, a combination of these two methods should work pretty effectively.

Always lay out the whole row before you start fitting the boards together. If one end of your row is a very small piece, start with it instead of ending with it, because that way you can avoid using the pull bar on any piece that won't be hidden by the baseboards (it can leave a mark). 

If you read the instructions for your floor you probably know this already, but be sure to start with boards of different lengths, so that your floor doesn't end up looking like a checkerboard. You want the joins to be at different places, because this will make your floor more durable, and it will look better.

Next up, Part III - Finishing!

Installing a Laminate Floor - Part I: Demolition & Underlay

One of the first times that we came to the house after it was ours, we discovered that the floor in the guest room really needed some help (the previous owners had cleverly put a rug in that room so we wouldn't notice). It had stick-down vinyl tiles that must have been 30 years old, and were peeling up around the edges.

Before (notice the well-placed rug)

Now, for a demolition-lover like me, this was great news--it meant that tearing them up would be a breeze! Needless to say, I started ripping up tiles right away, because it was so much fun! I removed the baseboards (post on how to do this and how much I love my mini crow bar and my chisel coming soon), painted, and we ordered a new floor.

Demolition!

We decided to go with a floating laminate floor for a couple of reasons.

1) We didn't want to removed the black paper that was stuck to the sub-floor if we could avoid it, and the sub-floor doesn't have to be perfectly flat to put a laminate floor on top.

2) We can't afford real hardwood right now.

3) The rest of our second floor has real, old-fashioned hardwood floors, and we knew that it would be impossible to match the colour exactly (and also that if we tried the laminate would look so fake next to the real stuff). We also didn't like the idea of having two different colours of wood right next to each other. Using laminate gave us the largest number of colours and styles to choose from.

This is the floor that we chose is called Picolo Light Grey, and it looks like this:

Laying the Underlay

Once the old floor was torn up, the baseboards removed, and all the bits of the old floor removed from under the baseboards, I swept the floor and then vacuumed. I tore up any pieces of black paper that seemed loose.

We got a roll of the cheap underlay (since the room is on the second floor, we weren't worried about moisture, so we didn't see a need for the fancy stuff), and I laid it out on the floor with "This side up" facing up, and set out to cut it to fit the room.

Lay the underlay not only so that the writing is the same side up on each piece (i.e. facing the ceiling), but also so it's oriented the same way (i.e.top of all the letters towards the window). If you have the same kind of underlay that I did, the left edge of each piece will have a strip of thin plastic extending past the edge of the actual underlay by about 10cm (4 in). The right side of each piece will have a strip of tape, covered by a backing, about 5cm (2 in) from the edge. The idea is that you're supposed to butt the pieces of underlay up against one another, with the cellophane on top of the tape, remove the backing of the tape once it's all lined up, and stick the cellophane to the tape. That way your underlay won't slide around while you're laying the floor. It took me a while to figure out what the cellophane and tape strip were for, so hopefully now you won't have to!

See how the word "Roberts" is one way up in the first row, 

and the other way up in the next row. This is how not to do it.

Another trick that I discovered is that once you have the underlay lined up on three sides, you can use a utility knife or a pair of scissors to poke holes a foot or so apart along the underlay where the floor meets the wall. Then you can lift it up and cut to "connect the dots" to get an accurate line, even if your room isn't square.

With those two tips in mind, putting down the underlay is pretty easy.

Click here for Part II: Installing the Floor