Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch (-Style House): Kitchen Update

You know, I was thinking that I didn’t want to be talking about all the many, *many* major things I’d done in the house on the blog for concern that professors from school might be haunting this space. It seems silly in retrospect. I haven’t done a whole lot of work since school started, but I’ve done some and whatever.

Since I last posted about the kitchen, I’ve done the following:

1. Installed the toe-kicks on the cabinets.
2. Installed baseboards on the walls (mostly).
3. Put up the “field tile” on the backsplash.
4. Installed the microwave (my dad helped with this).

Which doesn’t seem like much for a three month time period. Also: my dad installed the transition strip between the kitchen tile and the living room hardwood (thanks!).

Photo from way before:

And now it looks like this (though there’s usually a lot more stuff piling on the counters — sorry for the lack of authenticity):

If you believe in yourself, you can notice the toe-kicks.

Stove (lower) and microwave (upper).

The forbidden corner, where feng shui goes to die.

OTOH, I like that my new blender looks like it has teeth on the front of it. Sharp, sharp teeth (and wavy).

Still to go!:

1. The edge tile and grout on the backsplash.
2. Veneered facing on areas under the microwave.
3. Finish baseboards (right now none of the mitered joints have been attempted).

And I’m not sure I’d really call it a ranch-style house. Otherwise, fine.

bkd

Kitchen Floor: Slated

Still needs to be washed another 30 times and then sealed (twice? we’ll see), but otherwise it’s done. Enjoy the photo retrospective. Or not, whatever works for you.

What the in-store sample tiles looked like.

It wasn’t very gauged, either.

The dry run. Also on the floor: a hammer, wire strippers, small wonder bar, four-foot level, joint tape, and a Dremel.

Thinset.

It’s like an under-utilized veterans’ cemetery where there was in-fighting about what direction the crosses should face.

Spray away, buddy.

All done but the grouting.

The float at work. I’m not sure in what sense it “floats”.

Semi-dry grout awaiting clean-up.

Light’s green, trap’s clean.

It occurs to me that life is like a box of slate tile: (1) you never know what you’re going to get; (2) even once you see what you have, you have no idea the ramifications of it or how it’s all going to work out; (3) then you cement them to your floor because, man, you gotta do *something*; and then (4) it becomes permanent and you live with it.

Was also weird to me how different the floor looked before and after grouting. Before: wild, like there were a bunch of rocks on the floor. After: like the floor in some fairy-tale castle. Kind of liked the wild floor better. Maybe I’ll see if I can get a three-inch-deep stream of water to flow over it permanently, that might help.

bkd

PS, Next time I’ll over-order by 25-percent rather than 10.

PPS, Where you see all the dark tiles grouped together, those are the areas getting covered by cabinets and appliances.

Cutting Slate Tile with a Wet Saw

This was kind of fun.

And now I have a power tool that shoots muddy water at me. Finally.

bkd

Cold Chisel, Warm Heart

For some reason I knocked all the tiles off before I demolished the walls. It was sort of fun chiseling them off, but just unnecessary. I suppose I did it that way because all the write-ups I found online talked about knocking tiles off so that they could be reused. In my case, no, I will not be reusing my tile. Because it sucks.

In the beginning was the bathroom.

And then we pulled the vanity out of it. Yes, the tile is pink and the walls and ceiling are brown.

Was pink.

Happiness is a cold chisel.

Then (after cutting them out with a drywall knife and hitting them with a hammer repeated) the walls came tumbling down.

Stoked to discover 52-year-old razor blades inside the wall. Made of tungsten!

And now, instead of a hideous pink, green, and brown bathroom, I have a rubble-covered, wall-less, function-less room. ¡Viva el progreso!

For some reason also I thought I’d enjoy this renovation stuff during-the-fact. It’ll be a good thing to have done, but in the meantime I’m sick of having to live in the basement and dump my bank account into Home Depot’s.

Out,

bkd