Color Me Svelte ...

Well, our kitchen, anyway. We finally settled on paint colors AND countertop choice - YAY! David Gulyas (see post below) brought over the complete Sherwin Williams collection for us to go through with large swatches for each, which was overwhelming but ultimately fun. David coached us through some good color selections. We went back and forth quite a bit, whittling it down to our final choices, but finally have a full palette for the kitchen. Check it out!



We ended up getting the paint matched elsewhere - SW is a little pricey for our dear little pocketbook. (Jay, wanna post about the horrors and the goods?) We're finishing priming this evening, and then Jason's sister graciously offered up her mad skills (and that of her beau) to paint on Friday, which means we'll be ready for hanging the cabinets this weekend! Things are finally coming together, and I just can't tell you how excited I am!!!!

Using a Water Level to Overcome Uneven Floors

One of the challenges fun things about living in a 100-year old home is trying to make something level on the original floors. This is no easy task when you sometimes feel as though, while standing in place, one foot is cooler than the other due to its higher altitude. If this sounds scary, just imagine trying to install a 10-foot run of cabinets across these peaks and valleys so that the faces of the cabinets all line up cleanly, and don't resemble something that belongs on the Earthquake ride at Universal Studios.

I have honestly been struggling with approaching this for awhile, but now that we've removed the old vinyl flooring (and its excessively fastened underlayment), we have to confront the issue. To my initial shock, our kitchen designer, David, had a simple solution: water. Even more elegantly, water: in a long tube. The concept is similar to the familiar bubble seen on most carpenter's levels, but works even better for multiple data points. There are ways to do this by yourself that involve a bucket, but it's even quicker (and simpler) with two people. In between playing gigs at CBGB years ago, David spent his days as a carpenter remodeling apartments in New York, and had worked on many floors in much worse shape than ours.

David offered to help us create a benchmark using a water level last weekend, and we started by taking about 20 feet of clear tubing and filled it most of the way with water. David went downstairs and capped the end of the tube with his thumb while I filled the tube most of the way with water (we left about 5 feet of air). Then we grabbed both ends and draped the middle off our balcony (so the tube was in a long U shape), to get rid of any air bubbles. As tiny air bubbles slowly rised (with help from us tapping the tube), the two water levels became closer together until they were finally level. Then we went back inside to our kitchen.

On the wall with the cabinets, we decided to arbitrarily make a benchmark measurement at a 40" height at what seemed like the highest point in the room. At this height, once we snap a chalkline for our benchmark all around the room, we can see where the peaks and valleys are on the floor. Additionally, we will be able to simply measure down from the benchmark line to mark the top of the base cabinets, and measure up to mark the bottom of our upper cabinets.We marked that first location's position at 40"with a pencil and I stayed at that initial point as David moved along the walls. At each corner, David would hold up his end of the tube and move it up or down as I kept my end of the tube stationary. The water line would move up and down at first, but once it stopped moving, David marked the water's level on the wall.
After the first line had two points, we both simply capped our ends of the tube to avoid spilling any water, and David moved along to another point along the wall. We did this along each wall with at least two points (sometimes more if an obstruction might get in the way of a straight line). Once we were done, we snapped a chalk line, and voila! Truly level benchmark!

Only one mishap occurred. As I was explaining this process to Jen, I realized that for a few of our marks, I had not taken my thumb off the tube to let the air escape and the water equalize! So we had to back and redo a few marks that were too high. Listen up kiddies and don't do what I'm doing in the photo here - air and water must mix for a level! It's a good thing we discovered that now instead of after lifting and mounting the cabinets.

Anyway, thanks to David, we now have a point of liftoff for the cabinets to be installed. And just in case we need it again in the near future, I capped both ends of the tube and hung it in the basement (perhaps a picture rail?). Hopefully we'll be trying for the cabinet install next weekend.

It shines in its sleep

I got a new camera for Christmas from my parents, and the timing couldn't have been better ... our floors are gorgeous!

Thanks, Mom & Dad & Elm Floor!

p.s. - they patched the boards that needed replacing with maple boards that were taken up from a local high school gym! Yay for recycled floors!

Countertops and Color Schemes

Let the kitchen decorating begin! Over the holidays we managed to get the walls up and prime them to be ready for decoration. We're currently having the original maple floors patched where the rooms were combined and refinished by the fine gents at Elm Floor from Elmwood Park who came highly recommended to us. That leaves us time to decide things that, in all honesty, should have probably been done a long time ago. Well, it was hard to visualize how the space and colors will be working together until we had a blank canvas.
While browsing many kitchen design photos, we noticed that light cabinetry generally is paired with dark countertops, and dark cabinetry generally has lighter countertops. Since we already have elected to go with dark cherry cabinets (currently taking up residence in our living room), we thought we were pretty well pigeoned into a light coutnertop. Besides, its a small space, and we didn't want too many dark colors to become overwhelming and claustrophobic. Another plus is that a lighter surface doesn't reveal how dirty they are as easily as dark surfaces (as we learned from having black appliances in our condo!), so we can wait longer before cleaning it!

We went to our local KDA and looked at some Zodiaq samples, and found a style called "Cappucino" that really was great against Cherry cabinets. I've succumbed to the fact that we simply don't have the budget to purchase IceStone counters, as much as I love the idea of having beer-bottle-based countertops. But Zodiaq is a great alternative that is still green, harder than granite, and requires almost no maintenance.

However, some darker (midtone?) counters, such as a rich green, end up looking really sharp with cherry cabinets. I mean REALLY sharp, as we found out by looking at the "Magellen Green" Zodiaq sample in the store. We didn't think much of this color by looking at the brochure (or web site for that matter), but this just proves that it is hard for the web or print to capture the look of these stone-ish counters, especially the abstract "sparkle factor" that Jen loves so much.


I think we've pretty much decided that it is down to these two counter colors. Kudos to Jen for the awesome mockups of our kitchen space with cabinet layouts with both counters done by hand in Adobe Illustrator. It's good to have a graphic designer in the family! Once we decide on the counters, we can figure out colors on the walls that will encapsulate them.

ringing in 2008

I've been down for the count for almost a week with some lousy virus, so Jason was stuck with the chore of priming the kitchen walls all by his lonesome on new year's eve. he finished with fifteen minutes to go!!!!