New Kitchen Floors

While we felt fairly confident that we could restore the hallway floors, once we pulled up the tiles, we couldn't say the same for the floors in the kitchen. After pulling up the layers of tile and linoleum beneath the top layer of ceramic tiles, we discovered that, while red oak had been used in the floors throughout most of the first floor, the kitchen actually had white oak. In addition, it appeared that these floors had never actually seen the light of day.

After spending the better part of a century covered in linoleum and tile, as well as cabinets and appliances, these floors were not in nearly as good shape as the hallway floors. As a result, we pulled them up and replaced them with an unfinished red oak, that looked to be a pretty good match to the hallway and dining room.



The new kitchen floors were re-finished at the same time as the hallway, living room, and dining room. Beyond the fact that they looked several decades younger than their hallway counterparts, the red oak turned out to be a pretty good match. Not only that, but they looked like a pretty good kitchen floor going forward. Our kitchen finally has a floor.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Renovating a home is such a draining process.  Everytime you feel like you're making progress, something happens to slow you down.  Whether it be permit issues, planning & zoning boards, nasty neighbors, leaky toilets, or a family of squirrels residing in your attic...its easy to lose sight of what made you take on this project in the first place.  mike & I have very supportive friends and family.  They are always there reminding us of the positive aspects of our home renovating projects.  We are thankful for them today and continue to strive forward.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Sandra & mike

Kitchen Inspirations.....

Can you believe it?  The holidays are right around the corner.  Thankfully my mom will prepare a feast....probably enough to feed the entire New England Patriots, for 9 of us.  :)  Usually I do all of the baking for Thanksgiving.  While mike might say I go a bit overboard myself, don't believe him.  Five desserts is perfectly acceptable......"variety is the spice of life" or so they say.  Anyways, our lack of a properly functioning kitchen this holiday season has got me thinking about the type of kitchen I would love to call my own.  Here are some of my favorites!

Luckily, my brother has been gracious enough to offer me his kitchen to use this holiday season.....probably in the hopes I'll leave him a care package.  Gianni you better put your request in now.

Happy Birthday Dad!

We just wanted to take a minute to wish my Dad, Claudio a Happy Birthday today!  Thanks for all your hard work.  If it wasn't for you we wouldn't have been able to do any of it.  Hope you have a great day.

By the way Dad....we have a family of squirrels living in our attic......No they are not birds!

Tackling the kitchen part 2.....adding on.

The kitchen is typical for an older home, small and dark.  We got a little creative with our ideas, including adding an island, a peninsula, or maybe even adding on to the kitchen itself.  We thought about making the full bath on this floor into a half bath, taking some of that space for the kitchen.  Then there was this L shaped porch/deck right off of the kitchen with a rotting roof.  Could we possibly expand there??  

Here's the back porch before.

 

Here's what it looked like during renovation.  We wanted the addition to have the same lines as the house.




We will eventually move this staircase.  As you can see its blocking the basement door.  This will be our new back door entrance.  



We replaced this patio door in the dining room with a window.



The demolition of this wall started where the original door to the back porch used to be.





Here it is.....well just framed in that is. 


The addition added about 120 sq feet to our original 100 sq ft of kitchen.  I'm envisioning a breakfast nook, maybe an island, creamy white cabinets, black soapstone counters, farmer's sink.......here I go with my ideas.



Tackling the kitchen...part 1

Where to begin with our kitchen?  As mike mentioned the tiles seen in "Entrance Hallway Blues" were also located in the kitchen. 

  We wanted to salvage the hardwood floors in the kitchen, but it was  impossible since the layout of the kitchen was not the house's original.  Our next thought was to install new hardwood floors and work around the cabinets.  

I wasn't a huge fan of the cabinets.  mike thought there may be spacing issues with the new flooring fitting in properly.  My Dad's initial thought was to take the bottom cabinets out, put the floors in, and re-install the cabinets.....but then the ideas started..........

 

And before we knew it we ripped out the entire kitchen..... 

Under the Tiles

Last week I mentioned how we had a bit of a to-do list in the entrance hallway. The first step was to pull up the tiles and see what we were dealing with underneath. We're hoping that the original floors will be in good enough shape that they can be restored.

So we got to work, and up came the tiles...only to find linoleum underneath. So...up came the linoleum. Underneath that was a thick coating of glue that had turned black.


We then got to the task of scraping up the dried up glue and pulling up the staples and nails that had been used for the sub-floor under the tiles. It was a delicate task because we needed to scrape with enough force to get the glue up, but at the same time, be sure not to scratch up the hardwood floor to deeply.


Will we be able to achieve our goal of refinishing the original hallway floor? Only time will tell.