Kitchen makeover, part 1: Before

I would LOVE to have a brand new kitchen with the latest appliances.  Alas, budget did not permit.  So we made do with what we have, and tried to improve it as much as possible. 

When we moved in, the kitchen looked like this:

When we've got the key: we are slowly replacing them appliances.

With previous owner's stuff: how do you like 'em wood?

They liked 'em wood lacquered and orange.

And I just HAVE to share this picture of the fridge nook wall:

What didn't kill me, made me stronger:  I steamed the wallpaper off in the middle of summer.

Before moving out, the previous owner must have let their dogs pee all over the cabinets, because they are disgustingly smelly and sticky!  And I'm talking rotting-fish kind of smell.  And melted-candy sort of sticky.  They must also liked deep-frying foods, as evidenced by the ever-present grease stains on and around the stove and on the ceiling (how, I ask you, does one get grease stains on the freaking ceiling???).

I almost threw up a few times during the process of cleaning up, since whatever different chemical cleaners we used did a very good job releasing the smells embedded in the kitchen.  But, none of them was able to really get rid of  the general ickiness.  We finally resorted this ultimate strip-all, clean-all, max-power stripping agent:

JASCO!  T has a love-hate relationship with this guy.  It cleans up everything, but oh, the fumes!  The painful heat when it touches your skin (have baking soda nearby)!  And the learning curve and numerous do-overs because we didn't put a thick enough layer (stripping is hard!  That's what she said!)!  After a few weeks, we finally got down to the bare wood (that's what she said again!):

Frames, insides, shelves, and doors.  I'm just showing the biggest cabinet here.  (See we had the fridge nook wall mudded after the wallpaper was removed.)

Then, we painted.  And we painted.  And we painted some more...

On to a glimpse of the painted cabinets and the hardware fiasco!

Ottoman makeover

After we moved in the house in November, long inspired by numerous DIY blogs, I bought a pair of ottomans from the Salvation Army for $10 each, thinking I'd make them over.  Easier thought than done, apparently.  Damn those blogs... why must they make everything look so easy?!  They really need to put warnings that "projects on blogs are harder than they appear" or something like that.

Anyway, I managed to strip one of them, remove most of the staples, stepped on one of said staples, found an excuse to take a (long, loooong) break, got nagged by T for not finishing up the project, and finally a few months later (this past weekend) got around to stripping the other one.  Gah!   It's not any easier the second time around, and it still took me 3+ hours and a blister to remove the staples, despite the shortcuts (no staple-stepping this time though).

Thankfully by now I had bought all the supplies (foam, batting, fabric, plywood support, staple gun, furniture legs), so this time I was actually able to put things together to finish!

In 2 days, I went from this:

To this:

Times two!

My ikea-filled living room!  Much better with the new ottomans!  To improve the sense of balance and an excuse to buy more furniture, get a second white chair!  Oh, the red couch will be slipcovered white (next project!), and the black side table will probably go elsewhere, and the blah of a rug will be replaced with a flokati / shag type (much to T's chagrin, but I'm the one that keeps the house, so what I say goes) for more glamour.

Quite a few mistakes were encountered through this project, such as:

• 2" foam being too thin (get at least 3" foam for seating, and high-density foam is recommended).  I improvised by putting a 1/4" plywood underneath the foam so the sitter doesn't feel the slats that support the seat. 
• I was planning to add a 1" high-density foam in the future for added comfort, but despite the hefty hem allowance, my fabric turned out to be too short as it is.  The hem was supposed to be stapled down to the frame, and it's just barely long enough as a slipcover.
• Fit allowance almost wasn't enough.  I added only 1/8 allowance to the width/length for a tight fit, thinking the batting would be squashed down to nothing.  I was kind of right, except that it was so tight that some of the stitching ripped as I struggled to pull down the cover.  Apparently it could have been prevented by pulling down each corner bit by bit so the hem is almost at the same level at all time.
• Not using upholstery thread.  Well, technically it's not a mistake yet since no stitching has unraveled from usage (knock on wood!), but I would recommend using upholstery threads for home sewing projects, as there is more usage and abusage to furniture than to clothes. 

All in all, it went well, and while this was a pretty basic makeover job, the sense of accomplishment is tremendous.  On to the next one!  Don't hold your breath though.  :D

Linking up to:

Rolling stand for the gigantic printer

Update on the house:  construction is done, we moved in, and we've been quite content.

This long weekend I had quite a few things accomplished.  First, a new camera:

I picked Nikon Coolpix L120 over Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS8 (which has similar features) mainly because it's more "pro" looking.  :)   And it's just the right motivator to get back to updating my blog(s).... which lead me to this circular saw:

 

Some of my projects and to-do's require basic woodworking, and I've been putting off these projects because I was intimidated by power tools.  Unfortunately (or fortunately?), the stress caused by the growing list of projects got the better of me.  In a brief moment of bravery, I bought the circular saw on Friday and started working right away.  

I cut some plywood (our first ever electric-sawing exercise!) into a big square and four little squares (using the term "square" very loosely here) and attach some casters to make this little rolling stand for my ginormous 80lb printer, which until now had to be dragged across the floor to reach the computer on the other side of the room, whenever we wanted to use it:

Ta da!  Nifty little stand...  My back thanks you!

What we've been up to

It's been 5 weeks since we've got the house, and the "rejuvenation project" - as my contractor calls it - is starting to take shape.

Rather than rambling on - nobody reads this blog anyway - why don't I just show the progress via pictures.  Here we go!

Living Room: We had the built-in bookcase removed, as we want to have an entertainment center or a library there.

before - with built-in bookcase

during - built-in gone + a literal hole in the wall

during - hole in the wall gone (pardon the increasing clutter)

On the other side of the former built-in, in the bonus room, we had a built-in cabinetry.  I hated it - it was finished in a half-assed manner and made the room felt like a garage.

cabinetry - ugh!  The backside of the built-in was hidden in this

About the only good thing about it was that it was very well built.  T and E had quite a workout demo-ing it.   I'm surprised the neighbors hadn't complained about the noise, because their method of "demo" is mostly hammering the hell out of everything until something falls down.

the other side of the hole in the wall, is the same hole in the wall.

Once the cabinets were gone and drywall up, the room feels much more open and airy, and less like a workshop.  I forgot to take a picture of the drywalled wall, but you're not missing much, seriously.

Ceiling:  The house throughout, except the main bathroom, has this type of wood slats and cross beams for the rather-low ceiling.

yup, a skylight.  It helps brightening up the living room.  Although it probably wouldn't be good for TV-watching.

We're going to repaint it with Benjamin Moore Simply White, so yours truly spent a good part of the past two weekends sanding all the slats and beams (twice for the gloss-painted kitchen ceiling) while T pretended to be busy with everything else to avoid participating in this activity.  I don't blame him, it's about as enjoyable as standing under hot steam while removing wallpaper.

Bathroom: We didn't plan on doing anything on the bathroom, since everything was in working order.  Ugly, yes, but functional.  Let's just wait on remodeling it later, after we move in. 
Of course, that was the original intention.  Lo and behold, one thing led to another:

sky-blue walls, brown tiles, vinyl floor.  Oh my.

original 50's tiles were removed.

The saying "they didn't make 'em like they used to" rang true in this case.  T and E were drenched in sweat after removing the tiles.  (It was also a 90-degree day, too).

empty slate.

I wanted to get a claw-foot tub, but they're apparently expensive and the underneath of the tub is unfinished cement and dirt.  So there went that idea... the tub stays :(

Next, I'll post an update on the other rooms.

Wall panels extravaganza

Remember the bedroom with the panels?

Yup, that's an emergency exit door.  In a bedroom.

Accordion-style closet door on the right.  Gag.

No, the color difference of the paneling is not from the lighting.  They are actually two entirely different style panels, in different colors.  Doesn't matter, they're out of here!

So T & E spent a few hours taking those panels out, and here's what they saw:

A failed black paint effort, covered up with mozaic-style tissue paper!

And this, on the opposite side:

I cannot look at pink and green the same way again.

I cried.  But I cried harder when I saw this wallpaper nightmare behind the fridge:

Ewww... I had to scrape all that?

Removing this particular wallpaper was just as bad as removing the twice-as-much painted wallpaper in the living room, especially since it's just gross.  I used my fabric steamer (Well, formerly fabric steamer.  It's pretty much ruined now.) to loosen up the glue, and scraped the wallpaper away.  The heat from the steamer and the general stinky-ness of the kitchen were not pleasant.

As long as we're still in the kitchen, here's a shot of another wall:

Somebody sure loves wall panels.

So we paid some painter to get the panels mudded, thinking we would just paint over it, rather than dealing with the suspected wallpaper underneath:

Apparently it was money not well spent, because our contractor suggested to get rid of the wall paneling altogether, because our fix attempt wouldn't last for more than a couple of years. So fine, let's take down the wall panels.

Thankfully:

No wallpaper!!

The house is finally free of wall panels and visible wallpaper.  I can now sleep at night.

The 60-year old tiles!

My husband "T" made sure that I disclose on the blog, that most of the demolition work is by him and his BFF "E".   So there!

It's true that they both put a lot of time, thoughts, and effort, without which we could not have done this much in a relatively short time, so THANKS guys!

Underneath the carpet that we removed laid the original tiles from 1950, sitting firmly (stuck) to the cement subfloor.  Here, you can see reddish-brown tiles under the mangled carpet (we were quite inexperienced in carpet rolling).

With an impulsive decision, we started scraping them away with a couple of floor scraper, one of which broke, so I had to run to a hardware store to get another one.  During my break errand run, the guys found difficulty with many, many stubborn sections.  Thankfully, being creative problem-solvers that they are, we did not give up and call the pros.  (One thing we won't do is to pay somebody to destroy our things.  We'll do it ourselves, thankyouverymuch.) 

Hammers to the rescue!

That's right, T and E ended up hammering the sh*t out of those tiles, throughout the whole house, while I scraped away what I could.  Was I concerned about the foundation being cracked?  Hell yes!  But what could I do... they needed the exercise. 

Here's one pile-o-tile from one room... and we had 4 roomfuls of similar waste. 

And the cement underneath.

Everybody slept very well that night and woke up with sore arms and chest.

Demolition DIY

The thing with DIY fixing is, once you get rid of a certain thing, be it wallpaper, flooring, etc, you invariably find other things that need to be fixed.  Soon, you end up getting rid of everything and starting from scratch!

That's exactly what we're doing (not intentionally).

The house was covered with industrial carpet.  Industrial in the truest sense of the word.... rough, heavy, ugly (gray-ish dark blue, ladies and gentlemen - the most potent color to enhance the dreariness of a house.).  It's in a pretty good condition, actually, but it has got to go!  See it for yourselves:

(gag!)

Somebody sure loved their turquoise.  And fluorescent lighting.

The turquoise wall on the other side of the room is actually painted wallpaper.  Apparently somebody didn't know care that you're not supposed to paint over wallpaper, because your buyer will absolutely hate you.  (True, I do hate whoever painted over this wallpaper).

One of the bedrooms was covered with wooden paneling on three of the walls.  Why just three, no idea.  I stopped asking questions a while back.

 (horror! How do you like the mismatched paneling?)

So we ripped off the carpet, padding, tacking throughout the house and those wall panels.  Here's the pile of rubbish to be hauled away. 

(There's more carpet in each bedroom.  The bright light is not heaven shining down... it's the skylight.)

Good riddance - we're done with demolition!  Or are we?   More to come!