Kitchen Renovations - The Pre-Finale

So I've been periodically jumping around with projects!!

Let's get back to my kitchen.  The kitchen is where the heart of the home is.  If your kitchen is done right, even if the rest of the house looks like crap, sometimes you can sell the whole house because your kitchen is amazing.  I wanted not only a good looking kitchen, but a functional one.

Again, here's the before blueprint:

And the after:

So, here we go.  The last part, I left off with the load bearing wall coming down, and header beam going in.  After the beam went in, things moved along at a good speed.  It shows how amazing things look different when you do things to walls, whether it's just painting it or putting decor on it, or in this case, covering up the studs...

The 1/2 bath is framed in....

Another view of the 1/2 bath

Mudding!

My general contractor gave me the sweats when we went through 5 layers of linoleum and vinyl and when he saw the original hardwood did the breathing in through his teeth (and he's NOT smiling), and the deep exhale with his mouth in the shape when kids blow out their birthday candles.  Then he says softly, "We might not be able to save it". 

"BUT MARK!! IT'S NOT IN MY BUDGET!!"

"Well, I know Miyu, but this looks prettttty bad.  I'll have the flooring subs make the call."

1 day later.  Enter Flooring Experts.  I gulp.  2 seconds.

"Oh, psh, this will clean up just fine! We are just so happy you're saving them.  A lot of people don't even bother asking and they'll just tear it straight out because of how it looks.  Can we take before and afters to put on our website?  It's good education.  Old floors are almost always salvageable.  That's the beauty of hardwood."

Then, we fixed the floors.  We had a lot of patching to do because of where old walls used to be, where cabinets used to be, etc.  They called it "lacing".  I call it MAGIC.  Refinishing cost me $1500.  If I had gotten new flooring, it'd been over $3000.  CHA-CHING.

No joke, the floor with all the dust and grime on it is the original hardwood.

Then, the cabinets came.  I chose to paint the cabinets (althought I'm a big fan of dark stained cabinets!) because of 2 reasons.
1)  I didn't want the hardwood floors to clash with my cabinets
2)  My kitchen really lacks natural lighting.  The 2 windows that exist faces West and Southwest.  So I needed to brighten my kitchen up some other way.

Poplar is a very good wood to use, if you're painting.

 Is it dinner time yet?  It's getting a little cozy in this kitchen!

Stay tuned for the final reveal!!

First Time Pinterest Challenge!

So, Young House Love is one of my favorite blogs to read everyday.

And... this is my first time at participating in their Pinterest Challenge!

And whaddya know, the Pinterest inspiration also comes from YHL, here is the original post.  Isn't it a beauty? It's made of marble tile (oooooh) in a herring bone pattern (aaaah)!

So here we go:

This was part of my basement renovation, I saw the Pin online when I was debating how I should tackle the mantle of the fireplace.

First, let's look at this fireplace (before) from afar:

 

Closeup:

Then, I started to reface it:

I directly applied the mortar to the brick (instead of using cement board) for a few reasons:

1.  Brick was straight, no loose brick (I fixed some top ones that were loose)
2.  Brick was bare, any sealer had worn off of it over time (I mean... my house is 85 years old, after all)
3.  I lightly sanded the brick with 60 grit sandpaper so that the mortar would have something to cling onto.

Some key points here with stacked stone tile are:

1.  Keep it level.  Stone will not stack correctly if you don't keep it level!
2.  Lay the tile out first, on the floor or something.   This way, you can arrange the tile how you want it since the color of the tile are all different. The last thing you want is uneven colors... evenly distribute the darker tiles and lighter tiles.
3.  This may sound obvious, but start at bottom and move up.  The stone sits on top of each other.  The stone is too heavy for the mortar to be its support.

The #3 above is hence why I have an odd-looking, jerry-rigged wood support system for tile in the middle:

Then, I needed a mantle.  It was an odd size (57" long) so I said, maybe a 60" shelf will work?  So I started looking... but couldn't really find anything I liked.

This is when the YHL blog post on their fireplace reface really REALLY helped me out!  YHL made their own mantle out of MDF and I took what they did at the top with the 2x8, crown molding.

I got the materials:

1 - 6 ft 2x8 piece of board
2 - 6ft 1x2 stain grade trim pieces
1 - 6ft crown molding
1 - 6ft 1x4

Then I built this:
 

After two coats of paint, I liquid nailed it on top of the mantle for the finished beauty:

What Pinterest Challenge will you take on this Spring?  A spring wreath?  A summer pasta salad made from scratch?  Basement fireplaces...???