While we had the primer out we went ahead and slapped a coat on the hood cover too (using a 2″ angled brush in the cracks followed by a small foam roller to smooth everything out). Things were instantly looking less wood-sy on that wall.

Once the primer dried on both – we used Zinsser Smart Prime which is low-VOC and was recommended by a few pro cabinet painters that we know – out came the same high-durability paint that we used on our cabinets (yes, there’s still plenty left!) and we gave the brackets, shelves, and the hood a couple of coats. Two thin and even ones over one coat of primer did the trick. We also applied those with a 2″ angled brush followed by a small foam roller to keep things smooth and even. Oh and the paint is Benjamin Moore Advance paint in Cloud Cover, bee-tee-dubs (which many pros use to paint the inside of their clients’ cabinets along with the outside, so it should stand up really well to everyday use once it’s nice an cured up).

But the exciting stuff really started to happen when we finally got to the point of ACTUALLY PUTTING STUFF ON THE WALL. Yowza. Sorry for the caps. I said we were excited, right? Excited might be an understatement actually. Luckily, since we had already drilled all of our screws into the wall, the hanging step was pretty easy. Up went the brackets on the short side…

…followed moments later by the shelves themselves. Can I get an “Ooooh”? How about and “Ahhhhh”?

Don’t worry, we weren’t gonna just let them sit there unsecured. We just had some other things to do first – like making sure everything was still level. It was. Phew.

So then we put everything up on the long side of the wall.

We had mentioned in the previous post that we had originally planned to screw the shelves into the wall (we even made some pocket holes in preparation for this step). Well, after feeling how solid the brackets felt (more on that here) and not really wanting to put 12 more cringe-inducing holes in our tile – we opted to just use those pocket holes as a spot to screw the shelves firmly into the brackets (so the screw actually went straight down, not at the angle of the pocket hole). In hindsight, we definitely could’ve skipped the pocket hole step, but at least now the screw will be hidden in a spot that we can easily caulk over.

Speaking of caulk, that was our next step after everything was drilled together. Since there were some dark seams where the shelves met the brackets, we just ran a thin bead of white paintable caulk along the top of each bracket and smoothed it with our finger to make the shelves and brackets look more like one unit. Tedious? A smidge. Worth it? Totally. Then of course we painted over it so everything matched.

And with that folks, we were done! Except for more waiting. Booooo.

As eager as we are to immediately fill them with plates and bowls and cups, we resisted that urge in order to let all of the paint cure a little bit longer – just because we caulked those screw holes and around the edges which called for some touch up paint. We definitely don’t want to jump the “fully cured” gun (which could result in a bunch of dents and dings in our shelves during their first few days of use). So for now we’ll just have to enjoy these empty “after” shots thanks to following the full curing time on the paint can’s directions. But tomorrow – oh baby, it’s on. Sherry’s even planning to shoot a little time lapse video of the process of loading them up.

Oh and of course we still have to add crown molding to the ceiling to finish things off and make the top of the hood a lot more seamless. But slowly it’s all feeling a lot closer to “done” than “just started” – especially now that the hood is painted too (never mind the fact that we still have some patch work to do on the ceiling along with that aforementioned crown molding).

We’re really happy with how the brackets turned out, so we haven’t thought twice about our decision not to do true floating shelves. We think these are really charming – and they’re super stable so Sherry could probably hang off of them if she wanted. Instead she wants to fill them with ceramic animals. Same difference.

It’s nice that there’s still plenty of room to load them up and make them really functional, even with the brackets (no, they will not actually end up full of ceramic animals- not on my watch). Our shelves are deep enough for our 12″ dinner plates and the brackets are 15″ apart so we should have lots o’ room to put everyday stuff up there – which we hear from other open-shelf-having folks works really well, since it’s used often enough not to get dusty).

And even though it was a bit weird at first to see our wall of penny tile suddenly broken up by these bright white lines, it’s cool to see the thing we’ve always envisioned come that much closer to being a reality.

So we should have pics (and a video) of the shelves all filled for you tomorrow. Until then, we’ll leave you with this slightly-closer-to-after shot of the room. We’re definitely getting there. And we’re counting down the seconds to Operation Cork My Floor (along with adding that crown molding, patching the ceiling, adding a pendant over the sink, covering the base of the peninsula with some decorative wood planks, hanging some art to the right of the fridge, do something to the side of the pantry, etc).

We feel especially giddy when we look at old photos of the room back when it looked like this:

We can hardly picture that old room anymore. Isn’t it funny how quickly your brain replaces things? It’s so crazy that we lived with the room just like that for over six months before even painting the paneling. But once we finally got the ball rolling… well, it’s still rolling. Haha. Is anyone else in the home stretch of one of their home projects? Though I probably should knock on wood when I say that, since it sounds like a sure way to jinx myself into some last-minute wrench in the plan (he says as he gets up to literally go knock on wood while crossing his fingers and eyes).

With the hood cover now built, we could finally put the shelves in around it. We were originally going to build true floating shelves (maybe even breaking out Ana White’s instructions) but after looking at some of our inspiration pics again, we decided to open ourselves to the idea of using brackets instead. Note: For anyone wondering how the whole dust/grease situation is with open shelves, check out this post (we’re crazy so we did our research). Apparently the consensus is that if you have a great range hood (check!) and put dishes you use often up there (soon-to-be-checked!) it’s all good. Rarely used items stored inside of cabinets get dusty too, so the key seems to be to have a good hood and to rotate things and use them a lot when they’re out in the open. We’ll definitely tell you how it goes for us. 

Besides just liking the look of them, brackets would also make us less concerned about things ripping out of our wall o’ tile (and you already know that stresses us out). Plus, we had heard that Home Depot had some pretty good and affordable options for brackets. Here are the ones I found – actually this is the photo I texted to Sherry to ask which one she liked best since she was at home with Clara and the photoshoot crew.

We both agreed the last one was BY FAR our favorite, so I picked up 12 of ‘em along with some 12″ framing lumber to act as our shelves. A few of you had said this 12″ framing lumber + brackets system worked well in your kitchens (and we had good luck with them making our office desk) so why not, right?

Well, one “why not” would be that they’re not wide enough for our plates. We have 12″ dinner plates and since 12″ in lumber terms is really closer to 11.25″, we realized we’d have some plate overhang-age. Which is never a good look:

After briefly contemplating getting smaller plates, we devised this solution instead: adding some 1 x 2″ trim around the end (just like we did to finish the top of our homemade console table in the living room).

Not only would it solve our shelf depth issue, but it’d also mean I could cover up the rough end of each board with a nice smooth piece of wood. A win-win, dontcha think?

With all of our materials purchased our total came to about $116 (for brackets) + $15 (for the shelf boards) + $10 (for the smaller boards to frame out the larger shelves) = $141. Which isn’t exactly cheap, but we knew we’d essentially get four shelves worth of storage (two big and two smaller ones) which is about the equivalent of three upper cabinets (which usually go for around $300+ total). And thanks to saving money with things like reusing our original cabinets, building our fridge cabinet, our self-installed wall of tile, and our craigslist range hood we were ok with a semi-splurge in the shelving category (plus we already have the paint and primer we’ll be using).

Next we began marking and measuring everything. We used the same weighted-thread-hanging-from-marks-on-ceiling method for indicating where my studs were (which we used here to hang our range hood). Ends up they’re pretty awesomely placed to get even looking brackets – except for the two on the end of the long side (that stud is being used by the hood, remember?). But we figured we’d just use heavy duty anchors on the other two (sunk into tile we knew they’d be nice and strong).

We also used this moment to measure and cut our shelves too. I know it may look short on that one end, but remember we’re gonna trim it with a 1 x 2″ board, so that’s intentional. Oh and see those subtle gray lines in the photo above and below? Those are our hanging pieces of thread to mark the studs. Just didn’t want anyone to wonder if we drew on the tile or anything.

We decided to just trim the exposed sides so each shelf had a slightly different configuration. The long shelf on top would have the wall and hood on both ends, so it only needed trim on the front. But the short shelf on the bottom would be exposed everywhere but the back side (the one on the top right would run into the hood and the one on the bottom left would run into the wall). I know it might seem strange not to just trim them all out in the same way, but we knew from building our console table that once it was all put together and painted it would look great this way. And of course we cut the framing lumber to different sizes to account for the trim, so they’ll all be the same finished length and depth.

We attached the trim with some wood glue and finish nails. You’ll notice we also have some pre-drilled pocket holes on the top. I was thinking it might be nice to screw the shelves directly into the wall (in addition to screwing them to the brackets).

That night I also broke out the wood filler to make the thin seam between the trim and 12″ board completely disappear. It was a small detail, but we thought once primed and painted it would really help make it feel like one solid board. See how even in the photo below (without primer and paint) you can’t tell that some are trimmed out on one side while others are trimmed out on two? We’re actually glad our plates didn’t fit on the boards alone since the trimmed out result is so much more finished looking.

While all that was happening, we also started getting ready to attach the brackets to the wall. We leveled and taped up some 1 x 2″ scraps to act as our placeholder shelves so that we’d know exactly where the top of the bracket needed to sit.

The brackets came with two metal hooks on the back, so I used my favorite paper template method to help figure out where I needed to drill corresponding holes on the wall. The strip of paper is taped to the bracket on the top and bottom, but the tape on the sides is facing out to stick to the wall. And the two holes are punctured right where the notches are.

Then I put it in place on the wall, pressed the side pieces of tape against the tile, and carefully peeled the bracket away…

…leaving my paper template in place so that I could mark through the holes.

See? Easy right? Now just pretend it wasn’t super tedious to do it 11 more times.

And since I still cringe at the sight of our tile getting drilled into (especially 24 times!) I couldn’t bear to photograph it again, let alone share it here. But here’s some of the final product – a dozen pairs of screws waiting for brackets to be hung on them. That my friends, as subtle as it may look, is the look of progress.

Here’s a sense of how everything will hang. We did a test run of hanging one side to make sure the screws weren’t in or out too far, and to make sure they felt secure. They did! Phew. True to form, Sherry can’t wait to load them up with dishes and plates galore.

But as excited as we were to just get the darn stuff hung, we knew it would behoove us to do all of our priming/painting beforehand – (that way we wouldn’t have to worry about taping off the wall or getting paint on our grout). So this is where our shelf-hanging tale ends for now. Waiiiiiting for our primer to dry so we can apply two coats of paint (the same color that we used for our cabinets) and then hang it all up once it’s nice and cured. Oh yes, and we’re priming and painting the hood too, so that should look nice and crisp the next time you see it.

Once dried, it should be pretty quick to get everything hung so we should should have “after” pics for you by Wednesday, barring any unforeseen craziness (who are we kidding, it’s week two of three for our in-home book shoots and we live in Crazyville, but it would take a pack of wild boars running through the house for us to slow down on our shelves). What did you guys do this weekend? Any lumber stuff? Priming? Drilling through tile? Prepping 35 more secret projects to shoot for your book while your daughter ran amok and your chihuahua ate various crumbs leftover from the past week of visitors?

Psst- The inspiration pics in this post were found at The Inspired Room and You Paid More Than Me.

As for the hood cover, the first thing we did was use photoshop to mock up two different options to figure out what we thought would look best. This was our original thought, since it looks most like a lot of the hoods in our inspiration pictures. The squares on the front are supposed to be panels we’d make using trim.

But it looked a bit top-heavy to us, so we tried this version instead:

We liked that much better, so I took some measurements and drew up a “technical” drawing of the plan. I roughly sketched the hood to scale (using some graph paper under this white sheet) with pen and then used a thicker marker to design the cover around it.

And in the other corner you can see where I started to figure out what sort of wood I would need to actually build this thing. I’m not going to even try to explain what this means now, since it will become clearer as you see the actual cover come together. But just know my goals with this thing were to:

• Make it sturdy (and use moisture/steam/grease resistant plywood so it would last)
• Make it as light as possible (I didn’t need worry about another heavy thing falling off of the wall)
• Make it pretty

When I returned from the store with some plywood panels and 1 x 2″ boards in hand, I got right to building. I was going to build from the bottom up so I started off by building a frame and cutting some plywood panels to size:

The frame is basically three pieces of 1 x 2″ screwed together in a U-shape using my Kreg Jig. To attach it to the wall, I made a couple more holes with my jig so that I could screw it tightly to the wood plank that we used to mount the hood (see, I told you that weird overhang would make sense!).

It looked a little something like this. Note that it’s not touching the actual hood at all, so our cover will essentially float around the entire thing (our high-efficiency range hood should have no issue directing moisture/steam up into the hood and up the vent, and our wood surround should stand up to everyday use like many wood hood surrounds built by various cabinetmakers and handymen/handywomen). We’ve heard from a ton of folks in blogland who have built or hired out wood covers since revealing our crush on them and we’re happy to report that everyone seems to have had a great experience with them (no moisture or steam issues with the wood around the hood). It actually makes sense since non-covered range hoods usually have wood cabinets against either side of them and they don’t typically have issues with those sort of things either.

Note: these pics were taken before we realized we should use metal foil tape and not duct tape for those vent joints, but we’ve since swapped it out and will share those pics in another update post about other things we have to share, like how we patched our giant honking ceiling holes, etc). 

With the frame in place I started nailing the thin plywood panels in place.

Here’s what it looked like with the first three sides done.

Remember the reason that there’s a small gap around the outside is to leave room for us to reach the control buttons on the front of the hood. There’s enough room for our fingers to slip in, without being a totally garish amount of space.

And if you’re Sherry’s height (or me slightly ducking) you can even see the buttons so you don’t have to wonder what you’re pressing (to see any buttons on the underside of a hood you usually have to duck a bit to see them, so we like that ours are just as accessible, albeit slyly hidden).

To add the next “tier” to our cover, I had to build a slightly smaller version of the previous 1 x 2″ frame. Since this would be the one against which the sloped part of the cover would sit, I ran it through my table saw at an angle to make it easier for the angled piece of plywood to lay against it. I didn’t measure or anything to make the angle perfect – it was just an educated guess since I figured anything would be an improvement over it meeting the original square edge.

Here it is attached to the upper portion of the hood.

Even though the next set of plywood panels would sit just fine on the top edge of the previous set, I did add a small piece of 1 x 2″ to give me a place to secure them with a nail. And yes, I gave it another guesstimated angled cut to help that sloped piece sit better.

This picture should help make more sense out of this. See the sloped plywood panel in place?

The next two sides would be on only non-rectangular pieces of plywood. Since this angle had to be exact, I held the piece in place so I could mark the exact line that I had to cut.

Then I ran them through my table saw to get these fun little quadrilaterals. Wow, I don’t think I’ve used that term since Mrs. Miller’s 9th grade geometry glass. That’s the class where I decided I should wear my glasses during tests because they would help me feel smarter (even though I just needed them to read the blackboard). Nerd alert.

Anyways, here are those two panels attached on the sides. It’s starting to look like something, no? Of course it’s still very clunky and unfinished looking without trim, but we’ll get there in a minute…

For the third and final tier, we had to cover the vent pipe with the section I affectionately called “the chimney.” First I cut my tiniest 1 x 2″ frame to date. Ain’t he cute?

And then I screwed him straight into the ceiling (hitting nice firm wood that I knew would hold it nice and snug – you never want to drill up into nothing- that hollow feeling is the worst). The only problem was that I hadn’t accounted for how gargantuan the hole was for that vent pipe. Guess we’ve got more patching to do (Sherry’s my spackling queen). And we’ll eventually be installing crown molding around all of this too, so it’ll look nice and polished in the end.

Here’s the chimney covered with the plywood panel, essentially completing the major construction phase of this project.

So here’s what it looked like at that point. Hood is sufficiently covered. We still have access to the buttons. It’s plenty secure and we’re happy with the shape of it. It’s just looking a smidge unfinished. Okay, maybe more than a smidge.

This is where trim comes in. And I’m telling you, it’s one of those “details make the difference” things. I decided to make the trimming portion on this fairly easy on myself. In keeping with the theme of “make it light weight” I decided to use some super lightweight plywood. And to minimize nail holes (and having to hammer against the cover) I opted to glue everything in place. This method should definitely hold up to heat and moisture and all other kitchen loveliness (grease!) – especially once it’s primed and painted with the same super durable Benjamin Moore Advance paint that we used on our cabinets – so we’ll keep you posted.

We also ditched the idea of doing panels across the front and sides (as shown in our original renderings) because we kinda liked the clean look better (and worried smaller boxy panels might not jive with our existing cabinets). It also made my job a bit faster, meaning I had the first row of trim cut and glued into place in no time.

I did like working with the LiquidNails because it gave you a bit of play for the first 10 minutes (hence the tape above to stop it from moving when playtime was over). But I ran out about halfway through (it was an old tube leftover from something else) so I started using this leftover tube of Loctite instead… and kinda wished I had used it from the start. I wasn’t able to wiggle things into place as much (I had to peel it off and restick it instead) but things really stayed in place – meaning no more green tape was needed.

The top portion of trim took me a bit longer (especially because I ran out of wood and had to run out for more in the middle of everything), but by the end of the day I had it looking like this:

The angled cuts on the side took a bit of time too. We opted not to put trim on the chimney part because it’s not really supposed to be a “decorative” part of the hood. Plus there weren’t any open seams between the plywood or anything that needed “finishing.” Once we patch that ugly ceiling hole and add crown molding around the entire top of that wall (and hood) we think it’ll look swankypants indeed.

It’s not 100% perfect. For one, it needs to be primed and painted (we’ll do that when we prime and paint the open shelves we’re about to build) and it needs some caulk in a few places just to make it 100% seamless. But I’m just proud that I accomplished my three goals. It’s sturdy and durable. It’s lightweight. And it looks pretty (if I do say so myself).

Now of course it doesn’t have some of the bells and whistles that a professional hood might have, but once it’s primed and painted it should perform just as well as a painted cabinet would next to or above a hood. And it certainly was cheaper than the $3 – 4K price tag we saw some places (check out this post to see a price that had Sherry spitting liquid at her laptop). In the end it cost me about $90 to complete, mainly because I didn’t realize how much wood/trim I’d need. So I think that brings our total for the hood up to $150 (since the hood itself was $60 thanks to craigslist). Wait, that doesn’t include brackets/wood to hang it, so make that around $175. Still not bad considering we paid $250 for our last kitchen’s stainless steel hood (and it wasn’t an industrial strength JennAir one like the beauty we scored this time).

Even though it’s still a big, tan-colored box on the wall – I did take some “after” photos of the kitchen for ya. Mainly because with book photoshoots starting in our house this week I wasn’t sure of the next time our kitchen would look this clean again. It’s definitely still looking pretty raw in there (we need crown molding, shelves, a ton of color that Sherry can’t wait to add with art and accessories, new floors, an installed dishwasher, a light over the sink, etc) but we’re getting there.

As much as it’s kinda weird for us to see something hanging from this wall that’s been empty for two months, we do like that we’re starting to break up the sea of tile a bit. In some ways it just draws your eye more to that wall so you can stand there drooling. Not that we do that. Much.

It mainly just makes us eager to get that thing painted, get the ceiling patches sanded and painted, and get those open shelves hung. Sounds like a good project to talk about next, eh?

 In the meantime, let’s talk about range hoods. Ever built one? If not, I never had either until a few days ago, so you never know what you might find yourself doing down the road…

Sherry talked last week about how we planned to encase it in a DIY’d wood cover (see inspiration pics back on last week’s post). Both of us were so excited about (1) the price tag and (2) the final look that we didn’t really think through the middle part: actually installing the darn thing. So yeah… #planningfail?

Here was our challenge (beyond just not having any of the installation materials or instruction): this is an under-cabinet hood and, well, we don’t have any cabinets to install it under. I figured that there were dozens of sites online detailing how to convert an under-cabinet hood to a wall-mounted one, so I wasn’t worried… until my Google searches started coming up empty. That’s when I started to second guess our plan. Was this just something that couldn’t be done?

Then I discovered these.

We didn’t buy these (our hood is Jenn-Air brand). But the fact that Kenmore sold bracket specifically “for mounting range hoods to wall when overhead cabinet is not used” meant it was not a completely crazy idea to retrofit ours to hang on the wall as well. So Sherry and I concocted a plan, did some shopping, and readied ourselves for some hood hanging (and possible hood hanging failure, as is always a possibility when we attempt to figure this stuff out as we go). This picture will make more sense soon, but just know it involved some wood pieces as a makeshift mounting panel and some heavy duty metal brackets as a stand-in for a cabinet.

But before we could put our plan in motion, some details needed to be taken care of. You know, little things like oh-yeah-we-didn’t-tile-high-enough-under-the-vent-pipe. Another lapse in planning. Oh well, it took about 20 minutes to whip up a small batch of thinset and fill it in with some spare tiles. Yes, it was slightly maddening to have to go back to the tiling phase (especially for eight measly rows) but by this point we’ve learned just to laugh. Wince a little. Laugh some more. And get it done.

Then we mapped out all the important stuff on the wall to ensure that things would hang where they were supposed to hang. Looks pretty crazy, right? But I promise it makes lots of sense…

All of this painters tape is marking important reference points, such as:

• 1 & 2: Where our floating shelves would go – important because we wanted the bottom of the hood and the top shelf to be lined up (which was about 34″ from the top of the counter which is right between the hood manufacturer’s recommended 30″ – 36″ distance from the stovetop)
• 3, 4, & 5: Where our studs are – important so we could attach the hood securely to the wall
• 6: The center point of our stove – important so the hood would hang squarely over the stove

In case you’re wondering how I located the studs, it was actually thanks to some forethought on Sherry’s part. Back when that wall was open she begged me to somehow mark where they were before we tiled and covered everything up, so I opted to make small marks on the ceiling to keep track of where each stud was. Then I taped a piece of thread to that mark, tied a paper clip to the other end (to weigh it down) and voila – a perfectly marked stud all the way down the wall. And once we hang our crown molding around the ceiling those little stud-marking dots will be hidden once and for all.

With all of our guides marked, it was time to screw in our first piece of wood. Here’s the deal with the wood. The hood by itself was technically wide enough to hang from two studs, except the studs didn’t line up with the two notched holes in the back of the hood (which were at either end) and I didn’t trust that it would hold that way even if they were lined up perfectly.

So we figured we’d screw a slightly wider-than-the-hood piece of wood into two studs (and use a heavy duty anchor to secure it in a third location) and then hang the hood onto additional screws that lined up with the hood’s notched holes. We actually got a contractor’s blessing (just didn’t feel right drilling into our pretty wall o’ tile without double checking our plan with an expert first. So after that phone call we took a few deep breaths and moved on to the next (very scary) part of our plan: drilling into our tile. GASP.

I bought a special bit that’s meant for glass and tile. It took a bit of pressure, but eventually I got all of my holes drilled. Though I think we both silently freaked out the entire time drilling was in progress.

Once we got over having riddled our tile with holes (okay, there were just six) I used some 2.5″ screws to secure the chunky plank of wood to the wall. I have to tell you, feeling those screws grab the stud so tightly was one of the most confidence inspiring parts of this process. I felt like I could’ve hung my whole body weight from this thing – that is, if I was able to grip the tiny ledge with my lanky girl fingers.

With one board in (to hang the hood from) I then had to attach a second one (to hang the brackets from) also with long screws into two studs and a third set of screws into heavy duty anchors to further enforce things. Then it looked a little something like this. Note: the vent pipe is slightly off-center, not the boards (so once we build the frame for the hood that will be solved and it’ll all look centered). Oh, and the blue arrows are pointing to the two screws that the hood will hang from.

We felt pretty good when we realized that most upper cabinets are just held to studs with screws and then loaded up with dishes and plates and other items (and then a hood might be added on top of all that weight) and the whole shebang stays up.

Speaking of which, it was time to put the hood up (since the brackets would need to go up after the hood). Okay, so maybe this part was scarier than drilling into tile. We half pictured the whole wall of tile pulling off of the studs. But lucky for us, it didn’t budge. It was up there solid as a rock. Which is good news, because clearly I could use less time worrying about hanging hoods and more time spent shaving…

Anyways. Sherry supported the hood just in case (she’s the perfect height to rest it on her head from underneath it while standing on a small stepladder) and I attached the brackets to the wood panel and then into the hood using the same slots where it would’ve attached to a wall cabinet.

It was feeling plenty secure by this point, so I relieved Sherry’s head from hood-holding duties while I secured the second bracket and she took some more photos.

Once it was tightly held to the wall, I took care of some of the finishing touches – like attaching the vent pipe to the hood and plugging it in (btw, how lucky were we that the existing plug hole in the range hood was pretty much perfectly placed for our outlet???) – and we were in business. Phew! Update: We’ve since learned that metal foil tape (sold at hardware stores) is better for taping that duct together than duct tape (regardless of the more fitting name of the latter – haha) so we’ll be retaping that vent with foil tape to keep the seal nice and strong for the long term. Thanks for the tip guys!

Okay, so admittedly it looks kinda ugly right now. The exposed pipe / wood / giant hole in ceiling aren’t really a good look, are they?

But it was a good start. Not only did we have a hood for the first time in over two months, but we had a hood that wasn’t crazy close to the stove like our old microwave was (we hung it 34″ from the top of the counter which is right between the hood manufacturer’s recommended 30″ – 36″ distance from the stovetop). And this hood has two fancy light settings. Oooooh. Ahhhhh.

And I know the exposed wood looks kinda crazy – especially because it sticks out about an inch on the sides. But I promise this is all part of a plan (hint: they’ll make for a good spot to attach my homemade wood hood cover), so just bear with me for a couple of days.

Oh and don’t mind this POV, we didn’t have the filters snapped in yet (they’re basically big stainless steel rectangles, so it looks a lot better from below once those are in). We’ll have to share more photos soon.

Now in case you’re still worried about this thing coming crumbling down overnight (we were – we actually pulled the stove out before we went to bed the first night just in case!), know that it has survived a few full days now with nary a creak or shake. So without jinxing ourselves, Sherry and I are calling this hanging project a success. All is good in the hood, as they say. Between the long screws going firmly into those studs and the heavy duty brackets also adding extra from-the-top support, this guy is pretty darn secure. So after a few days of breath-holding, Captain Careful can officially exhale.

Now for the fun (?) part – building a pretty wood cover for it. Somebody crank up my jams! We’ll be back with all those details in a few days, but in the meantime, what did you guys do this weekend? Any heavy-object hanging? Tile drilling? Using your head to support something? Oh and something crazy crazy crazy is going on in our house today (well, it starts today and lasts for the next three weeks!!!) so we’ll fill you in on all that tomorrow (once we have lived through one day of it and have some photos to share).

So here’s how we got there. First I have a little “materials shot” for ya:

1. Bucket of clean water
2. Putty knife & another bucket to mix grout in
3. Paper towels because, well, grout is messy
4. Sanded grout (from The Tile Shop, $19 with discount) – ours is the Mobe Pearl color
5. Rubber float (from Home Depot, $2)
6. Flexible Grout Admixture (from The Tile Shop, $17 with discount) – this reduces grout shrinking and cracking
7. Sponge. Woot!

Oh and we used leftover rosin paper from Home Depot to prep the room, since it was again helpful in keeping the mess off of our counters.

Grout, like thinset, is another mixture that you only want to make in small batches – since it’ll dry out after about 20-30 minutes. So according to the instructions, I started by pouring a bit of admixture into my bucket and then adding the grout powder second.

Just like with my thinset, I used my putty knife to mix everything together until I got a that toothpaste-y consistency that I found easiest to work with.

I had forgotten how much I enjoy grouting. That may be an overstatement, but after the focus it took to actually install the tile it was fun to do something that took very little thinking. It was basically just using the float to smoosh the grout onto the tile and, more importantly, into the cracks. Sherry helped too. She was less into it than I was. Ha.

Once we made sure we didn’t miss any spaces, we held the float at an angle and scraped off some of the excess from the front of the tiles. Then it was time for some sponge-and-water action. This not only cleans grout off the front of the tiles, but also kinda smooths the grout between the tiles. It’s kinda weirdly amazing to me how simple but helpful this step is.

If you want to see these steps in actions, we managed to film this little one-take video of it. Clara’s need for a cream-cheese refill cut it a smidge short, but you get the point:

Admittedly the task is a bit tedious – and more than bit taxing on your wrist – but we managed to get it all done in one afternoon.

The difference between an ungrouted and grouted tile job still amazes us. Just when we thought we couldn’t love our penny rounds more. You can see the difference below – the left side has dried grout in it, the right side is ungrouted. You can also see how much lighter the grout gets once it dries. Of course there’s still a haze on the grouted tiles on the left, so they don’t look as gleamy as they do once you buff that off with a cloth after it has fully dried.

Oh, and since people had asked before – here’s a picture of the corner seam after it was filled with caulk that matches our grout. We also caulked the seam where the tile meets the counter (that’s still drying in this pic, so it looks darker along that bottom edge). This was taken before we buffed the tile with a cloth though, so it’s kinda chalky. But you get the idea.

Here’s the whole room completely done, though it’s kinda hard to make sense of it at this picture size – since it sort of just looks like a gray wall. Haha. But in person it’s approximately 50 times bigger than this photo on your monitor. And those gleaming penny rounds look pretty darn lip-smacking. Yes, I just used that adjective. The penny tile does that to me.

So here are some close ups so you can get a better idea of what it looks like in real life. Thankfully even when you enter the room from the frame hallway on the far side of the kitchen you can easily make out each individual penny tile. Which is nice because it would have been a colossal bummer to spend 14 hours tiling the room only to have it look like gray paint from afar. Even from the front door it clearly looks like little round penny tile on the part under the microwave that you can see from there. Whew.

This shot is probably best at depicting all the varying tones in the tile. It’s awesomely random. Some tiles are a bit darker and some have a dark ring (or semi-ring) around them – we think it looks really charming and adds to the dimension. And you can see the polished shine on the top right corner of this shot (they look hazy in this pic for some reason, but up at the corner you can see that they gleam in real life). It’s actually a really “marble-ish” look without having to dish out the money for marble.

Here’s another close up to show how some tiles have darker rings and varied coloring. And you can really see how the grout cleans things up and adds some nice tone-on-tone action where dark holes and mesh once were:

We were a little nervous about the grouting step because we had heard that it can accentuate any seams or inconsistencies in the way that you laid the sheets. But our experience was the opposite: it actually seemed to disguise those little mistakes. It’s probably because our tile / grout color combo is low contrast, but if it was dark it could highlight those flaws instead of bridging the gap and making things look more finished and even. So this isn’t to say that grout solves a bad tile job when it’s low contrast (unfortunately nothing solves a bad tile job) but if there are tiny inconsistencies, similarly toned grout might be your best friend. And thanks to using a good sealer, it shouldn’t be a bear to keep clean (we used something awesome on our first house’s tiled shower and didn’t have to scrub it ever again – even while hosting Open Houses a year later it looked as good as it did the day we grouted).

Here’s a better shot that shows the shine- although it’s only on that portion of tile on either side of the range hood. I blame our terrible kitchen lighting, but it’s next on our to-do list! Yes, we have an appointment with our electrician and everything.

Speaking of other still-to-be-completed projects, we also still have to add a range hood and some open shelves. We think our tile will be a pretty darn sexy backdrop for our dishware and such (knowing Sherry, there will be a whole lot of “and such” up there with our dishes – the girl has plans).

Even though grout is done, our job with the tile isn’t 100% complete. We still have to seal it. And before that we have to do a bit more clean up (aka: more buffing to remove small traces of haze in some areas). It’s pretty common for grout jobs and The Tile Shop actually sells haze remover, but we’ve found that just good ol’ fashioned elbow grease (and a dry dishtowel) can also do the trick. Buff, buff, buff. So we may try that first. That is, once our wrists recover.

You know we’ll be back to share all the goods as we go (applying our sealer, planning/replacing the lighting, range hood happenings, open shelves, new cork floors, etc). In the meantime, have you guys ever grouted? Did you kind of like it (me) or kind of hate it (Sherry). The good news is that we both admitted that it was totally worth the hassle when we were done, so that’s unanimous. Glad to have it checked off.

Psst- Take a wild guess who is the most excited indoor train rider in our family. Might not be who you think. More on that here.

We talked about a few fun play tables over on BabyCenter a couple of weeks ago, but finally found the inspiration that we needed to DIY one right in front of our eyes. And no, it wasn’t this leftover-plywood-slash-side-table combo that Sherry rigged up in about 30 seconds of “hey, maybe this will work!” Sorry, Sherry. #playtablefail. Back to the drawing board…

Actually, this was our inspiration. The desk that we built with an old door for our first house’s office, that’s been getting the cold shoulder ever since we DIYed a newer, bigger desk for our current house’s office (which made this one look oddly tiny and cramped). It had been sitting at the opposite end of our dining room for a while – just waiting to somehow be repurposed (or craigslisted).

Well, this was its lucky day. It was too tall and too long, but since it was something that we cut to size the first time around, we figured… why not tweak it again? So we set off to create a miniature version of it. But we had a few requirements for it (like for it to be able to be used while Clara’s sitting or standing like a true activity table, to be big enough to seat a few other kiddos, to be sturdy and solid and safe, and to not be too precious – so it wouldn’t be the end of the world if Clara broke out a permanent marker on it one day). After chatting about a game plan with Sherry for a while (to figure out the right width for a few kids and the right height for standing & chairs), I lugged it down to my basement workshop and starting disassembling it.

Then I used the miter saw to cut the legs down a few inches.

Then I had to cut down the tabletop (aka, the old door). For this I broke out my beloved table saw.

With my top and legs trimmed down to kiddy sizes, I just had to cut down the support pieces (aka: the aprons) and screw everything back together again.

Oh and I did have to patch the open end of the door this time (when it was our desk we just left the end open because it faced the wall, so nobody saw it – and the room was so tiny that no one could get back there). But that wasn’t going to fly with little wandering hands around. So I cut a thin strip of spare plywood and nailed it into place. Once it’s all painted, it should look pretty good.

So with that (and zero dollars spent) Clara’s new coloring desk was complete. Well, mostly.

It still needs a fresh coat of paint. And we’re leaning towards (can you handle this?) white, so that we can make the $5 yard sale chairs the colorful accent instead of the table itself. Although Clara has done some crayon scribbling on the top that’s so cute it makes us want to tell her to go nuts and then use some sort of clear sealer to keep the doodles around forever. So we’ll have keep you posted if/when we make a decision…

There’s something really charming about the fact that it was made from an old linen closet door from our first house (where we brought Clara home from the hospital and raised her for her first seven months of life). That’s one sentimental table. And we love that Clara now has her own pint-sized parson’s desk when our adult-sized one (from West Elm) sits on the other side of the living room. It’s like a mini-desk for our mini-me.

Oh and you may remember these yard sale chairs that we scored back in the summer. We actually used them to build the desk at the right height for those chairs (and for playing while standing too – you know we like things that multitask). So it’s nice to have two chairs that already work. You know so if Clara’s baby BFF’s drop by we’re ready (we can also pull the desk away from the wall if kids want to face each other or we want to add more chairs in the future).

They don’t look half bad as-is (one has been stained yellow while the other was stained an evergreen color and they’re both pretty worn) so they might stick around like that for a while. We did debate painting/staining them someday, but it doesn’t seem to matter to Clara either. She fell in love with her new spot from the first second she laid eyes on it. Must be nice to wake up from a nap to something that was custom built just for you.

But seriously, look at that face. Does it not make you want to build something for her too?

We’re leaving the desk here in the living room for now because it was an empty spot and it’s convenient for her to color while we relax work on the couch/clean up/prepare dinner in the nearby kitchen, etc. But we made sure to keep the desk small enough so that it could also slip into her room, the future playroom, the kitchen, or just about anywhere else that we may want to place it as she grows.

Wanna know the best part of this project? Besides it being 100% free, we got the entire thing done in one day. From concept to completion. Man did that feel good. Especially with a certain other project that’s taking several months (cough…thekitchen…cough…cough). Although now that this is done, it’s back to cutting trim and sanding wood putty. More on that stuff for ya tomorrow.

A few of you questioned why we needed “such a big microwave” when we originally posted about it, which did get us thinking that we don’t do all that much microwaving. A bowl of soup here. A bit of reheating/defrosting there. And when we took down the kitchen’s original black over-the-range microwave (which was just as wide as our oven – 30 whole inches)…

… we realized just how hulking the new 30″ one would look in its new home next to our pantry. See, we had originally planned to build it in there like the one in our first kitchen, but that meant that it would butt up right against the side of the window:

So two weeks ago (after seeing how nice and open the kitchen felt without a lot of those heavy, overbearing upper cabinets)…

… we returned it and bought this much smaller countertop one instead for $84 (it’s 18″ wide). He’s nice and “modestly sized” as Sherry likes to say. I even tossed a tea mug in there for scale:

But much like the big original microwave that we got, we never planned for it to live on the countertop. Oh no, we got planz yo. This guy is getting built in…

This is one of our old upper cabinets (it hung to the left of our old microwave when it lived above the cooktop) and it just happens to fit the microwave almost perfectly. It’s actually a bit snug around the frame, but the frame is built in around the front edge of the cabinet if that makes sense. So on the inside of the cabinet there’s about two inches of extra space on either side.

The only problem was that:

1. the cabinet itself was too tall for its new home next to our pantry (it would hang oddly low as-is)
2. it wasn’t deep enough for the microwave to sink back into it and look flush (with extra ventilation room for safety reasons)

So we had some work to do. We had to adjust the height and depth of the cabinet, then hang it next to the pantry with a new door. That way the infrequently used microwave can be hidden away most of the time and when it’s needed we can open the door and zap our food while allowing the appliance to vent (more on that in a moment). Oh and we already had an electrician add an outlet where the cabinet will hang, so the microwave will have power.

Many custom kitchens actually have built-in microwaves, like this one from here…

… and this one, from here:

So we knew it could look great and actually be really functional (warning: read the paperwork on your microwave to see what type of ventilation it needs – some don’t need any except for the ready-made space under the little legs while some have a vent on the side or back that needs room for aeration, which is something we took into consideration as we went)

But back to the whole cabinet being too tall issue. First up was chopping that baby down to size. I started by prying out the metal shelf rails. Luckily they came out with almost no effort.

Then I measured, marked, measured again, leveled, measured again, double-checked my marks and leveled one last time…

…before taking my jigsaw carefully along the lines I had drawn on each of the three sides.

What I was left with looked like a bad magic act. All that was missing was a lovely assistant chopped into two lovely pieces.

Are you nervous yet? I was. Although I felt a bit better because this was my second time doing this (I tested this method on another spare cabinet that we weren’t reusing first).

So that big cut started getting me to a better height, but I also had to cut a hole in the back to help with the depth/ventilation plan. Oh, and I had to put a slight notch in the bottom right side of the frame so that the microwave door could swing open more easily (this way we can shimmy the microwave over to the right in the cabinet, which gives the hinges on the left more room to swing so the door can open freely). Not to worry – it will later be concealed by a door.

Here’s a shot to show how the microwave stick outs the back – which also helps it vent since there will be a column of “free space” behind the cabinet for aeration all the way up and out the top of the cabinet (more on that a bit later).

Enough looking at its backside. Let’s look at the front. Is this starting to make more sense? Remember once we add a door that small notched out area for the microwave will be concealed.

Oh, and I added that shelf above the microwave by nailing in some fixed ledges for the shelf (which we already had) to sit on.

Obviously the cabinet was far from being ready to hang. It needed a top, for one. And it needed some extra support on the back if it was gonna sit away from the wall enough to let the microwave vent out the back.

So we devised a plan, I made a sketch (which I don’t expect anyone other than me to understand) and hit up the hardware store to grab some wood.

The new top was basically three pieces. A thin piece of plywood as a new top, a thin piece of pine on the front and a scrap piece of 2×4 to hold it all in place. It’s looking a bit rough at the moment, but bear with me…

Along the back I screwed in a few blocks of 1 x 4″s doubled-up. This way the cabinet will sit away from the wall a couple of inches and I still have solid wood to screw into when we go to hang the cabinet. Oh, and we cut a wide channel in a couple of the blocks to (broken record alert) help the microwave vent up the back.

Last but not least was the side. For this I used another thin piece of plywood that I clamped on tight, cut to size, and then nailed in place.

After all that “fun” stuff, it was looking more like this:

Significantly more cabinet-like if I do say so myself. Especially once it all gets painted the same color with a door in the front and some shiny new hardware.

Then with the help of my lovely assistant (nope, not the one I pretended to cut in half earlier in this post) we hung this Frankstein’d cabinet in place.

Here’s a view of the top so you get a sense of the venting on both the back and side. I drilled some holes in the left side of the cabinet to take advantage of the gap between it and the pantry (the gap exists because the cabinet frame was wider on that side).

So with cabinet hung, we put the microwave in place and plugged it into the outlet that our electrician put in when he was here about a month ago (more on that here).

Of course it’ll look better once it has a door on it (and when it’s all painted) but even with the addition of some cookbooks and plates it’s starting to look more presentable. Even if just a little bit. 

Update: as for that little routed out area that will only be visible with the door open, many of our cabinets are less than gorgeous when they’re open (picture them stacked high with cookware, blenders, tupperware, and all sorts of other stuff!) so we’re of the “what happens in the cabinets, stays in the cabinets” mindset. If the doors are closed and the kitchen looks good, we’re happy!

This makes us all the more excited to take care of the door situation – which we’ll hopefully be posting about later this week. Until then, allow this terrible photoshopped rendering to demonstrate how the added door will hide the little routed our area for the microwave when it’s closed (it’ll be open whenever the microwave is in use, of course).

Oh and with this cabinet now hung next to the pantry it leaves us 14″ to the right of it (between the side of the cabinet and the window over the sink). And once the new 12″ deep floating shelves get hung on the oven wall of the kitchen there will also be exactly 14″ between the front of those floating shelves and the right of that window over the sink). So it won’t look crowded, and will actually be nice and balanced. Whew.

Getting the whole cut-down microwave cabinet thing done also makes us excited about our shrinking budget. Not only did we get $255 back for returning the jumbo microwave, we also sold our old over-the-range one on craigslist for $90 (which adds up to $345 back in the ol’ kitchen piggy bank). Plus, we craigslisted our old kitchen table & chairs for $120 and actually sold our old granite counters for $350! If my math is right, that’s $815 back in our pockets… well, it’s actually $731 after we take out $84 for the cost of the new microwave. Still, over seven hundred beans is definitely a welcome “kitchen refund” as we get to that hard “middle part” of the makeover that has us eager to reach some of the bigger changes that we’re slowly but surely inching towards.

No one wants those cabinets painted and the new backsplash hung more than we do, but we’re trying to be realistic about the timeline in here (we originally estimated that we’d be done sometime in January, which we still hope to accomplish). We don’t know how much we’ll have done for the holidays, but at the very least we’ll have our microwave concealed by the time company arrives (oh man, I first typed that as “by the time cabinets arrive” – clearly I’ve been spending too much time in the kitchen). And just to lay it out for anyone wondering what our next steps are, they’re a little unglamorous for a bit longer – and then they should get a lot more exciting:

• cut down all the doors for the cabinets that we added
• add window trim and build a window sill (we had to strip the window over the sink down here)
• add toe kick around all the cabinet bases to make things like the peninsula unified with the rest of the kitchen (we’ll hold off on adding shoe molding until after we do the cork floors later)
• remove all the cabinet doors (after making sure they hang straight and are fitted correctly) and wood putty and sand any gaps/cracks/old hardware holes, etc
• prime everything
• and then we get to paint – yeee haw! (we’re still torn between white and a soft tone like gray-beige, but we’ll share as soon as we’re sure!)

Continuing the list after that step gets us all clammy and overwhelmed, but a new lighting plan, cork floors, and backsplash tile with floating shelves and a built-in range hood are all on the agenda. One cabinet day at a time. What have you guys been doing in the kitchen? Demo? Holiday cooking? Painting? Microwaving?

And this year the theme was:

1. free stuff we already had (no getting in the car to go fetch anything, since we feared that would cost us another week to get things up)
2. nothing pointy/hard/breakable (for bean safety reasons)
3. color, color, color (just like our tabletop tree in the living room)

So yes, we gave our full-sized tree a whole new look (see what it looked like in 2010, 2009, 2008, and 2007 here) using stuff that we already had in the house, like a bunch of leftover paint chips from my bin.

Yes, I save old paint chips to reuse them for things like this art project…

… and this temporary postcard ledge arrangement (from our first house’s office)…

… and this year’s tree project:

First I cut them into strips (so I got 2-3 ornaments out of each leftover Benjamin Moore paint chip) and then used a hole puncher to make a hole…

  … which I then used to loop twine and string from my craft bin to hang them. I love that they’re like modern little colorful icicles that cover the tree. And of course the fact that they were all f-r-e-e didn’t hurt either.

The other main element of decoration on the tree is a few spools of ribbon from the gift wrapping closet (snagged on clearance from Michael’s last Christmas). We just unrolled them, found the center point and folded it over the top of the tree, so the same amount of ribbon dangled down each side of the tree in an upside-down V shape. Oh and the “tree skirt” is just three faux sheep skins from Ikea (they’re sort of a holiday tradition at this point).

I even had some leftover ribbon to make a little bow at the top. Aw, shucks. Our tree is definitely a gal this year.

Oh and you’ll probably notice two things from this picture…

1. We had yet to “catch up” with our advent calendar when we took these pics (the second we got the tree up we excitedly snapped these photos) – but Clara and I have since hung 12 advent ornaments on the tree – so we’re back to one a day from here on out.
2. We did some quick mantel decorating in the kitchen, let’s take a closer look:

I added some old feather trees on the floor (from Target, a few years back) along with two ceramic birds up on the mantel (like two white Christmas doves) from an estate sale a few years ago. I also added in the little thrift store rocking horse that I painted for Clara (more on that here). And of course I hung our stockings from Target a few years ago (backwards this year – just to spice it up)…

It might look like those three stockings mean that Burger didn’t get one… but of course he did! John and I actually share one (labeled “Mom and Dad”) and then there’s Clara’s stocking and Burger’s stocking:

I also stuck a basket full of gifts in the fireplace (actually they’re fakers, see how I made those here).

One of the most fun things about the new doorway between the kitchen and the dining room is that we can enjoy the tree from the kitchen too. See it peeking around the corner of the opening?

Never would have gotten to enjoy that view if the wall didn’t come down a little while ago. Yay, demo!

It’s so nice to see something festive in the dining room (the big tree), the kitchen (the holiday mantel), and the living room (our tabletop tree). Aw, Christmastime, how do I love thee. Let me count the trees, er, ways.

So that’s the inside of the house all decorated for ya. Well most of it (I still have a holiday frame gallery project to shoot and share with you guys). Oh yeah, and for the first time ever we decorated the outside of our house too! We’re talking lights and stars and even a homemade wreath and some bright red ceramic-looking reindeer. That’s right, we went all out. Pics to come as soon as we can snap them and write something up!

Psst- We’ll be back with a kitchen update tomorrow for ya! Lots of the stuff that we’re working on is extremely detail oriented (ex: cutting down an old cabinet to make a smaller one that “matches” the rest of the kitchen and houses a built-in microwave), but we’re moving just as fast as we can!

… mostly because we found ourselves staring at that mismatched unpainted paneling (shudder) and those ugly unpainted/stained/gross parts of the ceiling that were exposed when we removed the upper cabinets.

So what’d we do? Why we got a-paintin’ of course!

The paneling took two coats of primer and two coats of paint (just to be safe). And the ceiling took… well, more coats of primer and paint than I care to share (I lost count, actually – maybe five or six?). Since some of it was totally unpainted and other areas were stained, we just wanted to be extra sure it looked seamless with the rest of the ceiling when we were done. Thankfully, after lots o’ coats of Kilz CleanStart primer (it’s no-VOC) and the ceiling paint that the previous owners left us in the basement… it all matched in the end. Can I get a whew?

The effect was much improved kinda-sorta improved. I mean it’s still a very raw space. But once we get the new counters installed (we hope to share photos of that shebang tomorrow!), get molding back around the window, add some backsplash tile, redo the lighting, paint those cabinets, and lay our cork floors, things should look a lot more polished. So we’re happy to be inching ever so slowly towards the finish line.

The last thing we had to do before the whole counter installation was add those darn support brackets that we mentioned back in this pre-Thanksgiving post. Basically we learned from the counter template guy that any overhang over 10″ needed some support (our peninsula will have a 12″ overhang on two sides). We could’ve paid $300 to have the Corian reinforced, but the guy also mentioned a cheaper DIY option. It’s like he knew us.

So we bought six 10″ steel brackets in the hardware aisle at Lowe’s and Sherry did her favorite thing (enter spray paint, stage right). At $6 a piece it came to $36, which isn’t free, but sure beats 300 big ones.

Once they were dry I brought them in, along with some scrap pieces of wood that I cut into 12″ sections. The template guy said we shouldn’t just screw the (heavy) brackets into the cabinets alone, but instead should put some wood inside the cabinet to help them hold nice and strong by drilling into that thicker wood surface hidden behind the cabinet.

So after measuring and marking my cabinets to make sure the brackets would be evenly spaced, I loosely hammered my scrap wood in place on the other side of the cabinet (if this isn’t making sense now, it will by the end of the post… hopefully).

To screw them in, I used another scrap piece of wood to act as my temporary counter so I was sure to place them at the right height (to be sure they would carry the load of the overhang without being too high or too low). Then I secured the bracket with three screws.

Here’s how it was looking after I secured the first three brackets in place. Of course, once the counters arrive we’ll also screw them into the Corian from below (Corian has wood reinforcement stuff to screw into underneath it whenever it’s manufactured for an overhang).

And although once the counters are installed and the cabinets are all painted white the brackets will barely be visible, we’re still thinking that we’ll add some shaker-style panels to dress up the back (and side?) of the peninsula. That way those will add some detailing and also allow us to completely hide the brackets behind some panel trim (by routing out the back of it and laying it over the brackets to conceal them). Hopefully it’ll be a fun challenge. I’ll keep you posted on that when we get to that step.

So here’s the kitchen in its counter-ready state. Oh, perhaps you’ll notice that we also primed a stripe of the refrigerator surround right where it meets the counter:

We didn’t want to prime and paint the cabinets before our impending counter installation (when our granite counters got installed in our first house, the white cabinets required lots of touch ups due to tons of scraping and shoving to get the heavy, tight fitting counters in place). So we’d rather just cover the counters and paint stuff afterward. But we thought that little stripe of primer applied beforehand would make it easier to paint right up to the edge of the counters without leaving a sliver of wood peeking through (now if there’s a tiny gap between the paint and the counters, it’ll be white and not brown, so it should blend right in).

It’s looking somewhat like a kitchen, right? Oh but of course ignore the wood chairs (they’re not counter height or the right color so they’re just place-holders for now).

In keeping-it-real news, the kitchen is actually looking more like this:

Of course, as parents when we saw those exposed brackets our “Toddler Impalement Device!” alarms went off, but thanks to some leftover cabinet shelves, we fashioned a dummy counter to make the edges more visible to Clara (and her sometimes clumsy parents). Having the chairs there certainly helps too.

Maybe we should just cancel our Corian order and learn to love these?

Yeah, or not. So excited that our next update for you guys should be INSTALLED COUNTERS. Hopefully tomorrow morning. Woot!

Oh how joyfully we’ll use the sink (my have we missed it!). Merry Countermas to us! We actually have a working fridge, stove, and dishwasher so we’re still able to cook at home (thank goodness) but washing the not-dishwasher-safe-stuff in the bathroom sink/tub is annoying. Is there anything you guys are anxiously awaiting? Have you done any ceiling priming & painting lately? Did you lose count of the coats. Oh man, it feels good to be done, doesn’t it?

Psst- We’ve listed our old granite counters on craigslist for anyone who is interested. You can find more info on them here.

Bummer, right?

Well, we didn’t let ourselves wallow in that realization too long and dove right into reconstructing the kitchen. Actually, between demoing the tiles and the plywood we actually snuck out to The Tile Shop (in my sister’s borrowed SUV) to buy cement board so we’d have all of our supplies ready as soon as demo was done.

The cement board (1/4″ thick Permabase Ultrabacker to be exact) was about $10 per 3ft x 5ft sheet after the 10% discount code that they offer everyone (YHL10) and I bought four of ‘em. Actually, I bought eight of them because of some gross miscalculations on my part but only used four. So once our extra board returns were made it was about $40 spent. We knew we’d be using them along the entire back wall above the stove (that’s going to be our focal wall with tile to the ceiling, a big range hood, and open shelves) as well as wherever else our standard 18″ backsplash would go on the other walls of the kitchen. I started with the 18″ backsplash boards first since they were smaller and more manageable. They just required some careful measuring to ensure that I cut accurately around the window and for the outlet holes.

To make my cuts I used my jigsaw, since it was convenient and I was good at controlling it. I also wore a gas mask (not a paper one, a real deal rubber one with filters) to avoid ingesting any of the nasty dust that flew. Though I’m pretty sure I wasn’t using the right blade for that material though. It cut just fine, but by the end of the job my blade looked like this:

Notice all of the missing teeth in the middle? Cutting literally sanded them off. So yeah… lesson learned. Maybe I was supposed to use a diamond blade since cement board is so coarse? Either way, I was happy to get ‘er done.

Setting the cut boards in place was pretty easy. I was able to balance them along the old plywood under them (they were the same thickness, which was really handy for a seamless result). Then I just made sure they were level and drove some screws in all by myself while Sherry kept Clara out of the danger zone (aka: our tore-up-from-the-floor-up kitchen).

So once I was sure that all of my screws were adequately sunk into the cement board (pokey screw heads are bad for flush-laying tile) I continued on my merry way around the room. This wasn’t so bad, actually! Especially since I dreaded it so much because we didn’t exactly have a great time with the same process while rebuilding our first house’s bathroom. Maybe absence makes the heart grow fonder?

The thing that made my life much easier was the fact that the 5ft tall boards fit just about perfectly in my 5ft tall wall behind the stove. That meant I didn’t have to do any cutting on those boards (except for the outlet holes). So the ease of cutting made up for the extra difficulty of maneuvering a bigger, heavier board. Luckily Clara was napping by this point so I was able to enlist Sherry’s help to hold them in place while I drilled. It certainly made this part of the day go much faster.

Oh, and as for the dangling outlet up by the vent – it’ll eventually be used to hook up our future range hood. Since we’re not 100% sure how /where that’ll be hooked up we just placed it somewhere temporarily that could (hopefully) work . If not, at least the hole will be hidden behind the vent cover we’re eventually going to build (and there’s some play in the wiring that connects to that junction box so we’ll be able to move it if we need to).

If you look at the photo above you’ll see that our future range hood won’t be perfectly centered on that wall of tile, but it will be perfectly centered on that back wall of the kitchen (when you include the space next to the cement board over the doorway). So once we add our penny tile to the ceiling and install our open shelves and our built-in range hood, we think the way that we “accessorize” the floating shelves will also help restore balance. We plan to use them to house everyday dishes that we’ll use so often they don’t have a chance to get dusty along with other items that are always stored out in the open like vases, some art, a plant or two, etc (more on the whole dust/open shelves thing here).

But just because cement board was done, didn’t mean we were done with our walls. After all, we still had this going on above the sink and pantry:

We briefly talked about doing more tile to the ceiling on that wall, but thought that one focal wall with open shelves and a big range hood with tile to the ceiling would be enough. So we decided that a regular old wall with a standard 18″ backsplash will better balance the other side of the kitchen which will also have that going on next to the fridge. Oh and we also thought tile over the pantry would just be super weird, and that would be the natural stop point for a rectangular effect like the other wall, so we’re happy we bailed on that idea.

But the walls of the kitchen aren’t drywall. Nope, remember they’re painted paneling (which we actually don’t mind for the soft texture and coziness it adds once it’s painted – we had some in our first home’s den too). So we did the unthinkable…

… we actually purchased a sheet of paneling. And oy how it pained us. We’re pretty sure everyone at the checkout was thinking “welcome to 2011, why the heck are you buying paneling?!” Luckily we had one leftover piece of painted paneling leftover from the doorway opening project that we were able to reuse to the right of the window above where the backsplash will go. So I just had to buy one sheet at Lowe’s.

So yes, that was a first. Never in my life did I think I’d be BUYING new wood paneling. And thank goodness it’ll get painted any second now (along with that rough looking ceiling), so we didn’t have to worry about matching color.

Luckily that one 4ft x 8ft piece o’ paneling covered all of the areas that we needed. We had the guy at Lowe’s cut the pieces to size so (a) they’d fit in our Altima and (b) we didn’t have to do it ourselves. But I did buy a new jigsaw blade while I was there (so I could cut the hole for our microwave outlet).

Oh yeah, and notice our moment of laziness above? Since a small-ish upper cabinet will be covering that section of wall we didn’t go through the trouble of cutting out that piece of plywood (it would’ve meant moving the pantry, and it won’t be seen once we install the cabinet with added crown molding around the top anyway). Gotta love one wall-hanging shortcut along the way.

As for the cement board seams, we’ll be taping them and then using thinset over them to set the tiles, which should hold everything in place for the long haul per The Tile Shop’s recommendation. But wait, let’s go back to this picture of that wall head on:

You might be wondering about that oddly placed window (it’s not centered on that expanse right now) but once we add the small-ish upper cabinet to the right of the pantry there will be exactly 14″ of wall space between the side of that cabinet and the window trim. There will also be 14″ of wall space between the right side of the window trim and the 12″ floating shelves that will be hanging on the focal wall (they’ll jut out 12″ to house all of our big dishes and stuff, which is nice because the window will eventually look perfectly balanced with 14″ of wall space on either side).

Anyways, here’s what the kitchen was looking like when we were all done. Still not great, but definitely better. And not only do we love how the room feels without upper cabinets crowding us, it’s also nice to start to see what it’ll look like once the tile backsplash is installed. I wish I had taken a wider shot so you could see the paneling on the other side of the room with the 18″ backsplash that will go over there (next to the fridge) since it really feels nice and balanced with one wall of tile and two standard backsplashes on each of the other two side walls.

Oh, and since lots of folks asked on our last kitchen post – these are both interior walls (that window looks into to our heavily insulated sunroom, not the outdoors) which is why they weren’t insulated before and why we didn’t opt to add any insulation during this step of the process. We lived here through last winter (which was colder and snowier than most) and we knew that the sunroom didn’t get very cold, so thankfully the kitchen never feels drafty or uninsulated (in our experience, brick ranches are great about maintaining a comfortable temperature in general since they’re so solidly built and aren’t usually drafty).

As for the timeline, this whole destruction/reconstruction process took us two days (one for demo/buying cement board, one for installing the new walls) so overall it wasn’t that bad. Though I was pretty darn sore by the end of it all. Thankfully Sherry pointed out that our next step was paint touch ups, which aren’t too bad (ceilings are my least favorite surface to paint, but we don’t have much of it to deal with). We’re actually kind of excited to get that done because the room will hopefully look less Frankenstein than it’s looking now (mismatched appliances + mismatched cabinetry + mismatched paneling = ca-razy). But still better than the before that we started with:

What about you guys. Have you ever hung cement board or actually had to (gasp) buy paneling? Any ceiling painting on your agenda?

Pssst- We’re over on BabyCenter chatting about the birthday time capsule that we finally completed for Clara to open on her 18th birthday.

Psssst- We’ve listed our black above-the-range microwave on craigslist if anyone is interested (it’s only a year old, works great, and is still sold by Sears). Here’s the link.