New "Before" Pictures Unearthed

I have a shortage of pics of the house in it's pristine "before" state, but I did find a couple hidden away in an obscure folder on my laptop. This is the dining room after the new light fixture was installed, but nothing else had been done at this point.

Here's a view of the original "wet wall". As in the dining room, I had already installed new overhead lights before I took the picture. Those wall cabinets were the only two original cabinets. I tried saving them so I could donate them to The Rebuilding Center, but they were built into the house and had to be destroyed in order to get them out. The blue paint in the back of the cabinet is actually the plaster wall; there was no back to the cabinets.

Here's a view in the opposite direction. The Big Chill refrigerator was the first thing we bought when we moved into the house. It set the tone for the remodel we knew was on the way. I can't believe I actually considered keeping that awful beadboard.

Doorbell Finally Mounted

I bought this really cool art-deco doorbell at Rejuvenation's attic sale 2 or 3 years ago and I've been (im)patiently waiting to put it up in the finished kitchen. Well, I finally got around to it. Now it'll probably be another two years before I hook up the button.

Here's another shot of the finished cabinets, now with decorative fake plants for that finishing touch!

Crown Moulding Finished!

Yipee!! The crown moulding in the kitchen is finally done! In fact, 99.9% of all the visible parts of the kitchen are done. Only the vintage stove is left to get refurbished and installed. Other non-visible things left to do are hooking up the fan and electrical for the vent hood and one light switch. The end is in sight!!!

Lesson Learned: Crown Moulding

I found out the hard way that priming the crown moulding after it is installed is waaay more difficult than priming before it is installed. Luckily, I only got around to installing 2 pieces before the cabinets went up, so I got all of the other pieces primed and painted last weekend while I enjoyed yet another beautiful weekend. (Am I still in Portland?)

Now I'm off to fill nail holes, sand, and prime again. All over my head. Ugh.

Finishing Back Door

I started by sanding the back door and taping each pane of glass.

It's amazing how much time you'll spend taping if you know you're going to put your work up on the internet for the world to see!

Finished! I figure I've got about 14 hours of work into this door. Ugh! But the finished product looks pretty good, so it was worth it. (Notice my new crystal doorknob from Rejuvenation.)

Splinter Repair

Did you know that SuperGlue (a.k.a. cyanoacrylate) works great on wood? I'm going to show you how I used it to repair a splinter in my moulding.

OOPS! When I nailed the lintel to the cap moulding, I didn't have it straight and on the last blow from the hammer it caused a splinter on the face of the moulding.

After I applied a liberal amount of glue to the splinter, I clamped it with firm pressure and let it sit for several hours.

Here you see the repair after the clamp is removed and the spot is sanded.

And here's the finished product. There's no sign of the boo-boo anywhere.

Marmoleum Installation: Part 3

I finally finished putting the shoe moulding around all the cabinets and the reducing moulding between the kitchen and the hardwood in the dining room.

This is the base moulding behind the refrigerator, primed, filled, and ready for paint.

Here's a nice shot of the cast iron toe-kick vent I got from Signature Hardware. Pity nobody will ever notice it.

These are all of the tools I used to install the Marmoleum, plus my power miter saw that's not in the picture. I used my 12" miter saw to make all of the full-length cuts, which required me to cut most of the way through, then rotate the piece 180-degrees and finish the cut. A table saw would have been preferable, but I don't have one.

The hack saw was very handy for cutting small notches when needed.

The big black bar is absolutely necessary. Don't even thing about installing this kind of flooring without one. You can use a piece of wood as a tapping block when laying the tiles in the middle of the floor, but when you get to the cut pieces around the perimeter of the room there is no way to tap the pieces into place without the bar. Go to your local big box and spend the $10 if you don't already have one.

Something Finished

I know it's not much, but with careful camera placement I was able to capture a shot that shows only finished surfaces.

And one with our cool retro phone. Stay tuned for more...

Door and Base Trim Get Started

Today I started working on the door casings and the few spots in the kitchen that will need base trim.

This is the corner between the door opening and the cabinets that needs about 12" of base trim. You can see that I've left the required 3/8" gap between the Marmoleum tiles and the wall. Here's a tip: when you're doing the drywall, don't think to yourself "Oh, the bottom few inches don't need to be perfect, it'll get covered by the base trim anyway." It needs to be perfect, otherwise your trim won't sit right and you'll have ugly gaps. I spent a few minutes with a rasp getting the bottom 6" perfect.

Here is the trim mocked-up. I'm using 8" douglas fir base moulding and a simple profile on the cap moulding that matches the door and window lentils and goes well with the cabinet crown moulding. I applied 2 coats of primer before making any cuts to the raw lumber. Now that the cutting is done, I'll apply the first finish coat, install, fill gaps and nail holes, and the apply the final finish coat. Notice how I rounded the end of the white shoe moulding to give it a nice finished end. I also beveled the ends of the 8" boards where they meet the cabinets and the door casing because they stuck out about 1/16". I think the bevels will look OK once they're painted.

Here's a look at how I assembled the doorway head casing before installing. I cut the head casing to be 1/4" wider than the installed side casings, and the parting bead to be 1" wider. When installed the bead will overhang the side casings by 1/2" on each side and the head casing will be 1/8" wider on each side. This assembly will get its first finish coat prior to being installed.

Kitchen Window Progress

I need to keep reminding myself that just because I haven't finished a project doesn't mean I can't post an update. So here's an update on my almost completed kitchen windows.

I have all of the trim in place and it even has the first topcoat of paint. Nail holes are filled and gaps are caulked. All that's left is to sand the wood filler and apply the final topcoat.

I ran into one small snag while installing the head casing. Unfortunately, the windows weren't quite centered on the wall. They are offset by about 1" to the left of center. This meant the lentil for the windows needed to be trimmed asymmetrically. The pictures show how each side mates with the cabinet crown moulding.

To trim the left end of the lentil I made a paper template by tracing the pre-assembled head casing onto regular typing paper. I then put the template in place and cut the paper to an exact fit. Then I put the paper back on the head casing assembly and marked where to cut. I was hoping for a nice snug fit, but my hand-sawing skills are a bit lacking, so I had to fill the gap with caulking. (Please don't tell anyone!)

Spring Bronze Weatherstripping

I decided to go old-school and install "spring bronze" weatherstripping. If you've never heard of it you're not alone. The only place in town I could find it was Wink's Hardware (which, bye the way, you must check out if you live in Portland). It's basically a thin strip of bronze that you nail every 1-1/2" into the sash channels on the sides, top, and bottom.



After a little trial and error I found the best way to install it is to cut a piece to length, mark every 1-1/2" with a Sharpie, and then tack it in place using only the two end nails. Don't nail them in all the way at this point.

Decide at which end you're going to start and nail that one in all the way. Then start adding nails one at a time moving down the line. Since you only tacked the last nail in place, you can pull it out and re-position it if you start getting extra length in the strip as you add nails.

Before I installed the spring bronze my windows were sloppy and drafty. With the weatherstripping in place not only will it eliminate the draftiness, but the windows don't rattle when opened and they have a more finished feel to them.

Window Progress

I spent every free minute of the weekend working on the kitchen windows and I'm still only half way done. I'm starting to see why people just paint them shut! Properly prepping and painting these old double hung windows is very time consuming and really tests one's desire to do a good job. Bear in mind that the first step in this kitchen remodel was to have these "restored". The restoration process only gets them back into original working order; I still have to paint them myself. Oh well, it will all be worth it when they're done.


Of course I couldn't just paint the inside. I had to go ahead and take the sashes out so I could prime the outsides as well. This is where the restoration really paid off; they were very easy to disassemble. I'm also going to install some bronze weatherstripping as well. I'll do a write-up on that later this week.

Finally, more progress

I started painting the kitchen window trim tonight, just in time for a freakish thunderstorm! For those of you not familiar with Portland weather, we're lucky to get 2 good thunderstorms a year.


Anyway, I sanded the uncut lengths of wood for the lentil, head casing, parting bead, and the side casings and then used a brush to prime them. I used floetrol to help eliminate brush marks (as well as a good quality brush) and so far I am happy with the results. I still need to sand the primer coat and then apply one or two finish coats before I know how well the trim will turn out.

Marmoleum Installation: Part 2

I got the bulk of the work done on the flooring. I thought it was going to take forever to do all the cut pieces around the perimeter of the room, but once I got in the zone it went pretty quickly. I still need to do all of the base shoe moulding and some of the perimeter pieces that are not visible in this picture.

I'll post a final message about the floor once it's 100% complete.

Marmoleum Installation: Part 1

I figured since I had the day off for the 4th, I may as well start installing the Marmoleum-Click tiles for the kitchen floor. I will use this post mainly to describe the layout process. I'll add a second part when the floor is done.

Step 1: Choosing your First Focal Point

When installing tile on the floor, whether it is ceramic, porcelain, or in this case Marmoleum, you need to plan the layout so the finished product looks nice. This especially true with a strong pattern like the checkerboard we have going in our kitchen.

For a typical square room, you should have two focal points; one for each dimension of the room (length and width). For our kitchen, the first and most important is the main entrance from the dining room. It is a 36" wide pass-through. If I had not considered this as a focal point, I would have started laying tiles against the cabinets on either the left or right side of the doorway, which would have left the pattern off-center in the doorway. That would not be nice to look at every time I walked into the kitchen!

Once I determined this would be my first focal point, I simply marked the center of the doorway on the floor. Since I am running full tiles down the middle (instead of having a seam in the middle), I measured a half-tile's width to one side and marked that as my reference seam. I setup my laser level on a tripod to mark this line.

Step 2: Choosing your Second Focal Point

Now that I chose the first focal point, I could have just started running full tiles centered in the doorway, but that would leave an off-center pattern somewhere else in the kitchen, in this case the sink. That means the next step is to find the center of the sink base. Since I centered a full tile in the doorway (instead of a seam), I also chose to center a full tile on the sink. I marke the center of the sink, and then placed a tile on the laser reference line from Step 1. The full sized light colored tile centered on the sink was the first to be laid. I then measured for the cut tile that goes behind it (leaving 3/8" gap per instructions). Starting at the center and the working my way back to the doorway will leave cut tiles at either end of the row.

Here you see me working my way from the center of the sink toward the door.

Cabinet Lighting is Done

The only thing that I accomplished this weekend was to finish the cabinet lighting. Home Depot provided the puck lighting for the underside, as well as the rope lighting on the topside. I hooked them all to the same switch.



OK, I guess I'm not 100% finished yet, because I still need to mount the retaining clips for the rope lights and I still need to buy and mount one more puck light under the little 9" cabinet to the right of the stove. But that'll just have to wait!

Cabinet Glass: Check!

And one more thing gets crossed off the list.

The good people at Cline Glass got us setup with some "seedy" glass for our new cabinets. They have literally hundreds of types of glass to choose from. I just gave them my measurements and they had the cut pieces ready by the end of the day. They also happen to be located directly across the street from Rejuvenation House Parts. Ya' can't beat that!

The cabinets came "prepped for glass", meaning the doors were rabbeted for the glass and retaining clips were provided. The retaining clips didn't quite touch the glass that I chose (thicker glass would have been fine), so to keep the glass from rattling I ran a bead of clear silicone around the perimeter before securing with the clips.

Cabinet Hardware is installed

Choosing the cabinet knobs and drawer pulls was the most difficult decision we made in this whole poject. It was tough finding something that tied together the original bungalow style with the modern elements in the kitchen. We ultimately decided on Belwith-Keeler's Bungalow Satin collection.

The knobs are the 1-3/4" long (P2151-SN) and the pulls are drilled for both 3" and 96mm centers (P2153-SN). Many of the online cabinet hardware stores carry Belwith-Keeler, but I picked mine up at my local Lowes for about the same price as the online stores charge after shipping and handling.

The hardware is of good quality and has properly finshed surfaces not only on the outer faces for appearance, but on the inner faces for comfort while you are pulling on them. The rectangular knobs even have two little points cast into them that grab the wood to prevent the installed knob from turning. This is a big help since the rectangular shape of the knobs really accentuates any misalignment.

I Found a Treasure Map!

It's good to know that whoever remodeled this house some 25 years ago had a good sense of humor. Checkout the messages I found behind the wallpaper.

This one says: "The money is hidden behind the third row of bricks in the north wall of the fireplace."

Right next to that was the following latin text: "Ad tempus homo est nihil pindar 81 AD" Anyone speak latin?

Kitchen: The Rebirth

Well, I finally made it over the hump! All of the old stuff is gone and most of the major new things are in or on the way.

You can see that my youngest daughter is quite happy to have a kitchen again! The new Medallion cabinets are installed as well as the hex tile countertops and subway tile backsplash. We chose the Medallion Sonoma cabinets in cherry, with the Chestnut finish. I even got to practice my finish carpentry skills by making a new window stool.

This is a view of what used to be the original utility chimney and a ratty old pantry with a heating duct running through it. I removed both, pushed the wall back 18" and added L-shaped cabinets and counters. I now have 2 ducts running through the new wall up to the top floor.

The refrigerator is a Big Chill unit that we absolutely love!

This is the main view into the kitchen from the dining room. It's getting pretty close to done, but I still need to install the new door and window casings and finish the crown moulding. All of the trim will be painted white. The cheapo electric range will be replaced with a vintage O'Keefe & Merritt 36" range. The range hood is a Vent-a-Hood 9" high Excalibur model.