The Twice Remembered Cottage

Cottage Kitchen Design Scheme

I know. Two posts in a day. I got the idea to make this design "scrapbook" page for our kitchen from Jessica at Westinmoreland House. Thanks, Jessica! It's helpful for me to see how all the pieces fit together and hopefully helpful to others who may be looking for resources. Keep in mind that colors on computer screens aren't really accurate (they are move vivid in reality), but you get an idea anyway. We officially have in our possession all our elements (and have ordered the ceiling planks and cabinet hardware)...it took us about a year to collect everything one piece at a time. Working on a budget! C'est la vie, eh?

Step by Step Cabinet Makeover / Hiding Undercabinet Lighting Illustration

Earlier I said I would give an indepth explanation on how we are going about transforming our plain (*yawn*) kitchen cabinets into ones with lots of cottage / farmhouse charm (plus how exactly how we are hiding the undercabinet lighting!). I know nothing about the electrical end of things - that's hubs area of expertise, but I can tell you about the rest...

Here's a rudimentary illustration that I put together to help you understand exactly what we are doing. I'm sure there are many ways to do this, but this is what we came up with. I've explained the illustration below...By the way, we got all of our trim pieces at Home Depot.

Important: If you want to add beadboard facing to the sides of your cabinet, make sure you do this first.

Step #1: Drill a small hole in the wall in the recessed area underneath the cabinets. These holes will accommodate the wiring, which leads to one switch (and can be put on a dimmer!)

Step #2: Measure and cut a thin, wood panel that is the same dimension as the bottom of the cabinet. In the center of the panel, cut a hole that will accommodate a recessed puck / disk light. Don't make this hole too large!

Step #3: Pull the wiring through the hole in the panel and then nail the panel to the bottom of the cabinet.

Step #4: At this point, you can attach your lights and insert them into the hole you cut in Step #2, but we decided to wait and do this after our cabinets were trimmed out and painted.

Step #5: Add stop moulding under the panel at the edges.

Step #6: Add decorative trim to the face of the cabinet right above the stop moulding to cover the panel.

Step #7: Add crown moulding to the top of the cabinet.

Step #8: Add decorative moulding below the crown moulding if desired.

Prime, sand, caulk, paint and enjoy! (In the future, I'll write another entry about the paint technique we're using...) If any of this doesn't make sense, please let me know and I'll be happy to answer your questions:)

Cabinet Crown Moulding Question - Corner Cabinet Angles

It took us a while to figure it out - those darned angled cuts - but we managed to get the crown moulding up on our first set of cabinets. *Note to self: Next time, buy more practice trim.* We have an L-shaped kitchen, though, and the next set of cabinets will prove to be more difficult. We'll have to figure out how to cut the pieces for the corner cabinet. Joy. Anyone have any tips before we blow our entire kitchen remodel budget on trim? Thanks! Here is the layout:

Cottage Style Cabinet Makeover Trim Work Begins, Undercabinet Lighting, & New Window Trim!

I have a moment to post a few photos of what we were busy working on this weekend. Hubs was a busy man! Though I started priming and painting the inside of the cabinets a couple of weeks ago, this weekend we finally began adding the beadboard and trim work to create our cottage style (or farm house style) kitchen cabinets. Before hubs began the trimwork, he did the hardwiring for the new undercabinet lighting. We're both pretty excited about that! The lights aren't in yet, but the wiring is there and when we finish painting under the cabinets, we'll install those.

We also added the kitchen window casing and trim and I'm thrilled with how it turned out! Before, there was only a sill and no casing (it was just drywall). This is the first window in our house that has real trim, lol! I can't tell you how much this trimwork has so far changed the look and feel of both the window and cabinetry, so I'll just show you instead! We still have to add the crown molding to the top of the cabinets and under that will be rope molding. We hope to get to that later this week, but I'll show you a few photos of what we've done so far...click on any photo to enlarge (There will be more before and after explanation pics later when we complete the cabinets)

Here's a photo of our sad, plain cabinets. I've already painted the inside of it and primed the outside.

This photo is a good shot of our window which was stripped of it's old sill. Also, you can see where we added the beadboard to the sides of the cabinets.

Yay! New window trim and sill! The new sill is six inches deep and now accomdates my sprawling ivy. See the new trim hubs added to the bottom of the cabinets?

A couple of closeup shots of the beadboard and trim...I think it's not only pretty, but it will help hide our undercabinet lighting. Of course, we still have to prime, caulk, and paint everything for a seamless look.

I think hubs did such a wonderful job, not just with the trim but with everything we've worked on in this house so far. With just about everything he's done, he's had no prior experience. He's picking up all these skills as we go along. Great job, hon!

First Kitchen Cabinet Painting Mistake & a Clean Garage!

I'm just glad we're painting the cabinets in small sections so it shouldn't take long to go back and fix our error. What happened?

Well, when I bought the red paint, I asked for a tinted primer that would closely match the paint. The lady behind the desk told me that that there wasn't enough room in the can of primer to add enough pigment to get it close to red, but that blue primer would work just as well because red would cover it easily. So I ended up going with blue primer. What I didn't take into account, however, is that we're going to be slightly distressing the panels of our cabinet doors by sanding the edges. When I tried a "test" distress on one of the three cabinet doors that we've worked on, the distressed edges revealed the BLUE primer. I had to sand really hard to get it down to the bare wood, but then the door was distressed more than what I had in mind.

What to do? Fortunately, we only have one coat of red paint on just three of the doors (and the blue primer underneath). My plan is to just go over the red with a coat of the creamy colored off-white paint that we're using on the inside of the cabinets (Homestead Resort Parlor Taupe it's called...it's like an antique white) Then we'll proceed with two or three coats of the red. After that, I'll carefully distress the edges to slightly reveal the off-white paint. Whew! And from here on out, I'm just using WHITE primer on the cabinets, lol. The blue (or any other color) would have been fine if I wasn't going to be "aging" the doors a bit.

Yesterday was a big work day for me here at home. After painting some cabinet shelving, I finally did something that I've been putting off for months and months: I cleaned out the scary garage. Actually, I don't think the garage has ever been completely cleaned out since we moved here 2 1/2 years ago. But it absolutely *had* to be done yesterday and not a day later. When we picked up our boxes of wood flooring on Tuesday, we barely had enough room to stack them at the front of the garage near the doors. The front of the garage was not a good place to keep them because sometimes when it rains really, really hard, water from the driveway seeps under the garage doors. Not a lot, mind you, but if anything is sitting a foot or two from the doors, it may get wet. And our new flooring was stacked a foot from the door...SOOOOO...this is why it was so important to clean out the garage yesterday - we needed to make room for the flooring to be stacked near the back.

It took my about 7 or 8 hours to put things back in order. Not bad! I got rid of tons of stuff, organized hub's tools and supplies, and swept. Now we have a huge workspace when the weather is too wet or cold outside! Why didn't we do this months ago?

We didn't move the boxes of wood flooring...at first. I told hubs we could just move it Friday evening. We knew it was suppose to rain within the next couple of days but we weren't expecting it so soon. At midnight - just a few hours after I declared the garage "clean", it started pouring down rain. At 12:30, I checked the garage doors and sure enough, a little water was starting to make it's way in. I didn't want to take any chances with the flooring, so I woke hubs up and he came out and moved all 32 boxes. I am so glad that I cleaned out the garage when I did or else we would have been in trouble, lol. Talk about good timing!

This weekend, I hope to add the beadboard to the sides of the kitchen cabinets. I'd also like to get some trim around a window or two. We'll just have to see what hubs decides to work on. We're adding hardwired undercabinet lighting, so he may decide to play with electricity tomorrow instead. We shall see!

Why I Want Red Cabinets

Yesterday was a big work day here at home...will post about it later:) *yawn* Until then, here are a couple of photos I put together just because. The roses are from my grandmothers funeral last week - they are going to make a beautiful dried arrangement to remember her by:) The last photo shows how our dining room table so easily and willingly multi-tasks. We love you, dining room table. Thanks for putting up with us.

Bought our Hardwood Flooring!

That's the big news...floors, finally! We ended up going with Home Depot's Bruce strip (2 1/4 inches wide, I think), solid (3/4 inch thick!) and prefinished red oak/white oak hardwood. They were having a sale, just $2.99 a square foot! The color is beautiful...it's called "Marsh" and it's a warmer, slightly redder version of Gunstock. I really had my heart set on hand hewn, wide plank - which was only $1 per square foot more at an out of state company, but we're really having to make the most of our budget and we had to take into consideration all the trim pieces we needed, too, which add up quickly. Plus, I liked the fact that if we need more for some reason, we can just go get it. No shipping fees! The photo to the left is a close match to the color and style. We won't be installing the flooring until after the majority of the "dirty work" is done here (we have a hallway ceiling to raise and a lot more painting to do!). Until then, I can just open up a box and stair at our shiny new floors:)

We also picked up what we needed to trim out the living room, kitchen, and dining room windows. I chose six inch wide trim for the dining and living room, but there's only room for 3 inch wide trim for the little kitchen window above the sink. The sills will be six inches deep. I bought a gallon of primer so I can work on prepping them. The trim work will be simple - no 45 degree cuts - just straight lines as shown to the right. I don't know if I'm more excited about the floors or the trimwork, lol! We have *none* now around the windows ('cept maybe a puny sill here and there) so the windows should look completely different when we're finished.

Kitchen cabinet work is going, slowly but surely. (We totally lazed out this weekend...see my Notes from Home...) We're putting in an order this week for the cabinet hardware - Thanks *so much* to Kelli for helping me find these beautiful and affordable handles ! The finish is oil rubbed bronze and I just think they look old-fashioned and pretty. The handles alone make me feel motivated to finish our cabinets!

I guess I'm caught up with the updating...if you don't hear from me for a while, just know that I'm slaving away on the kitchen, lol!

A Little Cabinet Update & Notes from the Heart

Just a note to say we are chipping away at our cabinet project. We've finished the inside of two cabinets and have another coat of red to put on the shelves. I cleaned and sanded the corner cabinet in order to start painting it today. Wow, it's amazing how much gunk comes off a surface when you use degreaser. I thought my cabinets were clean, but I was wrong!

Yesterday Zoe and I did a little Goodwill hunting and found a few treasures. I found a few earthy baskets to add to my growing little collection, a giant wreath, a cool frame, and a sweet little urn/vase. I'll try to take some photos soon.

There is a thread going on at the Cottage Living forums about what we are least proud of concerning our home decorating/renovating. It's been a depressing last couple of weeks, thus very easy for me to focus on the negative. Here's what I wrote:

I have been *so* depressed over the state of my totally undone home. I was out of town this weekend and stayed with family and while there, I was just in total awe and envy being in a completely put together, nice, clean home. Everything there so neat and organized...and did I mention clean????

Here, we are pretty much living on a construction site. We remudded the walls in the living room and kitchen and we're still trying to get the drywall dust off the surface of everything. Our kitchen floor is old beat up and scuffed up linoleum. We will be ordering hardwood floors within the month, so we're not going all out to clean up every paint drip and drywall mud plop. Have I mentioned that we ripped out our living room/hallway carpet last spring? I was having major allergy problems and it just had do go. Good thing - I don't even want to think about all the dust that would have settled into it. Even so, we've been living with painted plywood floors (painted to seal them so the kidlets wouldn't get splinters). Black,of all colors (it was cheap oops paint). Like our old linoleum, it has tons of paint splatters, too, and just looks dirty. We have a corgi and beagle who are constantly shedding - and the hair really shows up on the black plywood - and I sweep everyday. Even though we're ordering floors soon, that doesn't mean we're putting them down soon. Hubs wants to get the major painting projects finished before we put down our flooring.

Hmm, should I continue, lol?! Our bathroom is completely gutted now save for the tub, (thank goodness for the tub!). We want to get our living room and kitchen wrapped up before putting the bathroom back together. It feels so icky being in there...no drywall, one lonely light, plywood flooring, plastic sheets protecting the yet to be tilled tub surround...*sigh* We had to move the bathroom door down 10 inches to keep it from hitting the toilet in it's new location, which means that we have more drywall work to do in the hallway, too.

Apparently, the way this house was built, the only thing keeping the door casings in place is the trim around the door. We're replacing ALL the trimwork in the house (it was built nearly 30 years ago with cheapy trim). We took much of the trim off most of the doors when we mudded the walls. Last night, our coat closet door and part of the casing literally just came crashing down out of place due to the lack of trim around it (now revealing all the clutter within). *Ack!* A far cry from the nice, peaceful, SAFE home that I stayed at while out of town this weekend.

There is so much left to do in this whole house remodel and sometimes it's so hard for me to focus on what we have accomplished. I'm terrified that someone will stop by just to visit, lol. I know exactly where I'm headed with this renovation and what it will look like when it's complete , it's just a tough getting there!

Let me add to that that my little girls have the most boring, unimaginative bedrooms ever. Beds and dressers. Since we'll be replacing trim and remudding the walls in those rooms, too (and because we're so busy with the rest of the house), I've put off doing anything nice. We truly do have a long road ahead of us here. I wish I could snap my fingers and it would all be done but I know that's just crazy talk. One thing that keeps me going is knowing that the longer that I whine and lament over being in the middle of this tedious remodel, the longer it will take to complete it. It also helps to know that every little bit of work that we do here (however slow the progress) is important and is one step closer to the final result.

What is important is that my kids are healthy and happy and seem to be pretty much unaffected by all the chaos and general state of ickiness our house is in right now. When I was growing up, my parents did a major remodel which I'm sure took many months (funny I don't remember how long it took). I do remember at some point having to wash dishes in a plastic bin on the floor because the new cabinets and sink was not yet installed. But that's about all I remember. Makes me wonder how much my girls will remember about this remodel????

Months ago, I promised the girls an End of the School Year party this summer. Looks like we may be looking for an alternate location, lol. There's a new park in town...maybe there?

Well, I better find an activity for the ZoeMiester to work on while I start painting again. Love to all:)

It's All in the Details - Wallpaper for Shelf Liner

As you may have noticed, I've been missing in action for the last week or so. My grandmother passed away on Monday, January 31, and I've been at the hospital, out of town visiting with family, and attending the funeral. It's been a tough road for my aunts these last few months as they cared for my grandmother, who was battling lung cancer. Needless to say, it was a very emotional week for the whole family.

Here at the house, we've started the kitchen cabinet makeover. We're having to work on one or two cabinets at a time because of lack of space to store the cabinet contents and to work on all the doors. It's slow going to say the least. Degreasing. Sanding. Priming. Three coats of paint, inside and out. Last week I managed to prime the inside of one cabinet and get two coats of paint on. Imagine my surprise when I woke up from a nap to find that hubs had painted the third coat "Ultra (bright) White" instead of bisque. Eek! Oh, well, four (maybe five)coats of paint won't hurt:)

I'm painting the inside of the cabinets a warm bisque color and the outside "Cherry" red. The shelves on the inside of the cabinets are also being painted red. I decided that instead of putting down the ugly old rubber shelf liner,I would really try to personalize our cabinets and make them look "cottage sweet" inside and out. So I went to Lowe's last night to look through their washable wallpaper. I did find a couple of rolls that were "ok", but I didn't want to settle. I spent a great deal of time searching through their special order wallpaper books for just the right "shelf paper". I saw several that I really liked and it was a tough decision, but finally, I ordered a roll from the Waverly "French Accents" Collection (above,left). My cottage style doesn't scream French, but neither does the wallpaper I selected. It's kind of old fashioned yet simple and fancy at the same time. The photo shown is actually darker than the actual paper - it is much lighter and less "beige" and more of a creamy white and "cherry" red in person. I've been throwing around the idea of actually wallpapering the back of the inside of the cabinets with a small red and bisque ticking pattern. The sample to the right is closer to the colors in the above print, btw. I can always go back and do this later after all the other design elements are in place. Another idea is to place wallpaper inside the recess on the back of the cabinet door, if there is a recess, that is. You can apply the paper to a stiff piece of thin cardboard the exact size of the recess, and then just pop it into place...use velcro if you don't want to do anything permanant. It's just an easy and fun way to add cottage style to your cabinets. I would just make sure that your paper selections coordinate nicely with each other and with the rest of the room.

About the outside of the cabinets, on the ends, we're adding beadboard and then will be adding crown moulding to the top. I also hope to add some rope moulding underneath crown, if there is room for it. It will all be painted out red and then slightly sanded for a distressed look.

It may be a while before you see photos because I'd like to first get it all completed. But I will for sure keep you updated with the progress:) I can't wait until this project is behind us!