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craftlady07_gw

Introducing myself (full kitchen renovation planned) LONG

craftlady07
13 years ago

Hi all, I wanted to take a minute and introduce myself as you might see me around here a lot over the next few months.

Background: I've been a member of the gardenweb forums for years now, but have mostly only been on the gardening side. I've seen the "Read this first" post and read through most of it, I've checked out the FKB (Excellent resources, thanks!) and browsed some of the more recent posts. My Dh and I will be starting a complete gut of our existing kitchen in the very near future. (I'll try to post pictures this weekend when I'm at home). We're both 31 years old, no kids but we have a 3 month old puppy. We've lived in our house for 3 years and this very well may be our forever home, but in any case we're going to be here for quite some time so we're not worried about resale value or anything like that. The house is nearly 80 years old.

The Story: (This may be TMI without pictures, but I figured it couldn't hurt). We will be removing a load bearing wall and installing an engineered beam to open up the space between the kitchen and a narrow enclosed "sun porch" for lack of a better word. By opening up that space I will have a 10'+/- wall of South facing windows into the back yard. The kitchen table will be in this area. The sink/dishwasher/main row of cabinets will be on the East wall (sink centered on a window) and the cabinets will wrap around to the north wall of the kitchen where the stove with an above the range microwave will be. We will be reusing a 24" butcherblock counter top to the left of the stove and the right of the doorway. The West facing wall is where the refrigerator will be centered surrounded by a pantry (built in, not walk-in/closet type). One side will be a coat closet as it is next to the back door and we have no mud room, and the other will be a pantry. We're going to be removing all of the plaster walls and insulating and installing drywall. The windows will all be replaced with new construction windows, not replacement windows and the corner chimney will be removed since we're getting a new boiler. We'll be installing radient floor heating and we have propane for the range.

Some thoughts/planning so far:

- We have been designing the kitchen in our heads since we moved in, but now we're serious about it. We just started checking out cabinet places, researching appliances, pricing out some options, etc.

- My/our style is country/farmhouse/traditional. I'm not a modern kitchen person at all (just not my style). But I do like stainless steel appliances. That's not a complete contradiction, is it? :)

- I am definitely getting a farmhouse sink, I just don't know what one yet (recommendations?)

- We live in a prime Slate Belt area (primarily blue slate) would love to have a locally quarried slate floor - any advice/recommendations?

- We're thinking of some sort of maple cabinet but no idea about color. We're keeping the original molding around the doorways/windows and it'll be very difficult to match as all of the existing woodwork is various shades of what I would call medium dark stain with a redish hue. I don't like super dark or super light cabinets and I don't want them to be too golden yellow. I think it's better to pick a complimentary shade of stain vs trying to match the exsting wood work. Does anyone have any pictures of a similar situation?

- The ceiling in the kitchen portion is higher then it will be in the "sun porch area" by about 12". This is unavoidable. Does anyone have any pictures of a similar look?

- We don't like the look of laminate or corian countertops. We'd like a natural stone and it seems as though granite is cheaper then some of the other options out there. Do you think this is true, or am I way off base? I'd like to stick with a product that is domestic. I'm also struggling with picking a lighter or darker counter. The wall of windows is going to let in a lot of natural light. Assuming the floor is dark and the base and upper cabinets are some medium shade of maple, I'm leaning towards a medium/dark counter and a painted beadboard backsplash. That's just some food for thought.

- We're doing the work ourselves with the help of DH's friends and our families. Almsot everyone that will be helping us has worked on complete kitchen remodels (including DH) so I have no fear that they don't know what they're doing. I just need to keep plenty of beer around to keep them motivated.

- As luck would have it, there's a home show this weekend that we will be attending and picking up all sort of good information.

Thanks for reading!! I'll be back with "before" pictures soon!

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