Stairs into kitchen
I’ve talked about my kitchen stairs before but we pulled down the ugly old banister when we re-did the floors so I’ve really started trying to figure out what we’re going to do.
I’m pretty set on wood treads, wood railing, and white spindles. Something like this from Better Homes and Gardens
There is a deep shelf that reaches under those stairs from the basement. It’s the perfect litter-box perch. It’s about waist high from the stair landing for easy clean-up and is out of the way for guests, smells, etc.
You can see the back of the plaster and lath from the kitchen side now that that wall has been removed.
We are going to do wainscoting around the kitchen so that will cover the side of the staircase. I would like to have a little cat-door peaking out from under the staircase to allow kitty access to the litter-box. My initial idea was to put a cat door in the basement door but I don’t love the idea of cutting into my doors. A little cat-door in the wall next to the stairs is perfect.
I have a couple ideas.
I love the idea of a cat-shaped hole but I don’t think I want a hole that large though it would be very cute. Here is a smaller cat-silhouette.
I could also just paint a cat silhouette on the wall and have a smaller hole in it.
There is also a small triangle of space under those stairs that isn’t being used. It is a dead space that hasn’t been cleaned in 100 years and is a bit of a mess. I’ll have Stefan clean that out and then I can either wall it up for another 100 years or I can do something functional. I love this concept:
There is also the stair treads themselves.
I’m not sure how much these would be used though. Also, what would I put in them? Canned goods come to mind as does shoes/scarves/gloves etc. They would also make good kid storage areas for toys etc. I really just think they are super cool but I’m not sure if it’s genuinely worth the effort. Part of me thinks that while we are replacing the treads, we might as well and part of me things it’s just a silly love of secret compartments.
What do you think? Cat passage and stair storage? Any other great ideas.
Sarah
Kitchen Floor Extravaganza
This weekend, we managed to install the entire kitchen floor. That’s over 250 square feet of 2 1/4″ flooring. It took us about 18 hours total. Not bad considering we had never done it before. We borrowed Stefan’s family’s floor nailer. Stefan has 2 old brothers (10 and 12 years older) and between the two of them and Stefan’s father, they have quite the collection of tools.
We bought the floor from Lowes. It is Bruce Maple Cappuccino in 2 1/4″.
$73.60 per case. We purchased 15 cases but we used just over 13 of them. We will be adding a a pantry at some point so we’ll use the remainder of the flooring on that. I love the floors. I had to navigate to this website to select some of the best fits for the floor we had. It looks just like the picture. Lots of variation. Dark but not too dark. Most of the boards were strait enough though we did have a few problem boards. Lots of length variation but heavy on the longer lengths which was really nice. Definitely a high quality product at a good price.
We started on the far wall. It made the most sense to start there because of the layout of the room. If we started anywhere else we would have had to lay flooring backwards at some point and you can’t really lay tongue and groove flooring backwards.
The dotted line is the stairs. We recently removed the ugly wall banister and the whole room has really opened up.
We started on that far wall and worked our way across. It took most of friday afternoon just to get the room cleaned and prepped. Here I am doing some final nail removal.
The first 2 rows of flooring have to be top nailed. There isn’t room for the floor nailer to work properly. After that, we use the floor nailer.
This great tool is an air-assisted tool. You use a specialized hammer to hit the tool and the nail is air assisted into the board. It makes for a quick and easy job. The tool has a special groove that sets on the tongue of the board and aligns the nail. Technically, you can use a finish nailer and manually align the nailer to the nail groove but we did that on a couple rows where the floor nailer didn’t fit and let me tell you, not fun. A couple downsides to the floor nailer though, at the end of the room, when you are flooring towards a wall, you have to stop using the nailer fairly early. You need hammer swinging room or you will put holes in your walls…which we did…a couple times.
Here is a good picture showing proper use of the floor nailer. I was having a little too much fun with motion shots.
Occassionally, a nail won’t seat properly or the hammer will slip and not drop quite enough force on the tool. In those cases you can either use a nail set to set the nail, use a crow bar to try to remove the nail, or use a trusty dremel to cut the nail off.
Watch out, it sparks!
It was a great two person job. I laid out the rows while Stefan used the nailer. It was much faster to lay out the rows and cut the ends than to nail so I also helped speed up the process by setting each board into place. That involved some gentle hammering on the ends to get each board properly seated before Stefan came by with the nailer.
After we were done, we swiffered the whole thing and laid down ram board which is a thick cardboard floor protector that you can find at Home Depot and the like. It is heavy-duty and kind of pricey but it works great.
There is so much dirt and debris in the rest of the house that tracking dirt around is inevitable. I’d just prefer it didn’t end up ground into our nice new floor hence, the ram board.
We also set that disgusting old stove on the cardboard form a flooring carton along with the shop vac and trash can. Watch out for those shop-vacs on new floors. After rolling around in the dirt for a month, the wheels do a number on hardwood. We keep it on the cardboard for now.
And TA-DA, a new floor. It’s so exciting to see a plan start to come together.
It still hardly looks like a kitchen but a little TLC and we’re going to have it looking good. Stay tuned! Next week: Project Back Deck part 2!
Sarah
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I love it.
Washer-Dryer Options
I am so torn about my washer/dryer. I am putting the washer/dryer in the master closet. It is on the 2nd floor so I’d like it to be fairly stable and not vibrate too much. I’m not too worried about noise. It will be on the other end of the house from the Den and the Master Bedroom so I think it’ll be ok if it’s a little noisy.
Water is very expensive in the Boston area so High Efficiency Washers make sense. I’m not the hugest fan of front-loading. I find it to be much less ergonomic to get into the washer with it being so low to the ground. Then again, the ability to stack is very nice. That would give me room for a folding surface next to the washer/dryer stack. Then again, The top of the dryer is already a great folding surface.
The laundry area in the closet is in a corner to the left of a window. There is just enough room to put a washer/dryer set side-by side. I also then have the option to put cabinets above the washer dryer. If I get front loaders, I can put a surface above both of them though. Great folding surface and such a chic built-in look.
The top-loader can look chic and practical as well:
I’ve narrowed it down to a couple options.
The first is the low-end, cheapest washer/dryer set I cam buy. Amana from Home Depot. The Set with a gas dryer is $878. Still pricey.
One would think I’d be able to get them on Craigslist but no luck. They are just as expensive or more than 10 years old and I don’t want to carry them up the stairs just to have to replace them in a couple years.
The Next step up is the lowest-end energy efficient top loader, the Maytag Centennial series which can be used with GIGA Turbines. At $1096 for the pair, they are just $218 more expensive than the lowest end and they will be quieter, more efficient, and higher-end looking.
The next step up is the Front-loader set. This set from GE is $1498 which is quite pricey. $620 more than a standard washer/dryer.
I’m leaning toward the high-efficiency top-load. I could go down a notch with the dryer since those are all equally inefficient. There is no rule that says the washer-dryer have to match and if I’m not planning on stacking them, I don’t need to get a matching set.
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We still have the same washer the builder gave us with our first house in 1986. I prefer top loading for the sake of my back. We had the front loading at hewitt and you just had to get on the floor. Not too bad when you are young.
I would go with efficient top loading personally.
Kitchen Island options.
The next thing I’m starting to think about for the kitchen is how to do the lighting. I think I’m going to have room for a 21″ wide island. The kitchen is 117 inches wide. 24″ for the cabinets, 36″ on each side clearance for doors, that leaves 21″. I’m looking at a couple options for the island. One day I was an awesome antique workbench like this one:
But in the short-term, I’m looking at something open-legged, probably from ikea. I think I’m going to paint the legs something colorful and bright. I’m thinking pink but I may wimp-out and do white. I’d like to give it a distressed look as well. I’m not sure if Stefan will go for it though.
One option is this $199.00 island from ikea.
At 20 7/8″x 4 feet, it is the perfect maximum size. If I want to go slightly smaller, I can go with this $99 model:
I like the addition of drawers on this one but at 17″ by 40″ it is small. Then again, it would be less likely to close off the space.
There is also this $79 pine option.
At just 15.5 inches, this is the narrowest table. It is a great little table regardless. I love a good sofa table to hold remotes and laptops and this number could be great.
Stefan and I are going to head to ikea in 2 weeks to pick up the countertops and I guess we’ll pick out the island then. So exciting to get to the buying stage of the remodel!
Here is a great inspiration photo for my brightly colored island. Not my color but I love how fun it is!
What do you think? Let me know!
Sarah
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We have that 100 one from Ikea with the drawers.. it is quite smaller than it looks when you try to use it as a counter. We have our microwave and mixer on it now. Also.. depending on what you put on the shelves.. its a weird width, so theres either lots of room loft over on on side, or something hangs off the edge.
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I think you have room for the bigger island. 36 is way more than you need for clearance. The main area is dishwasher door and refrigerator doors. Add wheels if you think you may need more space at times. You want it usable. You may want to wait until you get the cabinets in before you purchase something though. I do love the painted piece. Also a sofa table is so handy when you have stuff!!
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Yeah, the dishwasher is on one side and the door to the outside is on the other so we are actually space constrained but we’ve got the 21 inches to work with and the swing of the door is only 33 inches so we have a little flexibility. I was excited to finally run the numbers and see how much room we actually have. I think one day we’ll be able to find an antique workbench to fit in that size space!
At the apartment, we’ve got the TV box behind the sofa as a sofa table and it is so functional! It holds the power strip for the large quantity of computers and provides a safe place to stash the laptops. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to go back!
Rebekah
4/10/2012 | 2:16 pm Permalink
Looks great!