Our kitchen has been a work in progress for nearly twenty years.
When we bought this house, the kitchen was a disaster. It functioned but could hardly have been uglier.
Picture it: orange vinyl flooring, cabinets yellowed with age, orange coke bottle glass fronts in several of them, a drop ceiling with fluorescent lighting and grey wallpaper polka dotted with ducks. Not only that but the room was cut in two with a peninsula and drop down cupboards.
In 1998, just as the housing market was starting it big wave, we got our tax assessment and Jay said “If we’re going to pay taxes on a $150,000.00 house, let’s live in a $150,000.00 house.” We refinanced and poured the money into the kitchen.
By the end of that summer, the drop ceiling was gone, the fluorescent lights were gone, the ducks were gone, the dropped cupboards, vinyl floor and orange finish on everything was gone, gone long gone.
We ripped out the peninsula and replaced it with a large island. We integrated what had been a tiny eating space separated from the working kitchen by a plywood wall into one large, eat in kitchen. Because the kitchen occupies the center of the house, it gets no direct light. The only window in the room opens onto a porch. So, we went with white cabinets. We kept the wall of cabinets by the window. They were in great shape and with a little stripper and time, I found that the doors were actually quite pretty. So I bleached them out, varnished them and they looked great on the freshly white boxes. We bought an unfinished table and benches and I finished them to match those doors.
It took me three tries to get the perfect knobs and handles for the kitchen. I’m very particular about hardware: it has to feel as good as it looks. I had some nice ones for a year or so before I realized the brushed gold finish was totally wrong. Brushed nickel: that was the ticket.
Fast forward eight years and the pale grey speckled laminate counter tops we’d installed are already worn down to white in all the busiest work spaces. At this point, we’d also morphed our microwave cubby into a built in spice rack and found space in another wall for a wine rack complete with glass hangers. These things all happened when Jay, who turns out to be a kitchen savant, had epiphanies.
The housing wave was practically a thirty-foot breaker by this point, so we refinanced again and replaced the worn out laminate with gorgeous granite. It’s dark, setting off the white cabinets and whitish floor like glorious shiny jewelry. I love it.
A year or so after we put in the granite counter tops, I walked into the kitchen one day and realized there were way too many colors and finishes in the room. When the counters were pale grey, everything was in the same value range so the natural wood cabinet doors were a nice added pop of color. Now the counters were dark and glossy and contrasting and the wood doors just looked sad and out of step.
I had Zack paint them white and everything was back in sync again.
Or so I thought.
Ten years later I realized that the stupid table and benches, which I’d finished specifically for the newly stripped and bleached doors, looked as out of place in the kitchen as a beer bottle floating in a fountain.
It took me ten years to notice. Ten years.
What can I say? I’ve been really busy and that table is usually covered with crap.
So last week, I hauled the benches and table out to the drive way. It took two cans of 2-minute stripper, two rolls of Bounty, three boxes of latex gloves, a dozen chip brushes, two packages of steel wool, two cans of varnish and about five days but now that table is a glossy, glowing beauty. Stripping the benches and the table legs was actually easy. The table top, which I’d revarnished many times over the years (and never noticed it was the completely wrong color: what’s wrong with me?) took much longer to strip than I expected.
My new hand sander made the job very easy.
After removing the old finish, I used two colors of stain because I couldn’t remember which of the stains I had was dark enough. Most of the time during those five days was spent waiting for the coats of stain and varnish to dry. It was hot and humid so the stains took 24 hours before I could handle them without color rubbing off. You don’t want to rush these things.
I like at least three coats of varnish on an object that’s going to be used. I prefer water based varnish for inside furniture because its easier to use, not stinky and it doesn’t yellow, which is very important since most of the furniture I varnish has been decoratively painted and I need to be sure the color stays true.
The final coat of glossy varnish dried on the kitchen table just in time for Josie to help me move it into the kitchen the moment she got off the bus from school. Yes, she came home to go to the Fair. Because our State Fair really is the best State Fair and my kids wouldn’t miss it if it meant cancelling a wedding or postponing childbirth.
We put the new dark, shiny table and benches into the kitchen and they look fabulous!
The chairs looked like crap, of course. They’d been chosen to match the old version of the table. We’ve been thinking about new kitchen chairs for a while, since the old ones were also pretty wobbly: I’d glued the struts back into one just last winter and tightening all the screws in them doesn’t seem to help anymore. Jay hopped online and we found some with just the finish we wanted at Amazon for not too much…
Before hitting 'buy', Jay checked Craig’s List. He loves Craig’s List. If you can avoid being killed or sold into slavery, there are some great deals to be had! He found a pair of chairs that he fell in love with. They have the dark finish we were looking for and white alligator seat cushions. They were also half the price of new chairs despite being of higher quality and much prettier.
He brought them home Saturday evening and they look like they’d been designed for this kitchen!
Tyler and Megan will take the old chairs home since they can always use more dining chairs.
The Kitchen looks like a magazine piece now!
18 years and the kitchen is finally done! Everything from the knobs and handles to the granite counter tops to the newly finished dining set looks gorgeous and in perfect harmony!
Except for those hideous light fixtures.