Saturday, June 21, 2014

Our Building Story Part 7 - Winter and Spring 2013

This will be a longer post....
Over the winter of 1012/13 we had an opportunity to go on a Cruise. We had never done something like that before and we were really excited to try....but then on second thought, we figured that if we didn't go we could probably afford to build the  kitchen for our house. That is what we decided to do. The next year would be our 20th wedding anniversary and we would do a bigger trip then. 

So over the winter Steve worked on the kitchen. I was pretty sure that I wanted a painted and antiqued finish, but I wasn't sure what colour. Antiqued cream coloured cabinets with green walls was what I finally settled on...until my visionary husband threw a new idea into the mix. :)
Since he has a long history of good ideas, I was all ears!
He switched up my colours and suggested green cabinets and creamy yellow on the walls. I wasn't able to picture how this would look, so he gave me an extra door and some bead board from the shop and told me to have fun trying out finishes. 
Since I would be glazing the doors with a dark glaze, I knew I had to start with a much brighter paint colour than the colour I wanted in the end up with.
I ended up trying a bright apple green. I painted the raw maple door...


Then I sanded the dry paint to rough up the sheen. 

And then I rubbed the door with an oil glaze. 

I loved it right away! I knew the clear coat would bring the colour alive more but I could see it was what I wanted! I tried different handles....wooden knobs.

I even made some out of diamond willow. 

In the end I found some on of Steve's wholesaler websites.
They were antique copper and were only $0.59 each on a wild sale!!!! 

This is what the cabinets look like stacked in the shop ready to ship.


You can see diamond willow in the background. 
We used some of those big pieces on the kitchen island later. 

The colouring is not true in this picture, but you can see how the bead board and antiquing looked. Steve added saw marks, worm holes and other dings for effect. :) They must of looked legit antique because one guy came in the shop and asked if this was a set of cabinets that Steve was re-finishing or fixing!

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So at the beginning of April, Steve, our two older boys and our nephew made a trip up to finish drywalling, mud/tape, and paint. We called the MD the week before to get the driveway cleared as there was lots of snow that winter. The first thing they did was clear the deck and get the dry firewood out to warm up the house. 



The next obvious place to shovel was a path to the outhouse!


In spite of the deep snow, they did have lovely warm temperatures during the day.

Steve's super-tidy mud job. :)

Since the guys were batching, They took turns washing dishes. 
The upstairs with wall board up.





With the butter-yellow paint on. :)


Jeremy helping put in the fir window frames that Steve built over a year ago. 


It was starting to look like a real house! 







The boys did all the upstairs themselves. They got the yellow paint on, but when I saw the pictures, I was quite sure that I would paint the upstairs green after all. 

I was busy at home making some furniture that would be helpful if we moved.
I made this coffee table and finished it with the antique white/cream I was planning for the cabinets originally. 
I like it on the table, but I was still glad I went with the green for cabinets. 


Steve had built us this heavy table a couple years before and we were still using our mish-mash of chairs, so I built these benches and stained them to match. The benches slip under the table and take up much less room as well as being less "visually cluttered"

I left a couple taller benches for the little ones. 


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One month later at the beginning of May, Steve and myself made a rare trip together without the kids to install the kitchen cabinets and do a little more painting.
We unloaded the trailer full of cabinets and I was concerned that our little place would seem so much smaller with all those cabinets installed. Interestingly, I found the opposite was true!!! The house felt bigger once the kitchen was in. I think the cabinets defined the space and of course hid all the storage items. 

Generator and tools ready to get going. Our little Honda 5000w generator has built this whole place and never once given us a moment of trouble!


Steve hard at work! :)





I LOVED THE COLOURS!
Colour really effects me and green definitely makes me HAPPY.


I painted the upstairs *green*!


I really liked the drama of the dark fir next to the intense green.

One other job I did was put pine boards on this wall by the stairs.

Having one last look around before heading home. 

So now I have a kitchen! :) 
We noticed that there were a number of gypsy moth caterpillars around on the trees...
little did we know that by the time we came back in June, there would be a full out plague of the little beggars. But that is a story for the next episode.... 

To Be Continued....




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