The kitchen table

The kitchen table is all finished, and I'm thrilled with how it looks.

When you compare these pictures with the before pictures, it's hard to believe that it's the same table. 

It's sitting in the bay window in the dining room right now, waiting for the varathane to cure. I figure I'll give it at least a week, because it's sure to get a lot of abuse from two small boys in the coming years.

Next up is the seat that I plan to use as a banquette with this table. Goodbye granny fabric!

 

Kitchen table progress

I spent this weekend hard at work on our new kitchen table.

A couple of people have asked me about it recently and I figured that a month and a half was plenty long enough to procrastinate about it. It was all the fault of those curly legs - I was really not looking forward to stripping and sanding them. Luckily, I was able to disassemble the table to work on it so it wasn't nearly as bad as I feared.

I used Natura Safe Strip that I picked up at Home Hardware to take off the old finish. I was skeptical that it would work, but it did a pretty terrific job. The only drawback is that you have to leave it on for 30-60 minutes to allow it to break down the old finish. That slowed things down a bit, but it was nice to not have to worry about fumes and nasty chemicals.

I was a little concerned after I finished stripping and sanding the pieces as everything was a different colour. The stain was completely removed from the two upper legs, but I couldn't get the four small lower legs anywhere near as light. Even with multiple applications of the stripper.

And the table top was even worse.

I decided to cross my fingers and soldier on and applied the walnut stain to all of the pieces. And I was pleasantly surprised that the tone of the wood all evened out.

I managed to get one coat of satin finish polyurethane on this afternoon. Three more coats to go - each one needs to dry overnight, so by the end of the week the table should be all finished.

Then it's on to the bench that I currently have sitting in the bay window in the dining room. That's an even bigger point of procrastination because it involves upholstery, and it really looks like a two man job. I need my sister to hurry up and get home from Florida!

New kitchen stools

The past week went by in a flash. We had our lab Christmas party last night, with about 40 guests. The prep for it almost killed me, but on the bright side, most of our Christmas decorating is now complete.

And some of my Christmas baking is done. On Friday I enlisted the help of two of my favourite people for that.

I've been on a bit of a tear with re-upholstering things this month. Last week I got some new (to me) stools for the island in the kitchen. We had some that I got for Christmas one year from Janine when I was a grad student, but they were a bit modern for our kitchen. They've served us well, as they seem to be covered in some miraculous finish that stands up well to the abuse of two small boys. They look as good now as when I got them 13 or 14 years ago even though we use them every day.

I've been keeping my eyes open for ones that have a bit of an antique feel to them. Last week I came across these beauties

Hard to believe that anyone would get rid of them, with their lovely straight-from-the-80's fabric covering.

I popped off the seat and made new covers for them. They aren't perfect as I didn't bother taking apart the old covers to use as a pattern - I just flew by the seat of my pants. They turned out pretty well, though.

When I picked the stools up I thought I would paint them black to coordinate with the fabric. But I kind of like them with the dark wood, so now I can't decide. Any votes one way or the other?

New kitchen shelves

When we decided to do the big reno, I figured it was a good time to buy the stove that I’ve been lusting after for years. My sister got one first, and I would eye it jealously very time I visited her. It’s a BlueStar six burner gas range. And it’s beautiful. Since the new stove is 36” wide and my old stove was only 30” we had to do some re-jigging of the cabinetry. The old stove was flanked by two 30” uppers and the fridge was against the back wall. It's that ugly black box in the corner there.

With the addition of the upstairs bathroom, we had to create a bulkhead along the top of the upper cabinets, and run a new plumbing stack down in the corner where the fridge used to be. Between this and the new stove, I was worried that we were going to have a tough time with the cabinets, as they were custom made for us 11 years ago. I figured that it would be impossible to match the colour on them. And I really didn’t want to change them.

Thankfully, the sizes of the cabinets worked out perfectly. I searched endlessly, and finally found a Samsung fridge that has French doors, is counter depth, and is only 33” wide. This allowed us to use the old gables and upper to surround the fridge. The contractors had to cut down the upper cabinet about 1.5” as the new fridge is a little taller than the old one.

The next problem was the space between the fridge and the stove. Luckily it was 15” wide, so we cut down the original 30” wide upper and used a single door on it. I ran out to Ikea and picked up a new 15” box for the lower and we used one of the doors from the upper above the stove, and one of the drawer faces from the cabinet we removed. That was our contractor Martin's genius idea.

 

The final hurdle was the space left between the fridge and the original rear wall of the house.

We had a bookshelf built to fill this space, and I painted it the same semi-gloss white as the trim.It looks blindingly white and shiny in the picture, but that's because of the flash. It looks really nice in real life.

The cubbies are three different sizes. The largest one on the bottom is tall enough to fit my original Canadian Living cookbook. I use it all the time, so it was important for it to be in the kitchen. When we were discussing the size of the shelves I had to scurry up to find the cookbook so that we could measure it’s height. I should write to Canadian Living and let them know I designed a bookshelf around their cookbook. Maybe I can win a biggest fan prize or something.

I lugged down all of my favourite cookbooks that I use on a regular basis from their storage place in our bedroom,

pulled out a bunch of pretty kitchen stuff from the cupboards and storage boxes and started arranging the shelves.

And there you have it.

It’s so nice to have all of this extra and easily accessible storage in the kitchen. I can keep a small number of regularly used books from my shamefully large cookbook collection here (I love to read about food almost as much as I love to eat it).

I was worried about losing the two large pot drawers that I kept all of my tupperware in, but I gained some cabinet space that used to be taken up by my cookbooks with this set of shelves. I also ruthlessly purged my storage containers and winnowed it down to one drawer, which I now store to the right of the stove, right below my pots and pans.

Every few days I make a little more progress unpacking. Slow, but steady! 

The kitchen sink...

Despite my high hopes and enthusiasm earlier this week, I haven’t made much progress in the bathroom. I just can’t seem to bring myself to paint. Maybe this evening I’ll put on a movie on Netflix and lock myself in there until it’s done.

I did manage to hang some pictures on the wall in the kitchen. At least I have one small corner of the house back in shape! Here’s a picture of the kitchen part-way through the reno. Note the tiny little useless window above the sink. I couldn’t open it without a climbing on a chair because of the angle of the countertop by the sink.

We forgot to include the larger window in the original building permit, and almost didn’t bother with it. Boy, am I ever glad that we did! Compare the picture above with how it looks now

Not only does it let in a tonne of light as it faces south, I can also now look out of it when I’m doing dishes. I cannot believe that I lived the last 12 years without it! 

We also replaced the kitchen faucet. It wasn’t in the plans, but it seems that it got knocked around during the reno and was leaking like crazy into the cupboard below. So we trundled up to Ginger’s and bought this amazing new one. It’s their Soho 33 line. We got taps from the same line for our upstairs bathroom as well.

I love how high above the counter it is – I can easily fill really tall pots. And the bell-shaped part is a pull-out spray nozzle; pretty and functional. The bowl holding the fruit behind the tap is the first item I ever purchased at auction over a decade ago.

I waffled between pictures or a large mirror over the sink. I was thinking that the mirror would reflect light from the window back into the room. But I had pictures on hand, so I decided to put them up and see how I liked it.

I don’t like the Monet/Renoir little poster things in the outer upper frames (they were cheap little things that I have from when I was an undergrad), but I’m happy with the rest of the grouping. Several of the pictures are special to us. The spoon was A.’s grandmother’s. She used it every day for mixing, and apparently stirred so vigorously that she wore away part of the bowl.

And this old picture came from my great aunt JoJo. I’ve had it since I was a young teen – she gave it to me the year before she died.

We picked up the antique seed packets on our very first trip to Saxton’s River, Vermont; for the FASEB Viral Assembly Meeting of course. Unfortunately the store that we bought it in has gone out of business. I checked when we were there in June. It’s too bad as they had a lot of beautiful antique maps, prints, and other interesting art. 

All in all, I'm happy with how it turned out. But now I'm on the prowl for something to replace the two little art prints in the top row. Maybe some original kid art?