It is hard for me to just not plug this baby in and start searing some meat right now! Well, it will be at least 2 months before I'll be able to do that. Steven cooked a pretend grilled cheese last night on the griddle while he went on and on about making a detailed Chinese users guide for his Ma. On our last Thermador in Atlanta, we all scratched it up a good bit and put some unnecessary miles on it by cleaning it improperly (and perhaps a bit too obssesively?). It is really easy to clean stainless the WRONG way and muck it up.
Two of these star lamps will hang from the foam faux oak beams at the ceiling. They will provide general light and eye candy; about a gazillion other lights in the hood over the stove, the pot rack, on a track over the island, under the upper cabs, and inside all the glass-doored cabs will provide the real & task lighting. The faux foam oak beams are primarily to cover new electrical conduit we'll add to supply all this new lighting on new circuits. Currently, as in any old house, the circuits in the kitchen are overloaded. We've learned that we can't have the toaster and the microwave going at the same time, which just adds to the drama of cooking in a challenged kitchen.
Here's the fabulous dish drawer. We were shocked and amazed to find a beautiful, smooth stainless housing around the whole thing, which one doesn't get to enjoy when one builds it into cabinets, as we will.
This is our Bosch fridge (sorry to be a label queen) and it is counter-depth and built-in.
If I ever get past my work deadlines, I'll be free to work on my new kitchen soon! We've got so much to do... Everything is just parked in the Dining Room for now, which will be our War Room where we'll assemble all the cabinets one by one. Jing Xia's bedroom will become the supply post, full of all the boxes of cabinet parts. And the kitchen will be the real war zone. We are hoping that when we take down what remains of the existing cabinets that the plaster won't come down with them. And we are also hoping to get them down without destroying them, so we can use them in the garage/greenhouse. We'll see.
We actually--neither of us--dislike the green/blue/purple Barney "we're a happy family" quality of our existing kitchen. The cabinets, especially, are good, but probably 40 years old. Solid wood and sturdy, but dirty and not super functional, with sticking drawers and doors, etc. But that tile counter we both loath. It is impossible to keep clean, especially the grout, and we've both given up trying to finazzle it. It will be gone soon. And the appliances were just bad, aging white bottom-of-the-line stuff that we're too snobby to deal with.
We are especially concerned about what is behind that tile backsplash: Where the old stove hood was we can see a yellowish kind of linoleum, and who knows if there is plaster behind there or not? When we took other parts of the counter out, we found that someone had glued the ceramic tile directly to the fabulous fifties counters which were a nice bright red laminate with cool aluminum edging. Anyhow, hopefully the Barney cabinets will make it unscathed into the greenhouse (we'll keep the carnival of colors). And, these provide nice "before" photos. Hopefully in 2 months or 3, we'll have some nice "after" pictures.
7 comments:
We have a Bosch Stove... it is fabulous... nothing wrong with being a lable queen... we are remodeling bath now... I hate remodeling... but I will be posting before and after pics tomorrow or first of the week... if they can get the work done... ughhh 3 weeks now...ughhh... and cost twice as much as they said it would...ughhh
Hi Kelly, yeah, i've processed it through and i'm ok with being a materialistic label queen (it's better than the alternatives). We are doing all the work ourselves, since we've basically blown our wad on all the pricey materials. Thank god for Ikea, we saved alot of money there that we blew on that range. The range, with hood and various accessories like warming racks and high stainless backsplash, was way more than all of the cabinetry.
I'll look forward to checking out the pics of your new and improved bath!
I would LOVE to do this project in my home. Our kitchen is definitely "retro" and not in a good way. Looking forward to updates.
Sam,
You sound as though you are actually enjoying your remodeling. We're in the sixth, and I hope the final month of the restoration of an apartment we bought this summer in Paris; that's why i haven't posted recently. I did, however, just put up a post on IKEA; I think my attitude toward it is somewhat different from yours.
I bit of advice on the kitchen. IKEA is infamous for sending the wrong stuff or leaving pieces out. Don't wait until your ready to put it up to check to see that all the pieces are there. And check to see if the stuff you ordered doesn't have any surprises. IKEA sold us a fridge without a freezer or even an ice compartment, without telling us and which we discovered only when we had already put the cabinets up; and IKEA had no fridge of the same proportions with a freezer to fit into the cabinets (Thank God another company did.) The whole thing was somewhat of a nightmare.
I sincerely hope things go better for you than they did for us, although the kitchen is finally finished and is fine, now.
Curtis, we'll be full of advice for you whenever you start a recherche a la cuisine someday, somewhere!
Bruce: your post about Ikea has struck terror in our hearts, since our delivery arrives tomorrow from them!
Thanks for the advice though, we will most assuredly check it all upon arrival. Our kitchen consultant is Jaydah, in the Ikea Atlanta store, and she has actually seemed extremely patient, with it, and detail oriented. Our order was for about 80 individual items (gulp), and she told us about glitches and set us up with ways to overcome them. She sent us away with several pieces and parts to pack in our luggage that do not come with the shipment, but should, and that we'll need. She also called me at work on our return to Ohio to say she'd forgotten the faucet for the sink, and took care of that over the phone (and the faucet has since arrived, ahead of everything else). So far, Jaydah inspires confidence.
Definitely much, much more to come on this one though!
We'd love to see pictures of your kitchen project! Oh la la, to have an actual cuisine francaise! You lucky guy.
Sam,
Jaydah seems to be a good omen; it appears that you've lucked out at least with your consultant (which is, in fact, the most important part). But then there are the warehouse boys, who, in our case, forgot to include the dishwasher door, which had been properly ordered and paid for, in our shipment. Since some time elapsed between our unpacking the kitchen and the discovery of the missing door, we were, in fact, perplexed by the check for 45 euros we got in the mail without any explanation. We later figured out that it was for the door.
Of course it would have been easier for us had they just sent the door when they discovered the error, but it was easier for IKEA to send us a check and then make us take another trip to the IKEA store (3 hours) to re order, pay for again, and pick up the door. This seems to S.O.P. for IKEA--- put the maximum amount of work on the costumer.
So, send Jaydah a box of chocolates in thanks, but still carefully check out your shipment when it arrives.
Best wishes,
Bruce
Please, please, please come give Blake and I some cool decorating ideas the next time you are in Atlanta. We close on Jan 2 and want to be doing lots of little fun, cheap things to the house because of shortage of time before b.b. comes. We need chic ideas!
Alex
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