The Kitchen Project

This will hang over our sink. It was designed to go with granite countertops.

And this is our fan. It’s flush to the ceiling, which we like, and we probably won’t use the light. Modern enough and stainless enough to be subtle.

Today started well. We oohed and ahhed over our kitchen color. Alyssa came over to help paint, and we had brunch at Sound Bites. She brought her telescoping brush, and we made quick work of the room. It was a slightly different color, but we all assured ourselves it was just “drying” and would look better when it dried.

Well, to be frank, the color still didn’t look right. I painted the ceiling and waited longer. We went to Wolfers to look at lighting, and Mark and I decided on a fan, a pendant, and a new light for the dining room. We went off to Home Depot and got a sink, couldn’t decide on a faucet, got a doorstop, and realized that replacement parts for the fan switches we have aren’t available. By this point, I was sugar crashing. We had great Korean food over the hill from us.

Tummies full, we went home to see that ill green on the wall where the pretty gold had been. I opened the next gallon of paint and it was beautiful. I compared it to the one we’d just put up, and it was different. Same formula on the paint lid, but different. Fortunately, we don’t have to cover the entire room again. Only about 30% of it won’t be covered by cabinets, so that’ll be our next big task. After Mark finishes cutting in the ceiling, and I spackle the trim, I’ll try the good color again.

This morning, we met a friend for brunch in Wellesley at 10:30 AM, and we figured that as long as we’re out there, why not stop at the Expo Center in Burlington with our color book and our countertop and cabinet samples to identify a wall color?

If you are familiar with the geography of Boston, you know how ridiculous this sounds. If you don’t live here:

View Larger Map

Note that the label for Somerville is somewhere else. It’s just not on the way. Nonetheless, it needed to be done.

The store was deserted–I guess most fathers don’t want to look at this frou-frou stuff on their special day, or maybe it’s because of our national renovation hangover, your call–and we had plenty of time to play with the tile displays and confirm our taste in yellows for walls, if not our preference for tiles. We shifted away from the grassier tones and toward the purer, lighter yellows, while Greg is reconsidering the neutrals.

After this, we wandered back into the fan area and identified a simple three-bladed ceiling fan that is compact enough for our space and contemporary without feeling alien. I think this is it. We didn’t form a strong attachment but we do now know what we’re looking for. A center light is not essential. We lack the ceiling height and, frankly, the urbanity in our design to go with a visually adventurous centerpiece. We’re going to go to a specialty lighting store soon to look at more fans and a pendant for the sink area before we make a purchase.

Historians are warned to avoid reading consumer displays as an expression of a culture’s aspirations, but it’s fun and David Brooks got a column at the New York Times doing it, so there you go. Greg and I were surprised to see so many fans for sale in a New England store that capture the spirit of the Mandalay Bay hotel. I love that I live in a country where someone designed, and multiple marketing managers green-lighted, the Jetsons’ tennis racquet fan. There’s some serious ugly out there and no doubt some of it has found its way into our brains and will manifest itself in our kitchen. That’s all part of the process.

We went home without making any purchases, primed the walls and ceiling, and ordered testers of all the reasonable shades of yellow Ralph Lauren paints off the web to arrive by mid-week.

We had a small hiccough last week when the electrical inspector said that per Somerville code, our many ceiling lights need to be insulated with firebreaks to protect the second floor from an electrical fire. Somerville is one of two cities in the commonwealth with this requirement, and the company that makes the firebreaks has a backlog, so Billy and John made their own out of sheetrock on Friday morning. Somerville has many two-family homes that transitioned from the single-owner landlord model to multi-owner condos this decade, which I imagine led to this change. It’s either in recognition of the competing interests of the first and second floor or a small roadblock to discourage condoization. Who knows. The real estate market is doing a good job on the second count.

This morning, out came the insulation and the drywall. Greg stayed behind this morning to photograph the insulation for the inspection. An impressive amount had been put up by the time I left for work; photos are sure to follow.

Greg and I go to Home Depot tonight to pick out molding for the windows and door frame.

Okay, so the story we all know has that on day 1. Billy and John didn’t have the blank canvas to start with like the more famous version of that utterance, so we’ll give them a few days slack. I came home after the gym to find Mark typing away (see On the Surface, below) and was eager to poke around and look for progress. The exterior light was fading, but it was clear, the drain pipe in the center of the room was gone! I looked around for the switches controlling bare bulbs we’d had the previous days, and they were gone. I turned around and flipped a switch. We have LIGHTS!

Most of our cans (or hats, or recessed lights) have power and bulbs in them now. The room finally has a sense of some progress away from demolition and towards build. The pipe was indeed gone, and more outlets had been placed around the room, including one for the stove, the fridge, and our network cable. The plumbers had run the line for the fridge’s water supply, and again, that big pipe was gone.

Our basement door doesn’t close well. We have to latch it. So i had Mark hold the door shut while I peeked downstairs. It was a little reminiscent of the King Tut discovery, but I grew up on that story, so “What do you see?” “Marvelous things!” is one of my favorite exchanges. Mark came down to look at things, but Phoebe managed to get the door open a few times. (The photo was her fourth trip in, since I wanted to film it.)

The second post hole had been filled in, and two temporary beams were in place. They’re just 2×4s, one buckling slightly with the jack underneath it. (That was that contraption we’d seen before that looked like a brass megaphone) The real lally columns are on the ground and will be put in place when the concrete has cured.

The plumbers have finished hooking up our drains, and have moved a few lines around to accommodate the new beam and remove some old brass pipes. We did find an old closet under the stairs. It had always had stuff in front of it, so I have stayed away from it. It’s a rather sizable closet, so we’ll have to figure out what we can store there.

The exterior work is all done with replacement shingles up. We’ll still have to paint, naturally.

Tomorrow: probably electrical and plumbing inspections. Those are both big steps, and will mean we can start to move forward with some other significant things, like floors and walls. We do have to get the floor level first.