Put a Cork in It!

I've been pretty excited about my choice of flooring for the kitchen, and today was a great day because I actually got to see it in the kitchen for the first time! Like several of the other materials, we got the cork flooring at Ecohaus. They have many options for cork, and we went with the Vida cork planks in the Bamboo pattern. It looks very elegant in the kitchen, and adds a nice warmth in color--a big difference from the previous grey ceramic tile! Cork is well-loved by chefs for its softness on the feet and joints. It is also extremely quiet--when Linus walks across it, it sounds like a light pitter-patter of rain!

Here are a couple pictures from today:

Blue, Blue, or Blue? A Palette of Eco-Friendly Paints

Over Memorial Day Weekend, I picked up some small cans of paint at Ecohaus. I'd narrowed down the color choices to a few shades of blue that I thought would coordinate with the tile nicely. We really liked one color, Porta Luca, but we were worried it was maybe a little dark, so I also got a can of Country Bay, for comparison. You can see here the paint test, with Porta Luca on the left. Matt and I both agreed this was the one! It picks up the dusky-cobalt in the tile, while also going nicely with the olive and light blue. It also goes well with the rest of the house--all the rooms make a statement with color.

The paint brand I got from Ecohaus was Mythic, a nontoxic, "ultra low odor" paint. According to the Mythic website, "Mythic paint is the only zero-VOC, zero-carcinogenic, premium quality line of latex paints available." And, after slapping a whole bunch up on the wall, then staring at the wall for quite some time, I have to say that never once did I even think that the house smelled like paint. And when I did think about the smell, that was when I realized there was NO smell. Seriously, none at all. Seems impossible, right? It made me feel good about the dog and kid wandering about during all this!

Sunset just did a page on fume-free paints, highlighting Mythic, as well as these brands:

• AFM Safecoat
• The Freshaire Choice
• Green Planet Paints
• Natura
• Yolo Colorhouse

Mythic also does custom color matches, so I ordered the bedroom and hall paints. Still need to pick the creamy accent color for the kitchen, so I'm headed back to Ecohaus soon!

Walls Go Back Up!

Last week the first stage of the electrical work was done by Boley Electric. After several days of ripping out more walls here and there, Brian started putting them back up, which, frankly, was more exciting than I anticipated. More than anything, it was just nice to have the kitchen feel like a real room again, and not some decades-old war zone. Plus, as a special Memorial Day Weekend gift to us, Brian moved the fridge back into the kitchen from the dining room. Now Wyatt and I can both eat at the table at the same time again!

Here's the main view of the newly-drywalled kitchen:

Here's the area where the fridge now goes, formerly inhabited by the oven, and far too many soffits. Without the soffits, the space seems huge!

Stepping out of the kitchen for a moment, the Solatube is now hooked up and brings so much natural light into the stair and hall--it's amazing!

A Vision of the Future!

Earlier today Brian posted some before-and-after photos of the demolition. Here's a super cool 3-D view of the future, created by Ray.

I can hardly wait!

Just A Reminder...

Demo Week Comes to a Close

Things are looking almost, well, clean. Except for all the dust, that is. All the cabinets, counters, flooring, and tile are out. Even the long-despised soffits are gone--hurrah! Here are a few photos from the current stage.

Just yesterday, all that cold, hard ceramic tile was in a heap on the floor:

No more pantry:

Today--not much left:


Soffit? What soffit? (Hey, is that the attic up there?)


Stay tuned! Next up: framing!

Out With The Old

If you've ever wondered how to get rid of the old insulation in your attic, then this is the post for you. Today we're having all the insulation "sucked" out to make way for new energy saving insulation. The insulation in millions of homes has been sitting in the attic for so long, that it's doing very little to prevent the obvious heat loss through the ceiling. Its been collecting dust and various kinds of debris, creating a potential fire hazard in a hot attic, not to mention the air contamination you'll certainly notice if you're ever brave enough to enter. Ridding the attic of this dusty, potentially hazardous situation and adding 10-12 inches of new blown-in insulation will result in very significant heating and cooling savings in the short and long-term. We'll post some pictures of the process later today, so everyone can see the process. In the meantime, check out Energystar.gov to see the potential for tax credits when upgrading insulation in your attic or throughout your home.

Photos: Demo, New Stairs, and More Demo

We are now on week two of the remodel! In the first week, Brian demoed the hallway wall, boarded up the stairway door in the kitchen, rebuilt the top stairs in the new curved alignment, and installed most of the Solatube. Today he started the demo of the kitchen! Here are a few photos of the first week.

Hallway--the wall's gone and it's all sealed up!


The stairway door in the kitchen is all boarded up:

In the hall, you can where Brian opened it up. The original chimney was to the right of what's left of the wall. Brian took out all the chimney bricks to open the space up.


Stairs: All gone!


New stairs!




Here's a view of the now very open stairwell, where you can see the Solatube in the ceiling:



Day 1 of the kitchen demo--lots of progress!


Luckily, we now have a kitchenette in our dining room:


Stay tuned for more photos as week two progresses!

Shopping for a New Kitchen

Most of the materials have now been ordered! Cabinets and handles, counters, backsplash tile, the sink and faucet, and the flooring. It took lots of looking around to pick out just what I wanted, but at least I had years of collected kitchen remodel magazines and books to help shape my style.

The first task was to find the cabinets. Brian really recommended Ikea cabinets, for their style, ease of installation, and value. I asked around and it turned out that nearly everyone I knew had put in Ikea cabinets. One friend mentioned that Ikea's cabinets had been rated second by Consumer Reports, after an expensive custom cabinetry manufacturer. After a day of scoping at Ikea, I decided that I really loved the Euro styling and all the in-cabinet organizers. I particularly loved their giant pull-out pantry cabinets--you can get all the way to the back of the cabinet!

Originally I'd wanted cherry cabinets. I ended up with a somewhat lighter cabinet called Akurum Adel Medium Brown (that's Ikea for you). You can see what they look like here in one of Ikea's vignette photos. I'm not doing as many glass doors above the counter, just a couple as accents.

I did shop around a little for cabinets, but really liked the Ikea styling a lot better than everywhere else I looked, within a somewhat comparable price range. One thing I really like about Ikea cabinets is that the entire cabinet space is taken up with the drawers and shelves, which is apparently considered Euro style. It is much more efficient than the American style, where you see drawers and cabinets inset, leaving a border of sometimes several inches on all sides of each part of the cabinet--lots of wasted space! Also, Ikea cabinets have the really nice soft-close feature, and they roll really smoothly too.

For handles, I wanted something simple, modern, and stainless steel. I tend to really like more angular design, so I instantly loved the Lansa handles. The size I wanted was only $6.99 for two, which was a crazy low price when I looked at similar handles at Home Depot for $20.

If you can see the rails on the backsplash of the Ikea vignette photo, I also got two of those to go above the large windows in the sunroom, plus a bunch of S hooks. I'll be able to hang a lot of my cookware here, instead of take up room in drawers. This was an exciting little brainstorm!

I shopped around a little to understand the pricing of quartz and granite countertops. I really wanted a countertop that maintained a cool surface, so, ideally, I could do pastry work (like rolling pie crusts) directly on the countertop. Great for tempering chocolate too! Other countertops like Corian and Paperstone were very attractive, but held warmth. Ikea (through a partner vendor) had good prices on quartz, so I chose a new recycled line of Caesarstone in the Smoky Ash color. Unfortunately although the square-foot price was good, the total price was very high due to the level of waste of a new, nonstocked color. I ended up saving $1,700 by switching to granite in the Uba Tuba color.

The backsplash tile was one of the first things I picked out. Because I love art glass, I'd wanted to incorporate glass into my kitchen. I also love the beach, being from Hawaii originally. So, I'd wanted a glass tile in dusty blues and greens, reminiscent of beach glass. Brian pointed me to Ecohaus, a great local distributor of environmentally friendly building supplies. Pretty quickly I found this great tile called Shire from Oceanside Glasstile, made of recycled glass. It has kind of a bronzey iridescent sheen, but you don't see that much when it's vertical.

I also picked out my flooring at Ecohaus. I'd originally intended to get Marmoleum, but none of the colors seemed to be "the one." Instead, I started looking at cork flooring, which I'd dismissed several years ago because I didn't like the look. Now they have many more styles, and I found this one called Bamboo that added a bit of Asian accent to the kitchen (again, with the Hawaii thing). Initially I'd been very interested in cork because it's very easy on the feet and joints when standing on it for many hours, as I tend to do. It also retains warmth, so no more cold ceramic tile!

I picked up a really basic one-basin stainless-steel sink from the countertop distributor at Ikea, and just yesterday ordered a new faucet. I really like the one-handle faucets--easy to maneuver and less to clean! I also wanted one that had both rinse and spray functions, plus a pull-down or pull-out spout. The Moen Medora faucet in stainless steel seemed to fit all my needs, plus it looks pretty and modern too!

I still have to finalize the paint choices, though I'm close! I'm sure a few other materials decisions will pop up too, but we're mostly there, and I'm super excited to see it all come together in the next month or so!

Of course, this has all been about the kitchen, and Ray's designs also entail moving the stairway to the basement so it's in the hall instead of the kitchen--making the kitchen a little less "Grand Central Station," as he says. Matt came up with a great idea to open up the hall area by making the wall more open, with a small banister, instead of it just being a door you open and close. There actually won't be a door at all, just a doorway, plus extra space to the left of the door. The stairs will curve down in a small L-shape, to the left. The bottom half of the stairs will be the original stairs. Brian also had this fantastic idea to install a Solatube in the stairwell, since we had to take out the old chimney there anyway. I love this idea--it will bring natural light into the center of the house. You can see the concept in this photo here (not our house, not our dog!). The whole stair and hall project will help unite the two floors so it feels more like one big house, rather than a one-floor house with a basement. I'm looking forward to this new outlook!

This week we started Phase 2 of the Bolhmann Kitchen Remodel. After a few weeks of sifting through designs, we came up with a great solution to Matt and Maile's needs. As you can see in the plan, we eliminated the door to the basement via the kitchen, and will move it into the hallway. Also, we'll be opening up the hallway space by removing a 100-year-old defunct chimney, replacing it with a 14" Solatube for natural light.

As it stands now, the basement door is gone, the new opening is created, and the solatube is shining a glimmering light of hope through a hole in the attic, that one day soon, their new kitchen will be complete.