Kitchen Chronicles: Trimming out the Windows

Hope you all enjoyed the holidays (or still are) with your favorite people!

My little sister is in town (the one who moved into our Florida guest room this past July) so our family is cherishing every moment together before she heads back to the east coast on Sunday...

Amidst all the holiday hustle, my dad and I found some time to address an important issue—our plain jane trimless windows. I'll get to all of them eventually, but for now I wanted to focus on the rooms on my priority list—the kitchen and my studio:

This was high on my list because it makes such a huge impact for relatively low effort and cost. And now's the time to do it before the wood planks and backsplash go in.

If you can remember back in March, I tried this for the first time with our new master bedroom redo, and absolutely loved the results:

I kept the existing stool and apron (the two bottom pieces) and just added two vertical pieces and one horizontal to the top. Since it was ridiculously easy, I thought I'd step it up this time and make my own stool and apron and knock out four windows in one day.

I enlisted my dad's help (he's a former furniture maker) and we agreed it would be a fun daddy-daughter project (the first of many, yay for being back home!).

The hardest part about this process was planning. All four windows were different dimensions and had different needs. We spent almost two hours at Lowe's trying to figure out exactly what to get and ensuring we wouldn't have to make a second trip.

For the design, I decided to keep it clean and simple. Straight cuts, no miters, no crown or fancy bevels. All of the door and window trim on the outside of our house is the same basis Craftsman style I used in our old bedroom:

So I thought consistency would be nice to tie everything together.

I chose cost-effective whitewood boards in various lengths and widths for each window, in 3/4" thickness. The total came to somewhere in the ballpark of $120 just for the wood—a bargain for the impact.

After gathering our wood, we got to work.

Step 1: removing the old window sills. Only two windows had them.

Next it was time to measure for our new sills. Each end needed to form an L shape on the ends so it would extend past the window.

Once the lines were drawn, we used a jigsaw to cut it out. It doesn't matter if the line isn't perfect since it will be covered with caulk and painted.

Ta-da...

After cutting, I realized that I should have doubled the thickness of the little piece that sticks out past the window...

Because I forgot about the wood going above and below it—I wanted it to stick out 1" past the other wood, not the window. Oops.

My dad suggested sliding it forward and cutting a small piece of wood to attach to it. Luckily he had a table saw to do just that.

We dabbed on some wood glue, shot a few nails through, and it was all fixed.

There was another obstacle—our wood wasn't deep enough. The largest planks they had at Lowe's were around 11.5" wide, but our sill was 13".

My dad fixed that by stripping down a piece of wood to the size of the gap and attaching it to the back.

To make it extra secure, he drilled pilot holes into the strip first...

Then screwed the two pieces together.

To make sure everything was seamless, he smoothed it down with a belt sander:

Perfect!

Onto installation. We installed the sills first, using plenty of liquid nails to level everything out (none of our existing sills were very straight).

This part goes really fast. Gotta love pneumatic nail guns.

After the sill came the side pieces (the order really doesn't matter). 

Notice my new sconce light boxes? That's for another post...

Then the bottom piece goes in...

And finally, the top. 

One down, three to go!

Next up is the garden window in the kitchen...

Same exact method. Sill, sides, bottom, top.

It's really as easy as it looks.

The window over the future sink...

And finally, the dining area window. The bottom piece was a little bowed (common with this wood) so we clamped it down before nailing it to the wall.

All done!

The next day, I came back to fill all of the nail holes and deal with one more problem—the textured walls.

Some areas were worse than others, but I wanted a nice smooth look so it's not obvious that the insides of the window are drywall and not wood.

Doug the handyman was there and let me borrow his drywall mud and go crazy. I figured I'd put a coat or two up and make the seams less obvious (most people would use caulk, but I wanted to skim coat the drywall to hide the texture so I killed two birds with one stone). 

The kitchen drywall texture was the worst. The wall was also nowhere near straight, so I had to put a few coats on this one to try and even it all out.

This step is not necessary (especially if you have smoother walls) but I'm really trying to pay attention to detail with this house. I don't want to have to go back and redo anything later on.

I also added a few light coats over some of the more visible knots. Not sure how drywall mud will work out but I figured it couldn't hurt.

And that's where we're at now! I plan to sand and caulk everything on Sunday so it's ready for paint. I'm choosing my paint color carefully this time—after we make an Ikea trip (hopefully next weekend) and get our pantry and bench seating, I want to color match the whites so the room looks cohesive.

In other news, I've been keeping my eye out for home decor and seriously scored last week. Check out what I got for $24!

My treasures include two vintage glass window panes and small doors, an antique sled and paddle, pretty white dishes, antlers, two quilts, wood trays, a stool, 4 suitcases, a dremel kit, kitchen jars and canisters, and a large collection of glass insulators and more. Most of it was actually free from an abandoned garage my parents inherited from their tenants, and the rest was picked up at a local flea market. I can't wait to start decorating!

But first we must get through the next few weeks of hard work. Brad has been at the house every day working on the home theater room and is anxious to share his progress, so that will be coming in the next post!

Kitchen Chronicles: A blank slate (+ more house updates)

Our contractor and electrician have been working all day every day this past week on the house, and I'm happy to report that their job duties are nearing the home stretch.

Here's how the kitchen looks as of an hour ago:

Yes, our house is a full on construction zone. It's not just the kitchen, either. The hardwood guys came yesterday to rip out all of the old carpet/parkay in preparation of the wood installation.

Everywhere except downstairs is currently rocking the subfloor.

They actually have to redo the top steps because there is some wonkiness and wobbliness of the railing. A while back they did the same thing to the lower flight:

So while we're on the topic of flooring and stairs, this is the floor we bought:

It's Armstrong Shell White Walnut engineered hardwood, and I lo-o-ove them. I was looking for a lighter whitewashed warm gray wood this time around (after two houses with super dark floors) and these fit the bill.

Here's a shot I instagrammed after we had received the wood (ignore the purple cast):

And you'll never guess how much we paid. MSRP is $6.99 (most retailers stayed in this range) but after a ton of googling, I was able to find it for $1.99 here. It was part of their Timberland Collection which is a value grade, so the pieces are selected due to "natural character markings in the wood, which may include knots, mineral streaks, and natural grain variation." Since this wood is meant to look a little more rustic, I was down with that.

When we checked the website again before Thanksgiving, we saw that the price had been marked down to $1.89 shipped during a Black Friday sale! They told us that once the wood was gone it was gone forever and they probably wouldn't get anymore in stock, we jumped on that right away (this was before the house even closed—that's how bad I wanted that wood).

The total cost for the entire upstairs (almost 1600 sf) came to $2,952 shipped. Total bargain.

But just when we thought we hit the jackpot... our installer told us we needed to buy stair nose to finish off the edges of our steps:

Holy crap—have you guys ever shopped for pre-finished stair nose?! It's a 2" wide by 6.5' piece of wood. And it was SEVENTY DOLLARS FOR ONE PIECE (that's $70, not $7) And I needed 13.

I tried every solution possible in my head and but none of them seemed to work. I consulted with our installer who said they were pretty much necessary to do the job right.

After procrastinating for a couple weeks, I finally, reluctantly made the purchase today.

I was able to find them slightly cheaper on efloors.com, but seeing that number at checkout still made me nauseous:

So these 2" strips of wood cost almost 1/3 of what the whole house cost. Absurd.


Anyway, those should be here in two weeks at which point the installers can begin laying down the wood. They won't be able to start on the kitchen until the cabinets are in (4-5 more weeks) so they'll install everything except the kitchen for now.

And back to the kitchen progress. Here's how we left off last week:

Doug had just started taking down the drywall so they could work on the plumbing and electrical.

Here's the new wiring and piping in progress:

He also framed in a 14" wall where the new built in pantry will sit:

And filled in the cutout to the living room as well:

While the ceiling was cut open, we thought it'd be the perfect time to start on the recessed lights. Brad and I spent a few hours Sunday planning and wiring. There's 13 ceiling lights total which we split into three circuits. Excuse the rough sketch. I used what I had on hand.

Circles: Light locations  Dashed lines: Wood beams

In the top left (above the sink/main cabinet work area) there will be four lights on one switch. In the top right in the dining room there will be another four lights on one. And for the bottom row, that actually changed a bit after we realized that the switch over the bar area was connected to what will become pendant lights over our dining table, so the light over the bar is now connected to the four linear lights at the bottom. We had to split the lights up because more than four could be too much for one circuit to handle. Make sense?

Brad picked up a chalk line at Lowe's which we used to mark all of the studs (which will come in handy later on when we're installing our wood planks and beams!) But it was also necessary so we knew where to drill the holes for the ceiling lights.

Here's a shot of it after they patched up the drywall:

And a shot of the drywall going in:

Our new pantry wall!

The mud is still drying so they will begin sanding tomorrow.

Okay, now for the fun part... we bought our cabinets!

Here was the sketch we started with at Lowe's:

There have been a few changes but the overall layout is still the same—an L wall with gray cabinets and a island with white cabinets.

Here's a real shot of the gray cabinets, in a very similar style to ours (from Kraftmaid's website):

The style is called Durham Maple Square and the color is Greyloft. I originally chose a lighter gray, but after holding it up next to our backsplash (90% sure we're going with this one), I felt it needed more contrast and the darker gray won out:

Ignore the cabinet styles, we're just using those colors. I brought in a sample of our floor to make sure everything meshed well together. The counter swatches are not final at all, we just pulled them out for ideas. But I think we will go with a white counter on the gray cabinets and a dark gray counter on the white island (probably quartz). I realize this is a whole lotta white and gray, but once all of the wood pieces and accessories are brought in I think it will be really nice.

And now for the price breakdown. We knew Kraftmaid was running a promo for $1000 off if you upgraded to all plywood cabinets, so we took advantage of it. The day before ordering in we also found out that for just that weekend they were offering a 10% gift card. AND they were offering $1200 off if you spent 10k or more.

Here's how it broke down...

Subtotal: $11,322
-$1000 promo: $10,322
-$1200 promo: $9,122

And we'll be getting a $912 Lowe's gift card in the mail so essentially we got $11,322 worth of cabinets for $8,210.

Because we are using their installers, we also don't have to pay any sales tax on the cabinets or installation. All in all I think we got a good deal and we feel confident about our decision—especially because we can just let the pros do the work and not have to worry about it (we really have enough on our plates!)

I have a couple more things I was going to cover in this post (like a major update downstairs) but it's getting late and I have to meet the electrician at 8am to talk wall sconces in the new studio and living room (yay!). This weekend I plan to frame out the windows in the kitchen and studio, so there should be a lot to share next time.

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday break! I'll be here next week with an update :)