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Yeah, we've already realized those potential impact points. Another one is in the corner to the right of the sink where the **** on the larger corner door on the right will actually land square on one of the ***** of the door on the left. We installed the Blumotion soft close hinges, but they have a fairly light "release" point when nearly wide open and can easily swing fast to the full open position if you don;t manually control the
swing with your hand. My wife has already decided that she will simply leave her hand on the **** until the door opening motion is stopped so she can minimize the potential for contact with the *****.
For wear points, we modeled our coating choices and combination after someone else's kitchen where they did the same thing and the cabinets still look great after three years of daily family use. We're hoping for the same success, and the fact that we're down to two kids at home is already reducing the amount of daily use on the kitchen hardware.
Also, when I sprayed the doors, the exterior surfaces got the primer coat plus three base coats of the milk paint and then three coats of the high performance clear topcoat. This combination has apparently created a very tough surface. On the drawer front I almost drove the screw through from the back side, the sharp screw tip dimpled and left a hairline crack in the surface of the wood, but the finish is completely intact with no chipping or peeling at all. I'll just lightly "touch" that dimple with a small hammer blow and may not even need to touch up the finish at all.
Can't let the Coffee thread migrate to page 2. So my wife picked up a little end table at Home Goods the other day for a spare bedroom, and it came with a dual outlet / USB plug in the back of it. An end table with a built in extension cord. Brilliant! (yeah, this is probably old news to everyone on here ..)
on Amazon - seriously, that's what the box said - and it's an exact match to the one on the Broyhill end table she bought. It has a nice heavy gauge cord, almost 10' long. For $16 I think it's a great way to add a charging outlet (when the in-laws are over everyone is always asking if I have a charging plug for their toys) at the tables. I also added a combo wall outlet in my kitchen near the phone.
I love it...Seriously. Yeah, those tables with the charger ports and all I just discovered myself. Even more brilliant is they make recliners with thise built into the armrest in a compartment. Sheer genius I say.
Byron, I'm glad you liked Bosch. We've moved on to Mr. Robot - since I'm a nerd. My wife likes it too, so it can't be too esoteric. I think it has a great narrative on the basement and closets of American culture.
Pete, I noticed the glare on the left of the "before" photo darkened the image enough to see the pattern in the splash guard tile. It skews the overall contrast between the before and after pictures, but your kitchen still looks great with how bright and clean your work has made it - very feng shui.
I did a remodel on the kitchen before we sold it. After the new floors, walls, and counter tops - I developed a bad case of screwit-i'mtiredofthis, and we never got to the cabinet faces as we planned... and you succeeded.
We are fortunate that we did not have to worry about floors, walls, or counter tops as they were all in great shape at the start. ALL we did was paint the face frames and replace the doors and drawer fronts. We did have to replace the dishwasher in the middle of the project because it finally died (immediately followed by the vacuum cleaner and then the toaster!).
The before picture was taken late one afternoon with lots of sun coming in from the big bay window, and the after picture was taken right after it got dark with virtually no external light input form either the bay window or the skylights. However, that's not why you can't see the pattern in the after picture... the pattern is no longer there! ... it's not just a lighting difference! The pattern is GONE! All of the darker diamond shaped feature tile have now been custom hand-painted by my wife to match all the surrounding tile. She's always hated those darker feature tiles, so she finally took 4 extra light colored tiles to HD, matched the six basic colors in those natural stone tiles to get six small sample bottles of paint, and then hand painted the natural randomness onto each of the dark tiles so they would just blend into the rest of the surrounding tiles. Even looking up close, you virtually cannot tell the difference for ANY of her painted tiles because she used a flat paint.
The diamond shape was initially created by cutting the lighter and darker tiles on 45's, and unless you can find the cut lines, you simply cannot tell which tile are 100% natural and which ones are painted over. The pictures below show the difference more clearly.
All of the darker diamond shaped feature tile have now been custom hand-painted by my wife to match all the surrounding tile. She's always hated those darker feature tiles, so she finally took 4 extra light colored tiles to HD, matched the six basic colors in those natural stone tiles to get six small sample bottles of paint, and then hand painted the natural randomness onto each of the dark tiles so they would just blend into the rest of the surrounding tiles. Even looking up close, you virtually cannot tell the difference for ANY of her painted tiles because she used a flat paint.
Wow, that's some serious detail work there. Hey, Stewart, how can we rep Pete's wife?
I'll take care of ALL of those reps... TRUST me on that!!
Anyway, she's an amazingly gifted woman (except she got DID get stuck with me over 30 years ago). We had about 9 of those medallion shapes throughout the kitchen, and the whole tile painting job took her about 45 minutes and cost less than $15 in paint.
I tried to rep, but I have to be very careful how I say this without implying anything inappropriate - I have to "redistribute" the reps before I can rep Pete again.
So... my eyes didn't trick me - your wife did. That's great work. Is there a protective coating on there to prevent the paint from sloughing off or discoloring with age/wear?
I also could not rep Pete (wife included) for the job well done in the kitchen and especially the tiles. I had to read the description of the work twice, because frankly I didn't know you could do that to tile.
No, Rich, there is no protective clear coat. My wife considered it, but she chose to start "simple" with a high end acrylic flat paint, and it is holding up perfectly so far. She actually did the tile back in July, so they have already had many many episodes of being wiped down at this point, and there is absolutely no evidence of chipping, peeling, flaking, or fading. We've discussed the potential wear issue, but here is her perspective... "It's easy and fast and cheap, and if it chips or fades, I'll just touch it up again in a few minutes and keep going." After now having done the cabinet frames, doors, and drawer fronts, we would probably add a topcoat of the General Finishes High Performance stuff we used on the cabinets because it has proven to be very tough and is available in a flat finish.
The truth is, the painted tiles are our favorite "secret" feature in the kitchen! Our second favorite feature is the open shelves (pictured below) where I removed a cabinet door and partition to convert a two-cabinet wide set of shelves to a three-cabinet wide open shelf unit (we really did not need that cabinet space). The wider span for unsupported shelves required thicker shelf material, so I used some inexpensive stair treads. Initially, the thicker stair treads looked too bulky in the unit, so I routed a barely noticeable thumbnail profile on the front edge which tricks the eye into thinking that the shelves are a tiny bit thinner (shows up better in the bottom picture, but you can only see the bottom side of the thumbnail which is actually present on both the top and bottom limits of the face edge). Those little thumbnail profiles create the tiniest impression of a shadow on the front shelf edge, and your eye "thinks" the shelf is a little thinner than it actually is. The effect is not obvious in the pictures, but in person, it makes a real difference. Obviously, my wife displays her small collection of antique yellow ware bowls there, along with a few antique wooden butter molds, and we think it's really a nice touch in the kitchen. In the pictures, you can also see a couple more places where the darker stone tile have been painted over.
Oh.... I installed one of those USB combination outlets under those open shelves last year when we were considering downsizing. We've enjoyed the USB connectivity, and I need to put a few more of them is other places in the house.
It's amazing what can be done with just a little thought. And I'll bet there's no way you could have gotten a regular contractor to make that modification, without him wanting to rip out those two cabinets and sell you a new one.
When I wanted to have my kitchen done, I was told so many times it couldn't be done, dishwasher not next to the sink, 27" deep base cabinet for the entire cooktop counter area, setting a regular fridge deep into the wall so it appears counter depth, etc. That's why I ended up doing it all myself with a lot of help from a friend.
Thanks, Saint. I really like that concept of a recessed refrigerator! If I were ever to do a gut & replace remodel, I would try to do the exact same thing!
I think a contractor might would have done the shelf unit for us, though, because that cabinet is actually a single unit. It only had an internal partition, and once I cut out the vertical face frame piece, the partition came out easily. I did, however, add some additional reinforcing mounting screws along the top rear of the cabinet to help compensate for the reduced structure on the face of the cabinet.
Also, that triple wide cabinet used to be completely enclosed with three doors on it. While I was out of town on business several years ago, my wife got my oldest son to remove one of the vertical face frame pieces and take off the two doors on the right. Since that has worked out as well as it did, it just made good sense (to us, anyway) to go ahead and open up the rest of the cabinet. It was a convenient decision, too, because my wife had celebrated the kitchen face lift by purchasing a few more pieces of yellow ware, and she was out of space to display them -- until now!
10-10-2017, 10:25 AM
Have a great weekend all! Sous, how's that mod coming?