Kitchen Renovation Update

Open shelving and hidden appliances will give our galley kitchen some breathing room. (Week 9 of renovation.)

This is just a quick update on the kitchen.  The open shelves that I designed and Marcello built are now hung above the shallow cabinets in our galley kitchen.  We opted for shelves instead of cabinets on this wall to keep the space as open as possible.   We are on the hunt for the right long steel rod to be mounted through the brackets of the bottom shelf.  We’ll use this to hang pots on S hooks against the wall.

The steam riser you see in the foreground is just a reality in pre-war NYC apartments.  We exposed it to provide more heat in the kitchen.  Our kitchen was the coldest, draftiest room in the house prior to the renovation so our contractors insulated the heck out of the back wall and ceiling and they built an extra radiator into one wall.  It should be toasty in there next winter.

We designed the base cabinets with a nook for the microwave in order to keep the countertops less cluttered.  Speaking of which, the cleft slate counters are being installed tomorrow and then the faucets can be hooked up and we’ll be in business!

Oops! The first attempt at custom panels for the fridge didn't quite fit the bill.

Our contractor installed this tongue and groove wood ceiling to add more texture to the mostly white room.

Kitchen Renovation Misadventures:

1) I messed up the “final” coat of tung oil on the kitchen floor and we had to sand down a layer to get rid of the white film that was created from a too-thick coat of oil.  We still need to do a bit more sanding and then put on the real final coat.  The oiling process with Sutherland Welles products was pretty arduous.  It’s a great DIY project, but requires a lot of patience.

2) The custom panels for our appliances weren’t quite right in round one.  Basically they need to be larger and cover the entire front surface of our Liebherr fridge doors.  Ditto for the Bosch dishwasher panel.  The handle placement needs to be tweaked as well.

3) Finally, the glass door, which I painstakingly ordered from Dykes, looked a bit funny when they lopped off the top edge of the wood to make it fit our awkward exterior door.  (The door to our deck is actually in the frame of an original brownstone window, so it is short and requires a step up).  This lopped off door was an early misadventure that we decided to live with.  You have to pick your battles in any renovation and I wasn’t up for battling the guys at Dykes Lumber.  I was pretty sure that no one else would notice the lopped off door, unless of course, I blogged about it!

Scott and I are VERY happy with our kitchen and we ought to be because we designed every inch of it.  I drove Josh, our architect, to madness with comments, like:  ”but if the cabinets were just one inch deeper, I could fit Granny’s china …”

Our contractor, Nick, and his carpenter, Marcello, have done an amazing job of executing the designs.  Thanks guys!  We can’t wait to move in and start cooking.  Or burning toast, in my case.

Here’s a shot of the kitchen before renovation, courtesy of photographer Moya McAllister.

Kitchen BEFORE renovation. Photo: ©Moya McAllister