We knew the kitchen needed updating. All the cabinets were made of brown pressed board and falling apart. The drawers were falling off and the doors were hanging askew. The inside cabinet shelves, made of particle board were rough and not easy to clean. They were dirty and broken. I hated them. Ditto, the countertops, made of some kind of white plastic. chipped and unlevel. The floor was about five layers deep over the original hardwood floor, built in the early thirties. I could see it under the dishwasher. I had no idea what kind of shape it was in, however, due to the aforementioned five layers on top of it. The top layer, of peel and stick squares was coming unstuck in places, revealing a one inch ply wood subfloor. All this to say, something needed to be done.
We had lived here twenty years when we found out, to our surprise, that we had a lot of equity in the home. So we decided to refinance, and take some cash, and fix some things. We took the cash, and decided to level the foundation first. Sadly, we ended up getting completely scammed by the "foundation repair" man we hired. We lost sixteen thousand dollars to him, due to our naiveness, and his scumminess. That sixteen thousand dollars would have nicely finished the kitchen, with some left over at the end.
So we hired another guy, who actually did do some leveling, and to remove the counters and kitchen floors. He did do some leveling. Not enough, but some. When the walls started cracking, we stopped. Sadly, this house will never be totally level, and I've come to accept that. Some old houses never will be level. He tore out the cabinets with a sledgehammer. And the walls. We ended up firing him, because he never showed up to work, and when he did show up, it was clear to us he was in over his head. He tore out part of the floor in the breakfast nook, and the way he was rebuilding it was kind of crazy. It wasn't level. It was weak. The screws were popping up out of the wood. And all the time, he was demanding more and more money. and tools. He wanted us to buy him tools. And he was unpleasant. The Mr. finally told him to take his stuff and go. He did, leaving the floor open to the crawl space and the outside elements as well, where the crawl space holes were. We wallowed around in the "hole" as we called it, for a few days, even having our 80 year old home health worker help us, trying to fix the floor he had left us. Finally we got smart, and we went and talked to our neighbor, who recommended someone he knew that was fair and honest and a good contractor.
We met the guy, and loved him right away. He fixed the breakfast nook floor, undoing and reworking most of what the previous guy had left us with. He installed the new-to-me cabinets that I had bought from a salvage store in Dallas. They had been sitting in my garage for months. I would go out and look at them, and wonder how they would look in the kitchen. They were gorgeous. White with lots of drawers, and decorative end shelves. And one triangular shaped glass fronted cabinet that I couldn't wait to see installed and lit up from the inside.
The only problem was, since we had lost that initial 16 K, we had to do things a little at a time. We had run out of money, because we had other things we had to fix, also. The kitchen was the last on the list, and also would end up being the biggest expenditure. So the new contractor would come and go, as money came in for us, alternating us with other jobs. And he has been a Godsend. The cabinets are in. The walls are painted. The trim is in, and the crown moulding. And last week he installed the new floor, on top of the old. Because what I didn't mention, was that when the unpleasant contractor finally got all five layers of the old floor removed, what we found below was pretty awful. The original hardwood was patched, and rotten in the corners. That had to be replaced. There was some kind of black paper all over it, which gave me grief for a few days, when I realized it could be asbestos. Fortunately, after a lab test, it was determined to be paper and nothing else. On top of that were a couple of layers of linoleum, and on top of that, the one inch sub floor, and on top of that, the peel and stick floor tiles that were coming unstuck. So, after much dithering, we decided, that rather than tile, which had been our first choice, and would have made the floor too heavy, and too tall for the adjoining dining room (there would have been a very large step up). We would just do a floating vinyl plank floor. Restoring the original was just not something we could do at this time, sad to say. But if at any time we change our minds, it's still an option. If we had put in tile, it would have taken away the option for restoration from us in the future, or for whoever lives here when we are gone, which I hope will be many years. So white, marble looking vinyl plank. Not everybody's cup of tea, but I like it, and it's worlds away from the dirty paper covered floor we walked on for a year, underneath it. It's so clean!
I walk into the kitchen now, and although it still isn't finished, the end is in sight. I smile to myself, as I putter around. It's a pleasure to cook, and even to do the dishes. The countertop is granite. The cabinet knobs are pink glass. Or whatever color I want them to be. For the month of July, celebrating Independence day, I turned everything red, white, and blue. Red glass knobs, blue curtains with stars. White ceramic caddies, for holding spoons, etc. It was lovely. Then back to the pink polka dotted curtains, and the pink glass knobs. When Spring comes, I might change to lemon yellow...
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