Our 50s Kitchen Renovation - Week 6
During week six the kitchen really started to change. Our kitchen and porch area both got their first coats of paint. We decided on a red and green color palette since many of my vintage kitchen decorations contain those colors. Red and green is a bit tricky, and we don't want it to look like Christmas, so we stayed away from forest green and stuck to the brighter, lighter mint green. I'll be adding lots of other colors, when I decorate which should help tone things down a bit.
Originally our kitchen was a darker, cranberry red, but since most of our walls would be now covered with cabinets, I decided on a brighter shade of red, to help it stand out. After looking at a ton of paint swatches we finally decided on "Neon Red" by Benjamin Moore.
We already picked out the countertop laminate a while ago, which will be mint green with a boomerang pattern, so we decided to paint the porch green to tie the two spaces together. We chose "Pistachio" by Benjamin Moore. With nothing on the walls yet, the colors may seem a bit crazy, but we think once it is decorated, it will all come together. (We hope.)
Neon Red, by Benjamin Moore. Trust me, this is not too red!
Pistachio, by Benjamin Moore. Ice-cream anyone?
Before the kitchen was even started, I had begun the work of refinishing our vintage metal Youngstown cabinets. After months of sanding, priming and painting, they were finally finished. In all, I refinished 8 upper cabinets and 10 lower cabinets, including two lazy-susans (a massive pain), a broom closet and the sink base. It was a lot of work, but they came out great and it was very satisfying to see them all stacked up together. (More on the cabinet refinishing process to come.)
Jenga anyone?
Norm, the finish carpenter, hung all the cabinets on the newly painted walls, so now we could really start to see what the kitchen will look like. He will also be making us a few additional pieces to match these cabinets, including part of the sink base and some accent shelving. We also had a local metal shop make new metal cleats to hang the upper cabinets from the wall. (We had some of the original cleats, but not enough for all the installation.)
Our lower cabinets had metal kick plates attached to the bottoms. Because our floors can never be perfectly straight, it made more sense to remove the kick plates and build a wooden platform on which to place the cabinets. That way Norm would have an easier time keeping them level. Since these cabinets are a bit different than most modern cabinets, there was a bit of a learning curve with the installation, but he is meticulous in his work and did an amazing job.
You can see the platform Norm built to support the lower cabinets.
The bulk of the cabinets installed. The window shown is temporary and will be resized and centered.
The broom closet and additional cabinet. A custom bookshelf will be installed in the space to the left of the broom closet.
The last bit that was done this week was the plumber came out and installed the plumbing under the sink area and worked on updating all our plumbing in the basement.