A Kitchen Odyssey: From the Beginning

Prior Post A Kitchen Odyssey: Follow Along If You Dare

I thought it might be helpful to tell you where we’ve been before embarking on where we plan to go on this remodeling journey. A bit of insight and background goes a long way on a project like this.

Our suburban ranch-style home was built in the late sixties, along with several other homes on our street. We purchased it in 1995 from the original owners, who had done very little (good) to it over the years. In fact, when I first toured the home with our agent, I was shocked at what I found (chronicled in an earlier post titled “What’s That Smell?“) The galley-style kitchen had stained and worn linoleum, dirty wood cabinets, the original electric cooktop and double ovens, and cracked countertops. The color scheme was dirty beige, with some hideous wallpaper accent, and the room was very dark.

Prior to moving in we did a mini-remodel on the kitchen. It was very low-budget, as the whole house had to pretty much be gutted. (We had to remove all carpeting, wallpaper and paneling, refinish hardwood floors, re-texture walls, paint every room, replace doors, tear out an illegally enclosed porch, among other things.) So we gave our ten-year-old a sledgehammer and let him go to town on the old tile countertops, we tore out the fan hood, stovetop, dishwasher, fridge, floor, sink, and fixtures. We pulled off all the cabinet doors and steamed off the wallpaper. Then we started repairing, repainting and replacing.

We added a gas line for the new Dacor 5-burner stovetop, had new black-and-white tile counters installed along with sink and fixtures. The cabinets were prepped and painted a light gray, as were all the doors and drawer fronts with new hardware. All new appliances, except the double ovens, were installed. And finally walls were painted and vinyl flooring installed. This makeover lasted until about two years ago.

In 2006, the dishwasher developed a leak in the front seal and we came home one day to find the floor in front of it raised and swollen from water. Time for action…again. We had to tear out the dishwasher and the vinyl to get to the subfloor. Not such an easy task, however, as there were 3 layers of vinyl and linoleum. The original linoleum floor, a second vinyl layer probably from the 1980s, and the layer we had installed. The years and traffic had caused the first two layers to practically fuse together, and the first layer was almost impossible to separate from the subfloor. Shoulda hired a pro. But we made the necessary repairs, installed a new dishwasher and chose to replace the linoleum with a FLOR product, as a temporary fix. A rather unconventional choice, as most homeowners don’t like carpet in a kitchen. But this is not your ordinary carpet. FLOR comes in large squares, that are easy to put down, and should there be a spill, you can literally pick it up and rinse it off in the sink! It’s actually held up well, but I don’t like it near as much as I thought. We also decided to repaint the walls and cabinets during this time, which is where we made our mistake.

Apparently when the cabinets had been repainted in 1995, an oil-based paint had been used. In 2006, we used an acrylic paint, which was fine at first, but has since started to peel away…a little at a time, leaving our cabinets looking, well, tacky (see photo at right). Hence our current call to action.

Next Time: What Needs to Be Done