11. Lights, Hardware, Action?

July 15, 2012January 20, 2016 / Apple Hill Cottage / Leave a comment

The kitchen cabinets are looking creamy and shiny — the luscious color of steamed milk. They are ‘curing’ in the garage bedroom, and before we leave them for awhile, I have a confession to make : I spent as much on the new hardware for them as we spent on the cabinets themselves.

The bottom two handles are from an antique cupboard that we bought from the E.N. Miller Antique Mall (***** 5 stars) in Verona last year. It is the bottom to an old schoolhouse cupboard that held art supplies. We will be using it as the island in the kitchen. It has great charm, but could be considered by some to be in rough shape. More on its transformation later…

The handles are wonderful — old, heavy, off-set pulls — and I wanted those exact handles for the other cabinets. I found them online at VanDyke Restorers. I’ve blanked out how much they were individually, but the final total was about $280. (I missed out on the sale price by “thinking” about whether I really wanted to spend that much. When I made the decision to buy — a day later –they were two dollars more!)

I confess to having measured the holes on the cabinets. And I ordered 3″ handles. They don’t fit. The holes are actually 2 7/8″ apart. Stupid me, I assumed that handles were uniform on the half inch. I guess that is modern cabinetry. Carpenter husband assures me it’s only a minor glitch, but the cabinets are painted, and I’m ready to dress them up with their finery, but now we have to drill new holes. Patience is being taught here…

Painted cabinets awaiting their handles.

The next step is the lighting and that means rewiring (not MY job) before the ceiling can be installed. This is what Michael reads before bed:

Bedtime reading — It puts him right to sleep!

On to the fun stuff — the lights. Michael hung them temporarily so we could visualize and also see if the kitchen was bright enough. (Yes, at our age we like lots of light — no squiggly bulbs here!)

These are just up temporarily, so ignore extensions cords hanging from them! (We are visual learners…)

The light in the center is over the island; the ones that are pendants are on either side–over the sink and over the pass-through. (I think we will lower them a couple of inches.) I realize that’s backwards and most people have hanging lights over the island, but we tried it and like this better. It’s more symmetrical, and I like symmetry! A LOT! When I see the asymmetrical, I want to go fix it.

And now, back to the island cabinet…Michael spent many hours on these beautiful doors:

The center of the doors was originally veneer. It was warping and buckling so I scraped it off, and we decided to put thin wainscot on because that’s what is on the inside of the cupboard. They looked like this:

Before…

He painstakingly beveled all the edges and then had to get just the right stain mix to match hundred year old wood.

The mixologist at work…

We also spent time researching what kind of finish was on the cabinet and how to clean it. The librarian did the research, the woodworker did the experimenting. (What a team!) We determined it was lacquer and cleaned it with a mixture of linseed oil and turpentine. They were detailed instructions and if you want the full article on cleaning and restoring shellac, lacquer, or varnish you can find it here. http://www.ca.uky.edu/hes/fcs/FACTSHTS/HF-LRA.053.PDF We still aren’t finished with the cupboard, but it looks lots better already, and the doors look like they were original.

With the temperature hitting 100 degrees, we were glad to work inside in air conditioned comfort.

How amazing that we have air conditioning in our humble cottage when our walls look like this:

and this:

It looks like someone took a shotgun to it, but it was really just Clara’s picture wall. It was covered with photographs. She must have moved them around a lot…

(Sigh…)

Patience is being taught here…

7. Imperfectly Sanded, Imperfectly Primed

June 30, 2012January 20, 2016 / Apple Hill Cottage / 2 Comments

Kitchen Cabinet Redux:

We bought the imperfectly sanded, imperfectly primed kitchen cabinets in two different places at two different times. The first (and main) batch was purchased at Construction Junction for $225. They include 3 base cabinets and 4 wall cabinets in almost exactly the sizes we needed. The sink base was seriously injured–it was in such bad shape that it was almost a deal breaker. We tried to get them to come down in price because of it, but they were firm. We left the cabinets there the first time, thought about it overnight, and went back the next day. They were still there. (Surprise, surprise–everyone else thought they were supremely ugly as well!)

It took Michael an entire day to rebuild the sink base. Here are before/after shots:

On the dolly headed for the workshop…

What a difference!

While sanding the sink base, I found a clue as to its origins: on the top was stamped William Schenck & Co., Inc. and underneath were the words Step Saver. When I googled these words I found a fragment of a newspaper article from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, May 31, 1952. Apparently the cabinet company was going to have a display booth at the brand new, state-of-the-art Greater Pittsburgh Airport. The cabinet company was located in Evans City, PA. Judging from the quality of workmanship, I’d say these were not expensive cabinets. The owners didn’t take care of them well either. Four layers of paint scraped off at the same time, which left only the original varnish to sand off.

The second batch we found at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore in Edgewood. These were much nicer and higher quality cabinets, both in the way they were manufactured AND in the way the owners had restored them. They were primed; they were painted beautifully in a very nice shade of high-gloss cream. I spent some time wishing the paint wasn’t chipping off in key places. I even asked Michael if they could just be touched up? Of course, the answer was no. We bought 3 wall cabinets–two for $35 and one for $40. Two are exactly the same size; Michael will build a base for them, and they will be re-purposed as a pass-through/peninsula/bar between the kitchen and the dining room. To finish, they will get a butcher block top made from Sapele wood from the Hardwood Lumber Company in Ohio. The third cabinet has lovely glass doors (which is why we bought it) and, as yet, it is place-less. While sanding them, I found a tag on the back dated May 11, 1949.

Tag found on the back of the high end cabinets dating them in May of 1949.

It says they were to be made for General Interiors for the Rose job. These cabinets are made of poplar–no plywood here–and are very heavy and expensively made. Mrs. Rose must have had a yellow kitchen, for underneath the nice cream paint is a sunny shade of BRIGHT yellow. Yes, an early 50’s kitchen color!

The cabinets are ready,

The tools are set,

Let’s go Prime!

Some tips for priming:

Put on some good music or a book on CD. Priming is as boring as sanding, but it’s not as LOUD! One can actually hear the birds singing outside.
Have a clean rag and a dish of water near by for goofs. Not that anyone would goof…but if one would happen to get a spot of primer somewhere it doesn’t belong, a wet rag applied immediately will help.
We are going to use oil-base paint to finish the cabinets, but Missy at Sherwin-Williams assured us that using a water-based primer will be fine. It sure is easier! If your cabinets aren’t as well sanded as ours are :-) you can buy adhesion primer that is miraculous stuff and will stick to everything. It is $$$.
Primer dries quickly, so don’t put much primer in the paint pan. Have both a brush and a roller handy, but keep them moist with primer, so they don’t dry out. And don’t go away and forget to cover them. Clean your brush when finished, but a roller will keep overnight in a plastic baggie if you tape it up tightly.
I worked on two drawers/doors at once. By the time the second one is done, the primer has dried on the first one, and it can be turned over and finished on the second side.
Prime the spots that need to be brushed first; then go over the brush marks with the roller. (All tips courtesy of Homeworks Contracting, Inc.)
The corners are brushed on;

and then finished with a roller.

The cabinets are almost ready to be painted. The only step left to do is to sand the primer lightly with a fine grit sanding block to get rid of bumples.

And the next installment is: Painting the imperfectly sanded, imperfectly primed kitchen cabinets. (I’m sure they will be imperfectly painted as well…)

2. The Sanding Queen

May 30, 2012December 6, 2020 / Apple Hill Cottage / 2 Comments

Fast forward to April/May of this year. A lot of stuff happened in between, and we’ll get to that in later posts, but for now, we are working on the kitchen. As in taking out walls–that’s a later post too–but for the past few weekends, I’ve been sanding. Not just smoothing rough edges, but taking off 4 coats of paint and the original varnish of kitchen cabinets. Oh did we dither about kitchen cabinets! They are so expensive, and I want white. The white cabinets that one can purchase at the BB stores are not wood; laminate, thermofoil, melamine, lacquer, acrylic–they have all sorts of fancy names and initials for what is really just junkboard. I’m a purist; I like real; I like old; I like authentic. So I wanted wood cabinets. The unfinished cabinets at Home Depot and Lowe’s were oak. It seemed a shame to buy oak cabinets and paint them white… So we haunted the Habitat for Humanity Restores in Washington and Edgewood and Construction Junction in Point Breeze. It took several visits in all places–and we found some other cool stuff in the meantime–but one day we came upon Really Ugly Cabinets. They were so ugly, we almost passed them right by.

Looks like a square robot from The Flintstones to me…

But when we stopped and figured it out, they were almost a perfect fit for the sizes of cabinets that we needed. Straight out of the early fifties–made from sandable birch plywood all through. They weren’t quite the doors I wanted, but for $225 they will work. Since we saved so much money on cabinets, the plan now is to buy really expensive countertops!

So now I am the sanding queen. You know the song. Unfortunately the only words I know are the sanding queen, da da da da da, she’s the sanding queen, da da da da da da the sanding queen. I didn’t even know it was an Abba song until I saw Mamma Mia! with Meryl Streep. But in my defense, it probably came out in the late seventies, early eighties when I was busy with babies.

I made the mistake of putting stripper on the first one. Oh, it worked okay, but it was very messy. Turns out, the coats of paint were put on right over the varnish, (NO PRIMER!) and they just peel right off with a scraper, which is much easier!!! 4 different colors–grey, red, lavender, green, and then the varnish. Any takers for those porcelain eyeballs?

We set up my cabinet shop on the side of the back porch until this past weekend when the temperatures soared into the nineties. I moved into the air conditioned comfort of the living room and Michael hooked up the sanders to a vac. It’s a complicated system of hoses and extension cords and duct tape. He’s done it for me twice now, and the last time I was supposed to be paying attention so I could do it myself next time. I think I’ve got it. The biggest problem is that the two main sanders I use have different sizes of exhaust holes and I have to figure out which one goes where with what vacuum hose and they all get entangled with the extension cords. But Michael was the original Mr. Tool Guy–and he can always rescue me. The best part about the vacuum is that I can take off my breather mask! Always wear your safety glasses (AWYSG).

Just for variety, I’m also sanding the four doors to the built-in kitchen cupboard in the corner.

These doors have antiquing from the seventies, bright orange paint, and then two layers of green. On both sides!

Here’s a better picture–you can really appreciate the color.

I have also learned about grit. The lower the number on sandpaper the rougher it is. For instance, if one is taking off 4 layers of paint, one wants to choose 80 grit or below. Once the piece is down to bare wood, 180 or 220 is for finishing and making the wood really smooth. I’ve been liking the little “Mouse” sander that has a point and gets into corners. (Michael just returned from HD this evening as I am writing this with a new sander for me. A square “finish” sander. He said it was for me, but the second sentence out of his mouth was “I’ve never ever had a finish sander.”)

BEFORE

Michael must have been jealous of all the fun I was having sanding, because he got into the act also. Last fall we bought a big table at the Restore for $35.00 — a great deal. It’s been sitting in the living room with a table cloth over it (protecting the beautiful finish!) I was planning on staining or painting the top dark, dark green and calling it an old reclaimed table. But just see what Michael the carpenter can do–(even without a finish sander).

AFTER

Now my old reclaimed table idea has to be rethunk! I’m not sure what to do with it now. Michael likes natural finishes, but I sort of wanted it to be dark. I went to look at all the stains, but just couldn’t decide yet. That’s for another day when inspiration hits.

Sanding is boring. The arm gets tired. The sander is loud. The vacuum is louder. The back starts to hurt. The mind wanders. There’s plenty of time for thinking, for praying, for counting blessings, for wondering, for comparing sanding to real life. Cleaning off layers of grime, old paint, and junk to expose the beautiful wood beneath. That’s what trying to live a holy life is like, isn’t it? Always we’re scraping off the gunk that the world leaves on us. Some of it’s been there for years–applied incorrectly, but still it sticks until we really try to scrape it off. And, oh boy, is it hard to get out of the corners! I’m thinking of the book I read last year called Somewhere More Holy by Tony Woodlief. It is some of the most beautiful writing I’ve ever read; he talks about home being where the sacred and the mundane meet when we search for God in the small everyday things–like sanding, like cleaning, like taking something ugly and reclaiming it. Next weekend I’m going to be sanding again. And the week after. And the week after. I’m sure I’ll tire of it. I just have to keep remembering what the finished product will be. Beautiful. Free of gunk. As good as I can make it. And I’ll post some pictures.