The Kitchen Remodel

This has been a long time in coming.  Like most of our projects, it has been quite a long gestation.  However, because we take so long, we are happy with our decisions for a long time.  Since we are investing so much into this major remodel, we want to be happy. Some decisions are made.  I bought my appliances with help from my trusty salesman, Lamont, at the RC Wiley here in Boise.  After talking with a repairman and looking at rebate opportunities, I decided to go with Kitchenaid. All will be white to match with the white cabinetry except the range top which only comes in stainless. The  range top and double oven were the major concerns and I like the way they look. The ovens are a lovely cobalt blue inside, which just makes me feel happy.  But more importantly, I like the lighting as it is on the sides which help to illuminate all levels of the oven.

I also bought a dishwasher and microwave.  Sadly we will be letting go of one of the first things we purchased when we were married, a Quasar microwave, that has lasted almost 30 years.  They don’t make ‘em like they used to.  But truth be told, it isn’t nearly as powerful as the new ones and takes almost twice as long to cook things.  I am expecting many explosions and boil overs as I get used to my newfound power.  It had to go sometime.  I offered it to my daughter and she wasn’t really thrilled with its dependable though impotent character.  I guess it is going off to the landfill, sigh.

I have also been working on the design of a kitchen backsplash.  I wanted it to look like a quilt, so I bought a few different tiles from kptiles.com to work with.  These are 6X6 tiles that are printed with china patterns for mosaics.  I took the tile I liked the most and went to the local Masonry Center where Kay helped me to find some matching tiles in solid brights.  Now for the design…

I was able to copy the color swatches off of the tile manufacturer site and pasted and enlarged them on Powerpoint slides so they covered the whole page.  I scanned the printed tile and pasted several over a slide so that the pattern matched.  I wanted to make sure that the pattern was the same size on paper as would be on tile.  I trimmed the printed powerpoint slides and then cut them into shapes and glued them onto 1/16 inch graph paper trying to leave 1/16 inch between the tiles for grout.  This was a very important step because when I initially started with an 18 inch square, the patterned tile was disproportionately drowned out by the solid color tiles.

Just the wrong scale in general.  The 12 inch square is much better visually.  Unfortunately, it will require more tile cutting, but then I don’t know the meaning of the word simple…

When we get the bids back from the remodeler, we’ll decide whether we will go forward with the project.  I am excited because everything is finally coming together, I hope...