Fridge wall of cabinets nearing completion

More progress on the kitchen. The glass doors have been installed. Eventually the appliances will be replaced with stainless steel. I also have some cabinet pulls ordered for the tall doors (still to arrive). We’ll also be putting in lights in the glass door cabinets and the open cabinet over the fridge.

 

 

Making Headway with the Kitchen cabinets

Just a very quick update on the Kitchen cabinetry with some cell phone pics…

Before

Now… (cell phone camera)

Before

Now… (cell phone camera)

I’ll have the last of the cabinet doors done over Thanksgiving and put in the top cabinet doors to the glass shop to be fitted up. We’ll start on the breakfast bar conversion to a bookshelf through December. I wish the Fairy Godmother could send some cash but as it is we are moving forward… just more slowly then I had planned.

mosaic tile for bathroom backsplash

I’ve been out of town for about 10 days, however, hubby got the new mosaic backsplash tile installed in the “kids” bathroom. This is the extra bathroom upstairs which we are nearing completion with just a few things to finish such as the cabinet doors and repainting walls in a lighter yellow color.

We picked some with white, gray and glass (Lowes at $10 each) to match the “Flint Crystal” laminate counter we installed and here are some photos with a cell phone camera.

The mosaic tile from Lowes has some glass squares so it’s necessary that you use glass tile adhesive. This tile was sealed on the back but some glass tile is clear through so the color of the adhesive becomes important when dealing with glass. We picked white grout for this project and it will need to be sealed for protection and to retain it’s whiteness.

A few of the small tiles didn’t match the thickness of the others (probably a manufacturing error) so he just popped it out and replaced with another tile from the excess. For that reason you may want to plan on buying one extra sheet of mosaic tile which you can cannibalize pieces from.

We’ll be putting some edging along the top and side with 3/4 round trim, painted white.

Kitchen – Regular Program In Progress Now…

Got a leap on the kitchen progress again. All the cabinets on the stove wall are in various stages of completion. Here the cabinet drawers are installed with the new cup-pull, hardware. The cabinet itself hasn’t been waxed yet so you can see the color difference between the waxed drawers and the frame (click photos for close up view).

Overall, the horizontal drawers (which replace cabinet doors) I think makes the kitchen look bigger.

Another View

Finally, something in the kitchen is starting to pull together and the vision can be somewhat seen. I love these cabinets but I’m still a bit worried about the durability of the chalk paint.

I can’t wait til the old green countertops and backsplash are gone and replaced with granite or quartz! It will look WOWSER!

Cleaning Stove Top Burners and Pans

Of all the Pinterest cleaning ideas I’ve tried, this was the only one which really worked just like I read AND was super easy. It’s how to clean your stove top burners and the pans. If there is one pin to try, it is this one!

As always, follow the full link to get the info but in brief, you use gallon sized, plastic baggies, and put one burner or pan inside per bag, with about 1/4 or less of full strength Ammonia. Seal bag, let sit overnight, and in the morning the baked on grunge slides off with a light scrub or even rinse.

Lessons Learned: The only issues I would strongly caution you about is 1.) Ammonia is dangerous so have eye protection on or be very, very careful. You don’t want any of this to splash into your eyes, mouth or nose. 2.) Ammonia SMELLS! You might want to do this in the garage or on the back porch.

Future Use: Wow! Definitely this will be done any time I have horrible looking burners or pans. It will be on my regular cleaning schedule and would be great cleanup for after the holidays when we do lots of cooking and baking.

Homemade Flea Shampoo for Pets

I’ve known that animal rescue groups recommended Dawn liquid soap to wash kittens too young for flea treatments but I saw this on Pinterest and thought I’d give it a try. It combines equal parts of Dawn liquid dish detergent with vinegar. I mixed it into a squirt bottle and both dogs got a bath.

Lessons Learned: Reported success with dogs, only one of the two had a live flea during brushout. On the barn kitty, it reduced the fleas but still a lot there. Barn kitty was the worst infected and lives outdoors so while better then nothing, I think for outdoor pets, other chemicals may be needed.

Not quite sure that this removed any more fleas than just a bath would have… but it was cheap to put together and probably did exterminate a few more than just simple, non flea, shampoo. It might be more effective if you leave the soap on for a full 3-5 minutes like flea and tick shampoo has in the instructions.

Future Use: Liked it for the dogs but I think I’ll follow up with an aloe vera conditioner as they had rough skin due to the flea issue.

Note! This won’t cure your flea problem because they are in the house, the bedding etc… so the house needs to be treated. Fleas also have a life cycle so while you killed the adults, you still have eggs that will hatch and give you more fleas! Although, if you don’t have a bad issue with fleas you can just keep bathing the animals, using a flea comb to remove active fleas and you can destroy the flea population that way. It just takes a lot longer and patience.

Edited to Add: after doing this once more, and seeing what happened, I can tell you pretty conclusively that this recipe kills no more fleas then a regular bath would (we did one dog with regular shampoo and another with the Dawn concoction). It also dries out the dogs’ skin something terrible!

DIY Changing Solid Cabinet Doors to Glass Inserts

I found a great article here about the step-by-step process of converting solid cabinet doors to glass. We lucked out and our cabinet doors were panel doors. In the long run, this saved us some substantial money as we were able to change the look of our kitchen without paying a carpenter!

Like I’ve written before always do a test door before proceeding with your actual cabinets. I had several cabinet doors I was removing for good (converting to open cabinetry) so it wasn’t a problem for me. However, if you don’t have a spare door, check out your local Habitat for Humanity’s ReStore where they sell odds and ends for home remodeling for dirt cheap prices.

Husband used a router but if you don’t have one, they are available for rental from tool shops. You can also find them used at tool consignment shops, on sale during Black Friday at Home Improvement stores, and off of Craigslist. They have great uses!

In the following photos, I marked important areas with a black Sharpie so you could better see what we were doing. Lime green lines are to show areas of interest.This work is done on the INSIDE of the cabinet door, not the face.

For this DIY experiment, we used the paint test door I made for the kitchen.  The areas marked with an X will be removed during this conversion.

When you look at the door edge you can see where the pieces have been fitted together to make the door. A panel cabinet door is not cut from one piece so it makes it easier to do this conversion.

Measuring this area tells you the depth to set your router blade.

Measuring off this side joint, you can figure the depth of the long cutting line from the edge of the inside of the cabinet door. We first measured the longest sides of the cabinet door, the short side, and lastly, the short side with the arch.

We will be clamping down a guide board. The Guide Board helps the router give a steady pass down a straight line. Measure the edge of the router to the edge of the other side of the blade, like so:

The Guide Board is measured at both ends to match the router edge to blade measurement and is clamped down.

The Guide Board was adjusted after we checked the router blade at the draw cut line. The router blade is sitting on the inside of the cut line and that is where it should be (click photo for a close up view).

VERY IMPORTANT!

The Router must be moved around the OUTSIDE of a rectangle (or circle) on a COUNTERCLOCKWISE movement.

The Router must be moved around the INSIDE of a rectangle (or circle) on a CLOCKWISE movement.

If you goof up that is okay – the above directions just make it easier for the router to cut.

The first pass of the router doesn’t make the cut we need so we go back for a second pass. This isn’t unusual during the first cut and you can always adjust the blade. We did the two longest sides first, the short side, and lastly the side with the arch. If you look closely at the second pic in this series (click on any photo for a close up) you can see how the panel is made up of fitted pieces:

The Guide Board is moved when we do the short ends.

All four sides of the inside of the panel are now cut.

The arch of the panel (on the inside of the door) also needs to be removed. You can do this with your router, by just scrubbing the bits out by running the router against the edges.

The inside of the panel lifts right out:

and the cabinet door becomes two pieces…

The doors were painted with chalk paint and went from orange oak stain to an off-white and distressed.

Glass was installed by Robinson Glass with 4 doors: 9″ x 21″ glass inserts with “seedy” (glass with a slight bubble pattern) at approximately $14.50 each panel ($54 total). If doing the glass installation yourself, remember to use a clear silicone caulk.

Want to see more about cabinets? There’s more on the blog right here….