Flooring renovation, kitchen renovation

new kitchen laminate floor

The parade marches on, the kitchen improves in little baby steps. A long view of the kitchen floor can be seen to the left. Mr has doggedly been working on our floor and kitchen. I think he finally became as frustrated with this antique house as I have been for the past three years. I rehabbed the cabinets three years ago. From day one in this house I could not live with the disgusting grease laden 1960-70s cabinets. They had no amenities (pull outs, racks etc.), a drab look and uneven surface. The countertops had such bad water damage that they shed sawdust, and the laminate lifted off its wood backing when leaned on. I rehabbed those cabinets before moving into the space. It was a huge, long project of stripping, scrubbing, priming, then painting the cabinets. That then progressed to replacing the hardware, hinges, and shelves with new strong flat melamine encased wood that made the cabinets feel new, and also made them easy to clean.

new floor sweeper for keeping the room
neat and clean...note our new kitchen color
on the walls- sparkle orange-love it!

laminate floor

Today's kitchen improvements were to continue laying the laminate flooring into the laundry room/ pantry (left). The door to the laundry had to be trimmed on the bottom and the top to fit over the new flooring. Moldings had to be removed and are yet to be put back in place to adjust to the new flooring height. It is just great, to see the flooring covering everything on the floor right up to under the washer and dryer.  All of the horrible flooring, that was present when we purchased the house, is gone. Thank God!  It made my skin crawl! A repeating theme through my writings here is that changing the floor, changes everything. These photos are proof positive of my mantra. Take a look at some of the old photos and I think you will agree with my evaluation.

laminate floor in kitchen

molding finish for laminate floor

close up of laminate flooring top

close up of flooring back with tongue and groove and foam backing

Kitchen flooring improvements over the last few days have included some kick molding mounted between the new floor and the cabinet floors. It also was installed on the end of the cabinets where the run of cabinets end. We finished the end of the cabinets with beadboard and the kick molding. This kick molding (seen to the right and above) makes a lovely finished surface, preventing dirt from seeping under the cabinets, and making cleaning and maintenance much simpler. We had to make a decision what color we wanted to use here. Mr insisted black was perfect because we have black appliances and there is a black fleck in the counter-tops. I could see I wasn't going to win this one, so we had to bring the black home and put it in place before he realized he was dead wrong.  After returning to the store we ended up bringing home one piece of each available color in order to make a good decision. This is what we decided - white, too light and stark -gray blue, way too blue -brown-completely wrong for the rest of the room and then the almond shown here in the photos above. The almond was our final choice because of its neutrality and the fact that it made a good transition between the white cabinets and wood toned flooring. The kick molding really makes the whole flooring job look professional, and eliminated the do-it-yourself look I wanted to avoid.

new kitchen wall and ceiling colors

I wanted to share our updated kitchen colors. We kept and freshened the Olympic paint "Stratosphere" blue ceiling color...all really seem to love this color on the ceiling...and a new color
Valspar "Orange Sparkle" for the walls. It has just the right amount of "pow" to put some life into this darker kitchen. This Orange Sparkle replaced a neutral off white beige color that I thought would call attention to the water view out the windows, downplaying the room walls. It did do just that, but in the dregs of the winter, it just wasn't enough color to lift spirits against the cold.  This pale orange seems to do the trick for lifting spirits. We both like it. The room had to be repainted anyway because when the foundation was put under the kitchen, the walls took a beating and sustained cracks that had to be spackled again and then repainted. It ended up being a blessing because Mr never would have been willing to repaint the kitchen so soon. I did the beige paint job, he did the newer light orange one. The down and dirty is that it is done and it looks super comfortable and clean. Love it!