Pass-Through

One day, oh, about 6 years ago, I was walking around in our kitchen trying to figure out something new I could do to that room. I first thought about moving the fridge against a different wall, but that wouldn't work, I decided, because there that would have put the fridge up against a baseboard heater. Then I thought about tearing down the wall between the kitchen and the living room, but I quickly discounted that idea because it would entail messing with electrical wires and such - plus that wall could be a load-bearing wall, I further opined. Then it hit me: We could put a pass-through on that one wall, the wall  between the kitchen and the living room. 

It's a good thing this pass-through idea was a good one because shortly after I suggested the idea to Bill I heard his reciprocating saw buzzing and went in to investigate and found a gaping hole in the wall!

He soon had that hole trimmed with beautiful barn wood, though, and I heaved a sigh of relief: That heretofore dark corner of the kitchen was transformed by the pass-through of light from the living room. 

Oh, and a bonus: People in the kitchen could now see into the living room. Cool! 

My Dad - one of our biggest cheerleaders in re to any remodeling we did - came to see us one day shortly after the pass-through went in, and he suggested we take pictures and use the pass-through as a sort of frame. So that's what we did. 

But this project was not over yet: I had the idea to add some gingerbread at the top of the new opening. After I came up with a pattern, Bill insisted that there was NO WAY he could cut such an intricate pattern in hard wood.

The next day when I got home from work, Bill presented me with a gift: He'd rough-cut the design in wood, and it was lovely.

Now it was my turn to do some work: I got busy with my rotary tool, shaping and smoothing tho rough-cut edges of the trim. 

Why, there's Dear Bill, coating the pass-through with polyurethane.....

Eventually this wall would be covered with barn wood - our intention for that wall all along - but that's another story for another day. 

Bye for now.

Susan

Burlap Back Splash

This house was built in the late 50's. The kitchen counter top and back splash reflected that: It was ugly yellow  and gold-flecked! It took some time to decide how to redo the counter top. In the meantime, I came up with a solution for the back splash: I covered it that area with burlap.  

First, I made paper templates of the sections of the back splash area. Bill used the templates to cut plywood. I covered the pieces of plywood with burlap. Then I sprayed the burlap-covered plywood with copper paint.

The plywood was then glued and nailed into place.

It would be a while before we redid the counter top, but at least the old, ugly back splash was GONE!

Here is a close-up of the back splash. For any skeptics out there, I would like to add this: The back splash looks as good today as it did when I installed it almost seven years ago....

Paper Bag Wall

Shortly after we moved into this house - at the tail end of 2004 - my husband painted all the walls off-white. In the process, he painted over wallpaper that was on an L-shaped section of the kitchen wall. You guessed it: The wallpaper bubbled. Bubbles everywhere! HUGE bubbles!! (Not really; they just looked huge to me.) I was in a panic. I'd read somewhere that one can paint over wall paper, but only with oil-based paint. I guess we found out the hard way not to paint over wall paper with latex paint. What was I going to do with that wall? I suggested to my husband that we start looking for a barn that someone might give us, so we could cover that wall with barn wood. 

In the meantime - till we could get our hands on some barn wood - I covered the wall with brown wrapping paper. I got a couple rolls of paper at the local office supply store, tore the paper into chunks, and applied it to the wall with wall paper paste. After each chunk was in place, I scrunched it around a bit so that it had a texture. After the paper was on the wall, my family loved the look. But I told them, 'I'm not done yet!' 

Next, I put two colors of paint in one roller pan and rolled those two colors onto the wall in one operation. The result was wonderful, and my family loved the look . . . .

But I wasn't done yet: Next, I covered the wall with oil-based stain. The stain snugged itself into the cracks and crevices of the paper. 

After I tired of the orange paint, I painted that 'paper bag wall' with two colors of green paint - same technique: two colors of green paint in one roller pan. I liked the green, and so did my family. I experimented a bit when I applied the green paints; I ran the roller across the wall in such a way as to create a plaid effect. 

We eventually added a pass-through in that wall, and we eventually put barn wood over my paper bag wall, but in the meantime, I really had fun with this part of our kitchen wall. 

I'm so glad for those initial bubbles - glad for our error in decorating judgment - for, in the end, I had a lot of fun with that wall. In future entries, I plan to share photos of the pass-through and such. 

Copper Soffit

When I found a copper-clad blind at a second-hand store one day, several years ago, I was stunned by its beauty. I was standing in the aisle, checking out this blind, asking total strangers as they walked by, 'Is this COPPER?' I'd never seen anything like it before. I thought I would buy it ($3.99), take it home, cut off the slats and apply them to the soffit in the kitchen - apply it to the area between the top of our cupboards and the ceiling.

But my plans changed when I got home and found out that the blind just fit our dining room window, width-wise. So our son Allen helped me install it. It was a bit long, but I just left the extra slats puddled at the bottom. Then, some time after we installed this blind, I was walking through the dining room when it suddenly occurred to me that there might be enough extra slats to re-implement the original plan for that blind: Maybe I could have a copper soffit after all....

Long story short: I removed those extra slats, cut the slats to fit above the cupboards, and hot-glued them in place. I almost ran out of slats, so I had to start using the parts of the slats that had holes in them. I remedied that situation by strategically placing the holes so that, when I covered them with pieces of slatting, it looked like a weave of sorts!! I'm am sooooo funny!!!

The whole project pleased me no end. If you were to walk into our kitchen, you might not consciously notice the copper soffit; but it adds a certain . . . . ambience, if you will. Plus, you know, it's unique: Not many people have a copper soffit!!!!