Back to the Kitchen

Well, now that the rest of the first floor had walls again, it was time to get back to the big kitchen project. During the time that I was drywalling, I was collecting the pieces I posted about previously and coming up with a few unresolved ideas. The first order o f business was once again leveling and drywalling the ceiling so I could get the step-back hutch permanently mounted. With the ceiling up it cleared by 1/2 an inch - prefect fit. I just did the old part of the kitchen ceiling first since I wasn't sure how I would tie into the pitched ceiling of the addition section.

Next problem to deal with was around the heater chimney and the kitchen "L" corner. I went through about a half dozen plans before settling on a design, after getting an old pantry cabinet that was in my grandmother's basement - thanks again!! The doors are a match to the other hutch I built-in and was a good fit for this area, plus added a good amount of storage space to the kitchen. I then came up with the closet idea between this cabinet and the powder room to house the dishwasher. The original idea was to house a dishwasher under the cast sink - but i didn't take into account the older sink's front face is too low for a built in dishwasher - good one dummy! Once everything was staged and happy I started framing this section.

After I started framing, it dawned that I really didn't have a good spot for a nuker and coffee pot. After some thought, I remembered I had some pine saved from what was left of the old pantry room, and that I could easily add a set of built in shelves in this space since their was a cavity between the wall framing and the heater chimney. I had installed the vacuum line feeding the dust pan outlet and the line to the upstairs bathroom in this cavity which had to be moved over. Plus thinking ahead (I can actually do this once in awhile!) , I installed a 4" PVC drain in this cavity as well for when the upstairs "kitchen" is converted to a master bath - this had to be moved over as well. Finally I built the shelving unit, which turned out better than I thought it would, and installed it in the framing.

Once the framing and cabinet/shelving were installed, I continued on with the closet framing. Now I was ready to drywall this section I just built... it was nice to be able to hang walls for once without having to shim every stud along the way. On the bottom section, I started installing the pine bead board. I found a great buy on EBAY for a lot of original pine tongue and groove bead boards that came out of a barn somewhere near Lancaster. They were all about 7 feet long and the final price.... $1 each! You can't get HD junk for that price and this stuff is the real mccoy. So the plan will be to have wainscoting 3 feet high around the kitchen and powder room. To trim out the built-ins I had just enough original 3 1/3" pine casing I took from inside the 3rd floor closet and basement entrance.

To finish up my framing work, I settled on continuing the ceiling straight until it merged with the pitched section. After marking some point with a level and running a string guide, I sistered joist sections to finish off the flat section of ceiling. Then I finished off the drywall work and now ready to start working on the walls. So far so good....