Testing cabinet and wall color

Color, bitches! I'm tired of existing with rental white and tan. I'm going to have a gaudy bawdy house, dammit. My kitchen? DAY OF THE DEAD. I want a place that when I walk into it to prepare a meal, I cannot help but to start dancing a little and feel a little more alive.

 

 The color for the cabinets I chose is Behr's high-gloss enamel in Citron. It's an ephemeral green that appears drastically different depending on the ambient light. I love it.

To contrast the chill lime of the cabinets I picked Behr's Atomic Tangerine in a satin enamel for the walls. Both paints will be incredibly easy to keep clean. Also: ATOMIC TANGERINE. Could there be a more awesomely-named color? I think not. 

Before the kitchen is reborn

Here's some shots from before I started tearing stuff up. The flooring is a fake wood vinyl tile which is the most...I don't even have a word fitting enough to describe what I feel when someone puts VINYL fake flooring over actual hardwood floors. That's like putting astroturf on...like...Ireland.

 

The walls are all plaster and lath. At first this scared me, but I spent some time learning how to patch them and now I'm quite pleased I have these walls. According to what I have I read, they're far more resilient to time than drywall. 

 There were some soft spots I tore out and replaced/patched here already. Basically if any area looks like it's loose, I'm tearing off the plaster, priming the lath, and putting up new plaster. I know this is excessive but I want this done correctly the first time.

Initial plumbing

The first order of business was to have the water turned on and see how bad the plumbing was going to be. Initial visual inspection suggested a few braze joints that would need to be replaced. There was also an old water softener and humidifier system plumbed into the main water loop that I planned on removing. Stupidly, I waited to do repairs on the water system until after the water had been turned on. Instead I installed the stove:

 

These are gas pipe fittings. The white stuff is a paste used to seal gas connections.

 

I used soapy water to verify that my work had no leaks. If after coating the connections in the soap solution bubbles had appeared, I would have known there was a leak.

OH LOOK! SUPER ENTHUSIASTIC SELFIE AND CHILD LABOR ENTHUSIASM PHOTOS:

 

 

 OH...about that turning the water on thing: Did you know that if the valve on the street-side of the home doesn't work, it's not the water company's responsibility to fix? It's yours. I did not know this and it just so happened my street-side valve didn't work. I had to have the water company come back out and shut off the water at the street while I put in a new shutoff on my side of the meter. 

Once that was fixed I was able to replace a few valves and remove a couple useless loops. The humidifier and softener went, as well as a burst pipe that ran under my back deck to a spigot. Yes, 12' of exposed copper water pipe in Northern Ohio is a brilliant idea. I don't care how good you are at draining your system, that shit isn't going to last. Oh, I also tore out and capped the lines for the obligatory creepy Cleveland basement shower.

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Ah, pluming that happens when you let stupid people have tools:

Someone had joined the copper drain pipe from the kitchen to the PVC floor pipe in a manner that pushed up on that black pipe. That black pipe is a gas line. The weight of the heavy black gas pipe caused the PVC pipe to crack. 

 

So I cut that crap out:

 

 

...and I rebuilt my own using new PVC:

 

 

 To stop the whole 'pushing up on heavy gas pipe and fucking shit up' thing, I hacked out a few inches of copper pipe. By hand. Overhead. With a hacksaw. 

YES...I have a reciprocating saw. I also have fucking common sense and know not to saw on a poorly supported metal pipe at and awkward, overhead, angle with a power saw. There was really no simple way to use a power saw to cut this thing. I could have purchased a special clamp for my saw, but since I will probably only ever saw a fat copper pipe once in my life, I chose to just man-the-proverbial-fuck-up and hacksaw it out. I like my fingers and face as-is, thanks. 

 

OH LOOK...they don't touch. Gee, that was hard. (/sarcasm)

Still leak-free, too. Go me!

 

As of this point

The first order of business after moving all our stuff into the home was appliances. Long story short, we had been renting for quite some time in Lakewood, OH. The place we were in was beautiful, but falling apart. A few months prior to our exodus, the shit pipe from out toilet broke from decades of neglect (it was a lead drain pipe) and caused a pool of filth to slowly build up in the bathroom ceiling in the downstairs tenant's unit. One day the ceiling gave way and poop and things came tumbling down. This led to weeks of demolition and construction in the downstairs unit (I work from home, by the way.) THE KICKER WAS THE LANDLORD HAD BEEN WARNED....like three YEARS ago...that the plumbing needed to be replaced. So, with the poop incident, and a falling-apart back porch featuring protruding rusty nails, and a window in my dining room broken from a storm (broken for 2 years), and a leaking roof, plus the city threatening to shut off the water because the landlord had 'forgotten' to pay the bill, and a slew of other shit (like his friends he moved in below us being drunk assholes), my requests and complaints became too much for the landlord to handle. I had been on a month to month lease for 4 of the 5+ years we had resided at the location, so he gave me a 30-day notice...on New Year's day. 

I bought a home (cash), packed and moved (with the help of a friend), and was living in my new place within those thirty days. He still has a mortgage, a ton of what was preventable repairs to do, and a failing soup business. I uh...have a home and a thriving home-based freelance income. I'm still a little bitter but never having to pay rent to an asshole again is helping me get over it.

So yeah, the appliances. The last place the fridge (freezer on the top, fridge on the bottom) and the stove (ceramic element) had been slowly going. I had asked for the assh...landlord to replace/repair them, but alas; new appliances or a repairman failed to appear. Eventually the fridge took on odors since it barely reached 41f, the freezer part had to be manually de-iced weekly. The stove just reached whatever temp it felt like. 

To make up for the previous 5 years of bullshit, I purchased my dream appliances:

Front-load washer and dryer. Super quiet and Energy Star compliant. I love watching them twirl the laundry...still...after dozens of loads. I giggle every time.

  

THIS DAMN FRIDGE! LOOK AT IT! So damn shiny and awesome. No smells, holds a precise temp in both the fridge and freezer portion. Also: ice maker. The last one didn't have one and the ice tray ice always tasted strange. DID I TELL YOU I WAS PAYING $775 a month in RENT? For that bullshit? No? Well I was. 

 

A gas stove. A real one. Nothing beats cooking on gas. NOTHING. 

 

 

Oh, now my dogs can go to the bathroom without me having to make sure they don't cut themselves on nails from a dilapidated back porch. They're pretty damn stoked about a bigger yard that's all theirs. 

 

 

The last owner of the house was a smoker, but I bleached and scrubbed that shit out immediately. This wallpaper will not be staying but you can see the amount of gross nicotine and smoke that had built up:

The best so far? Solid hardwood floors everywhere. Safe beneath layers upon layers of other flooring.