Valentine's Card; I mean video

Valentine's Video

I went the picture collage "video" route over the traditional greeting card. It's green, it's not adding to "stuff" as we try to minimize, plus it made for a fun walk down memory lane as I dug through pictures. I paid the $5 to upgrade my Animoto subscription for this month so I could do a longer video, so it's not necessarily less money than a paper card, but I think it will be enjoyed more. Anybody else veer away from the traditional paper card?

Hopefully he'll enjoy the digital alternative!

Picking a Contractor & Load Bearing Walls

The easiest way to pick a contractor is...I'm not sure there is an easy way. I've mostly picked bad ones. Or, maybe it would be more fair to say, there were always disappoints involved. There was the super personable guy, recommended by a friend and son-in-law of a colleague who was great in helping to us to reimagine our backyard and plan out the right decking. Versus our starting point of only seeing what was there and limiting ourselves. He and my husband even became friendly. Because they had three months to get to know each other, as the project drug on, and on, and on.

And who can forget the gentleman who took my money for some painting work, but didn't feel obligated to perform said work until I got the police involved. Ah, memories.

With the kitchen, we talked to a few different contractors. They might have all been great, but we decided to go with the first one who gave us the worst news: The wall we planned to take down because it wasn't load bearing, was load bearing (scroll to bottom for signs that a wall may be load bearing). This was after the other guys all agreed with us that it wasn't, and we planned our kitchen and ordered cabinets based on this assumption. We decided to hire the bearer of bad news, on the basis of he knew what he was was talking about.

The adorable shop where I randomly found our contractor. 

Incidentally, I found the company when I popped into this cute, sparkly shop in Historic Occoquan. Somehow chatting with the owner turned into talking about my kitchen project to her introducing me to a contractor who happened to rent her back office and was renovating the wine shop up the street. OF COURSE.

The moral of the story? I guess it is to ask around. If you like how somebody else's space looks, ask who built it and get referrals. Always get a second opinion. Or even a third. For us, it was the fourth one that was a charm, and that got us the company that knew how to NOT crash our second floor into our first floor.

I do regret going with the "time and materials" option that they offered, vs. working off a project rate/estimate. That took 2 weeks and several thousand dollars more than planned, since the time overruns were on our dime. But the quality of work was good, and felt collaborative. And our master bedroom remains firmly ABOVE our kitchen. Pretty happy about that!

Oh, wait. He's right. That IS load bearing. (Note the header beam.)

A few signs that a wall may be load bearing, though you only 100% know by opening it up:

• It runs down the center of your house.
• Another wall runs above or below it, parallel. A sign that the weight carries all the way through both walls and down to the foundation. 
• It runs perpendicular to floor joists. Caveat: some houses have joists running in more than one direction. That's where we got confused...

Don't that wall fool you. It's stronger than it looks.

Ultimately, we opened the wall to see that the contractor was indeed correct. We did save $$ by not hiring him to do that part. We know how to smash things pretty well. I think I will retitle this blog, "Learn From My Mistakes."

Numerar Counters: Choosing, Sealing

The beech Numerar counters look lighter in real life. Nice glow to it.

After weeks of debating whether we should save money by going with the Numerar wood counter tops, we decided that we actually liked the oak look and would be foolish to not get them. As always, there was a catch. The Numerar line was being discontinued, and would instead be replaced with an MDF product with a wood veneer. What the what? Ugh.

But, if we bought a few pieces that were longer than what we needed, there was enough left in stock for us to do our kitchen in beech. If you are shopping for an Ikea kitchen now, you will not know what I'm talking about. The discontinuation of Numerar was a bleep in the store's timeline. Two months later they'd brought back the beech counters (not the oak, though), I'm guessing due to the fact that nobody wanted those ugly veneer wood wannabes. Wonder if they still sell those?

This meant we got to exchange our too-big pieces of wood and end up with exactly what we needed. Bringing our total for counters to about $500. Not too shabby to for a natural surface that brightens up the gray of our cabinets. Plus, if we ever want to upgrade, we can either use the wood in another project or sell it on Craigslist. We paid so little for it (comparitively speaking), that it wouldn't be painful to switch it out in the near future. That being said, we really like the wood. So it will probably be sticking around for a few years. Another plus: Wood is easy for the DIY-er to work with; no special tools or skill required. As long as you can use a tape measure, level and saw, you're golden.

Protecting the New Counters
Like every other decision, I spent hours researching how to seal them. For those who don't know, while wood has the advantage of being repairable via a light sanding, it also has the disadvantage of being a sponge. Sauces, water, everything, can leave its mark. Sealing helps to prevent that.

I did read about people staining their counters, and while I initially considered that direction, I decided that 1)the light color had grown on me 2)I didn't want to worry about food safety. While I didn't plan to prep food directly on it, we are messy folk. Food is bound to make its way off a cutting board now and then. Or rest on the counter while waiting its turn for the food processor.

I started with mineral oil, picked up at Giant for about $3.00. It went on easily, but you have to re-treat fairly often, and I wasn't confident that the wood was sealed enough. I decided to bite the bullet and splurge on General Finishes Salad Bowl Finish by Rockler, which I had to order online. It was popular with woodworkers and if it was safe enough to eat salad from, I was sure it was safe enough for the occassional stray veggie in my kitchen. I'm very happy with the end result--it gave the wood a soft sheen that made the tones seem richer, but did not change the color of the wood. Spills seem to come up easily, even when I find water that's sat for awhile. (Apparently I'm the only family member who is worried about warping and staining...sigh.) One tip: Seal your counters BEFORE installation. That way, the underside is also protected from humidity. Or, do as I say, not as I do...

Kitchen Planning, A Learning Curve

Early on in our dreaming-of-a-new-kitchen (at a stage when "planning" was too strong of a word; we'd just moved in and a remodel was at least a year out of our reach), we stopped by Ikea just to chat with one of their planners. His advice would come in handy when our dreaming turned to planning:

• Live with the space for awhile. See how you use it.
• Pretend stuff has been moved; fake cook at the new stove location, block off the island space with tape and see how it feels to walk around it.    
• Traemand design services offered through Ikea for an additional fee are hit or miss. For the most part they are not true designers. We ignored this bit of advice and ultimately felt like we wasted our money. We did not use their design, and then couldn't get a response when we asked for a revised quote for the construction.  

If you can afford it, a qualified designer may be a good investment. Me, I bumbled my way through a few programs before just settling in with the Ikea online planner, with all its ups and downs.

Ikea 3D Planner Pros:

• As you go through, it's pricing out everything you need. You can easily play around adding or removing elements to see how they effect cost. 
• It's fairly simplistic. You don't have to learn a whole new skillset, like with say, SketchUp.
• At the same time, you can add windows, doors, floor and wall colorings, giving a pretty good sense of what your room might look like. 
• You can pull up your plans at Ikea and their kitchen staff will help you play with it (I recommend going a few times. You'll get new ideas from each person and learn some tricks for using the software). 

Cons:

• Glitchy! Save often. It is not uncommon to lose an hour's worth of work. Sometimes you can't move a cabinet where you want, especially if you are placing it somewhere it doesn't "expect" a cabinet.
• It's meant for laying out cabinets. If you are moving walls, you'll need to trick the software. We drew our whole first floor as one room, and then added obstacle walls to mark where the new walls would be. Talking to Ikea staff was a huge help in figuring out how to work around this. For us, it was nice to get a sense of how all the spaces would relate to each other. 

In the end, talk to Ikea staff early and often, read blogs by people who have been there, done that (here's one I found helpful), and you should be able to greatly shorten your learning curve. I learned a lot the hard way, but I did manage to design a kitchen we love using the Ikea software. 

After like 100 design variations, we finally settled on one that worked and purchased cabinets based on it. So you can imagine how excited my husband was when, after standing and staring at our kitchen one last time, I thought of IT. The design. The way it should be. All we needed was to change out a few cabinets. And move the garage door. (Good news, Ikea is great about returns!) I share that because you'll find your plan evolves as you go along. That's normal. Allow yourself to think of every possibility and then scale back if need be, vs. starting from a scaled back perspective and seeing what will fit in it. It could save you having to return some cabinets!

Why Ikea?

I have to admit, as much as rely on Ikea for affordabe home goods in many cases, I hesitated on outfitting my kitchen with its cabinets. I was worried that the quality may not be the best, or that since their style is so recognizable, future buyers might be turned off by the Ikea brand.

So began some research. First, I questioned my realtor (turned friend) who assured me that it would not hurt resale. That could be different if you're in a million-dollar neighborhood. In ours, the fact that the kitchen was updated and opened would make it a standout. I turned to blogs about other people's experiences with Ikea cabinets; most reports seemed good. 

Cliq cabinets are made of wood & stylish.
They just didn't fit our budget.

I also looked at other brands. I was in love with the gray Cliq cabinets, but their estimate was about $8,000 with a discount. Gray was our preferred color, partly because we thought it would be a good contrast with the dark wood floors and, well, we just like it. 

I made the rounds to Lowe's and Home Depot, as well as getting samples from some of the online RTA (ready to assemble) cabinet companies. With the former, I found that I couldn't what I wanted for my budget. At the lower end, the materials were pretty much the same as Ikea. 

We almost went with one of the RTA companies. Even though they didn't have the gray that we wanted, the price was comparable to Ikea and the fronts would be real wood. 

Still, I'm not the decisive type, and my husband had never seen Ikea cabinets in person. So we made a trip to the store, where we got some insider information: in fall 2013, they would be introducing Lidingo Gray in the US (it was already available in Europe). Suddenly, the color we wanted would be attainable at a price we could afford. This

Ikea gave us a similiar look for half the price!

was in late spring, but we decided to plan our remodel around the US release of the cabinets. With all the bells and whistles, we'd spend about $4,000--or half of the first quote we received. 

While I took the long way to get to this decision, I don't regret doing the research and spinning my wheels a bit. I don't feel like I compromised and automatically went with the cheapest option. Ultimately, it felt like the best fit for our situation and budget, and while I can't yet speak to long-term durability, I'm pretty darn happy with how they look and function.

Oh, and we saved a ton being able to install the cabinets ourselves. (By "ourselves," I mostly mean my husband and a family friend.) According to him, the process was pretty straightforward. The written directions are basically stick figures and sometimes confusing; his recommendation is to watch the installation videos on YouTube. They're also helpful for putting the cabinets together.