Closing off the pocket door

Remember that cool pocket door that I loved, and carefully refinished and painted as part of my front entry makeover?  You can check that out here.  Well, it's gone, and now it seems like it was never there!

 Not a good photo at all, but essentially, I just primed and then painted over the wall patch with the same blue paint I had used before. I didn't put the base molding on because we are going to be creating some built-ins here, and so I'll add that in after I get the cabinetry built.

Like all the other drywall/plaster projects, this had tons of steps and seems like it takes forever.  First, we had to build out a wall with 2 x 4s, then cover that with drywall.

and then add a second layer of drywall, because the old walls are button board and a layer of old-fashioned plaster on top, for a thickness of 1".  Which means we have to put in two layers of 1/2" drywall, and then Dale does a layer of veneer plaster over it all to tie it together.

 

This is what it looks like from the kitchen side.  This wall looks monumental to me right now, but I think I'll get used to it as we move along.

 

This is the first coat of plaster to tie it all together.  I don't think I have any pics until I painted it all blue at the end.

So -- this is what it looked like with a pocket door.  Very cute, and I really liked it, but the door no longer made any sense --








And this is what it looks like now.  I do have big plans for the near future, however.





Meanwhile.....I also got the walls in the kitchen painted, and crown molding hung in most of the kitchen, but we still have a few small spots that need touchups along the beam, so I am in the middle of a few things.  Here's a little preview of some of the detail work I've been doing:

Trim around the beam and the ceiling in the kitchen where the wall has been smoothed out --















We continued to add the additional band 5" down from the ceiling to make the molding appear deeper.  This picture above is the first color I bought but I was  not happy with it -- too minty, so the new color is a more celery green.


So - there is a little more done, but right now we're in Indiana visiting our cute little grandson (oh, and the rest of the kids, too!).  We drove this time, and had a fun time, so I'll add that post later this week.  In the meantime, here's a picture of Parker J to tide you over:

The little drummer boy!

Oops!

After re-scheduling and waiting and going around and around with the appliance people from IKEA, we finally got the repair technician out.  And guess what - there was nothing wrong with the vent hood!  oops -- we actually had a bad connection elsewhere, and the full voltage was not getting to the hood.  How embarrassing - and it cost us 78 dollars to have the guy point out that we needed to check out electrical connections or replace the breaker.  Luckily, it wasn't the breaker, just a bad connection in the last light that we tied the hood into.

It looks pretty awesome, and it even works, too!  LOL !  We also had the GE repair person out - the  convection settings weren't working properly for us -- he instructed us to run the self-clean feature twice - we did it once, and it's worked great ever since.  We just need to keep an eye on it so we get it taken care of completely while it remains under warranty.  He did tell Dale that there was another person who was having a similar problem, and the 2xcleaning did the trick. we'll keep on top of that.

In other news, we've finally moved on to patching up the drywall.  We spent the weekend piecing it all togher, and Dale did two sessions of filling, so now it's ready to get a nice smooth top coat, then we can paint.  Here are some shots of various problem areas:

Those are all 'before' shots -- they all have some fill done.  I also painted the walls with a coat of the wall color, but I'm not happy with it -- too minty.  I want more of a sage green, so I need to go and get another gallon.  Not much color in this room with all the tile and cabinets, but I want something that projects some warmth.

In the meantime, I'm going to have to figure out what to do with our entry now that the pocket door is gone. We've got a big blank wall that we aren't used to!  I am looking at various ideas for built-ins, some type of mudroom approach.  Here are a couple of favorites on  my pinterest board:

 

Love the bench, hooks and shelves.  Not sure if we have enough space to make the shelves deep enough to hold baskets, and besides, we have a ton of stuff for the shelves, so this is my front runner.

I'm thinking a cabinet centered on the wall might look just as nice - build it in, but let it look like a freestanding piece.  I like the one above for that, with the arched top and the crown molding.

Finally- this one has no cubbies, but a nice shelf on top to place objects or framed paintings.  So now, I just need to figure out what I want!

Ready to work on the floor this week!

As much as we wanted to do more last weekend, we had out of town company and so we had to do the fun things like visit the Getty Villa and drive around Hollywood and visit the LaBrea Tar Pits (one of my favorite places!). 

We got an interesting tour about the gardens at the Getty.

So last weekend we got NOTHING done!  so much for progress....
But we jumped into action during the rest of the week.  First off, getting the rest of the electrical and the ceiling done.  Our ceiling was covered in ceiling tiles and furring strips.  Taking all this down left a lot of holes, and we also had to remove a huge old ventilation fan from the ceiling.  So that left us with a lot of work to do on the ceiling.

Originally, I had hoped we could patch/sand/fill, but with the sum of all the work, Dale decided it would be better to skim coat the whole thing.  Which would be a huge amount of work for me, but luckily, he's a plasterer, and so he had no problem.  you can see how nasty it was before above...

 this was after a scratch coat, and the ceiling patching...

Then he did a finish coat, nice and smooth, and we sanded and finished last night, and I primed this morning:

And all the recessed lights are in. We aren't going to install the pendants over the island until we get it in place, but you can see the two boxes for those above.

By the way, that large section of purple drywall on the wall above is covering a hole that will be a pantry coming up in the near future.  We just put the drywall there temporarily to keep it looking better.  Dale did a veneer plaster coat on the wall to the left of the door because there was a ridge where the old cabinets were, and the layers and layers of paint over the past 50 years left a mark that was super defined.  We will be replacing this door, too, maybe with a slightly narrower door (this one is 32 inches wide, and it just barely clears the island.  30 inches would be better, and we want a french door there).  So that wall has a lot of changes coming, but for now, it's just going to stay a little bit neat.

We also finished getting all the old plumbing taken out, and connected to our new island plumbing -

We are also going to lower the bottom of the window about 7 or 8 inches, but we want to get the cabinets roughed in first, so we have a better idea of where the best height would be.  Today we are going to install the plywood and backerboard, so I hope to spend the rest of the week installing the tile floor.  We do still have some drywall to finish up as you can see above, but rather than put it in and then cut it, we are fine with just holding off a bit to be sure everything is where we want it before we finish that off.  While we were at it, we added an outside spigot so I could water the plants on that side of the house, and wash the car without dragging the hose all around the house from the other side.  We are also going to add an exterior outlet in the opening on the bottom left, so we didn't close that up yet either.

With any luck, we can get the tile done this week, and then we'll have the weekend to install some cabinets.  Since they've been taking up all the space in the garage all summer, it'll be great to have some workshop space in there again, too!