The Kitchen

... and this was how it all started; a bad '80's renovation in country blue... wood trimmed cabinetry, melamine counter, vinyl flooring (I'm sure it was once called linoleum), a small, poorly installed, built-in European fridge that couldn't keep up with Ottawa's humidity, and an undersized AEG oven and stovetop. This was it for ten years.

From the start I had a vision as to what I wanted as my ultimate kitchen; my regular dining partner thought the same. We wanted something that would be lasting - something traditional that would not show its age - something timeless. It would have to fit in with the 1920's style of the house - the cabinetry would have to go right to the ceiling to avoid the greesy bug collection that congregates on the top of cupboards, and it would have to include a full fridge and range.

This was no mean challenge. Our kitchen is little more than 10' x 10', and there are four doors - one to the back mud room, one to the dining room, an entrance from the hall, and a door to the basement. This posed a major design challenge. Think of it - a full fridge is at least 29" deep not counting the handle. We had less than 27 inches to work with before a door was blocked.

The one thing coming out of the bad-'80's renovation was the design; in general it was very practical - the stove was in the right place, the sink was ergonomically positioned at an angle, with ready access to the stove, and the cubboards were well laid out. But one of the fundamentals... I was not going to settle for undersized European appliances just to accomodate the four doors.

Selecting the Contractor

This was pretty easy. I needed a team I could trust. I wasn't about to sit around in a construction zone for 3 weeks eating take-out and living off my hibatchi.

Picture living in this mess for three weeks or more. I was going to hi-tail it out of here and go on vacation - that meant I needed to really trust these guys with my house. I went to Sandy Hill Construction - and that was the only quote I got - and I don't think I could have made a better decision.

Getting the Cupboards Right

Selecting the contractor also made selecting the cabinetry vendor pretty easy. Sandy Hill had a relationship with one of the folks at Kitchen Craft, so we went in and talked to them. We had been to other kitchen places, but weren't married to them; and the person at Kitchen Craft, while having an annoying affectation of looking at his cell phone every time it rang and snapping it shut rather than simply turning it off, was a good salesperson. To meet our design goals we selected an antique white finish in a fairly simple shaker style. We wanted small cupboards at the top with glass fronts; we wanted antique brushed library pulls, and handles instead of knobs for the cupboards - it was on some of these little things that we had to make decisions that we hadn't planned in advance - like the type of glass we wanted.

The Appliances

Appliances were pretty straight forward. I was not going to compromise on quality or size to fit the room - I wanted standard-sized appliances; and the centrepiece would be the oven. We chose a counter-depth side-by-side GE fridge; a Bosch dishwasher and the, crown jewel - a Heartland stove. This was the perfect fit to the vintage of the house - with the power, features and quality of a top end range. And the bonus was that it was made in Canada. Oh, and a little piece of trivia? The homes on Wisteria Lane.... you know, The Desperate Housewives? They're equipped with Heartland stoves.

The Other Pieces

From the start I had an idea of what I wanted for the counter - cement. We spent much of the planning period looking at alternatives to cement and then ruling them out - they didn't fit the vision of something very simple. So we kept coming back to cement. Our contractor found an artisan who worked ith cement and he designed us the perfect counter.

I also had a vision for the sink - I wanted a traditional farmers sink. I wanted it to be a rectangle with perfectly straight sides and right-angled corners - no rounded edges. That was a real challenge. But eventually I found one - a Julien sink, hand made in Quebec; and here's a tip. The tendency today is to opt for a deeper sink - 10" or so. Well that's what I thought I wanted too. But when I was in the plumbing store I stood in front of a 10" undermounted sink (making it effectively 12" deep) and pretended I was doing the dishes... and that little exercise convinced me that if I wanted to avoid a bad back I should stick with what I was familiar with - an 8" depth - when it's undermounted, it would easily end up being 10" - ample deep enough. We ended up settling for Moen faucets after the plumber had attempted in vain to install the Franke ones without them leaking.

In terms of lighting, other than undermount and pot lighting for the cabinets, I wanted traditional school room lights. We thought these would be easy to find - and I guess at the end of the day they were; but only after we were told that the ones I had initially picked out and ordered were no longer available... we then stumbled across an antique lighting store in Toronto and found exactly what we (or apparently "I") wanted. It was only after the lights were installed and the kitchen was finished that I was told by my regular dining partner that she had not really liked the lights when she first saw them - but let me go ahead and buy them without saying anything.... and once installed she loved them.

And finally the flooring. We initially wanted to go with slate - but a number of people advised against it because of the difficulty in getting consistency in colours. After a solo trip to the tile store I found the perfect black ceramic tile. It was slightly textured and had just a hint of tan in it - almost as though someone had spread a microthin layer of wet sand across the floor and let it dry. A second trip was needed for confirmation and the agreement of the aforementioned "regular dining partner".

The Construction Zone

The bulk of the renovation was completed in three weeks. As advised by our contractor, we stuck around for the first four days, the period when he expected to have to consult with us on some key decisions... and he didn't disappoint.

One of the strategies employed to allow us to have a standard-sized fridge without blocking any of the doorways, was to countersink the fridge into the wall by 6 inches. That meant opening up the wall between the kitchen and the dining room and hoping there was nothing inside - which of course there was - all of the water pipes to the upstairs bathroom, the main stack and duct work.

The only solution was to make the wall deeper, so it could accommodate all of this infrastructure, as well as 6 inches of the fridge. And that meant knocking the entire wall down in the dining room - and losing six inches of space - moving all of the pipes and duct work and rebuilding the wall, keeping the original mouldings in place. And this little piece of work (shown partially completed on the left) was completed in less than two days.

The rest of the renovation was true to plan. We left the house for two weeks, checking in by phone only twice to reassure ourselves that things were progressing as planned. We returned at the end of two weeks to a kitchen that was more than 90% complete. A fully functioning kitchen with a plywood counter would be the stand-in until the cement one could be crafted - a step that would take 6 weeks. Of course, at this point my regular dining partner took off for China for two weeks and I was left cleaning the house - all that plaster dust in the construction zone, restocking all of the dishes, washing everything by hand, and sorting out the mess - good tunes, beer and the thought of it in the end made it all worth while.

The installation of the counter 6 weeks later was the signal to ratchet up the heat and get the whole thing finished off. The sink and faucets were installed the same day as the counter; the subway tiles that made up the backsplash were installed a few days after that; the lights went up, the dishwasher was hooked up and locked in place, the glass and crown moulding was added to the cabinetry and the final touchups were made.

All of this was done pretty much on budget. We went high on the appliances - driven by the Stove and the extra that we paid for the counter-depth fridge, though I'm still trying to understand why a hood vent costs half of what the stove does. We paid more than you'd expect for the sink (I think it was $1200), but I firmly believe that it is those design features that set it apart. We had a custom bi-fold door designed for the basement so it would fit in with the simple shaker style, but that too was generally inline with expectations.

The contracting work was about $11,000 ($2,000 over budget due to the wall move); the cabinetry was about $16,000; the floor about $1500, the backsplash a $1,000, the cement counter about $3,000 generally inline with what you pay for granite - probably a little less, and we benefitted from the small area that was needed, and then there were some incidentals. I think the appliances netted out at $12,000.

And that was it. Ten years - alot of whining, a library of torn out pages from kitchen magazines, a clear vision of what we wanted, the ability to recognize where you can compromise and where you firmly stand your ground, and absolute faith that you have a contractor looking after the job backed by a team you can entirely trust.