It all began with a pan of smoking bacon grease.

A few weeks earlier, my soon-to-be ex had left a pan of bacon grease on a still-hot burner and in the ensuing chaos of the smoke-filled kitchen, the pan had caught on fire. The hot pan melted a part of the laminate counter near the stove and on this bright sunny day in June, with my soon-to-be ex in Pennsylvania for the summer, I stood contemplating the burn marks, and the attempted repair of the counter with a plastic paint (no, not by me).

My mind wandered between the messed-up counter and my job search, and scrolled through my to-do list for the day. What should I do today? I should get my career back on track after several years as a stay-at-home Mom. I should take some night-school classes to get current on a few topics. I should clean the garage. I should make a list of all the things that need to be fixed around the house and start fixing them.

And then I thought of a line from “Sex and the City” where Carrie wonders how much time women spend “should-ing all over ourselves”.

Should-ing All Over Ourselves
I realized I should do a lot of things that day, just like I’ve spent most of the days of my life doing the things I should do, whether I want to do them or not.

Instead, I ripped out the kitchen counters.

And so began another home remodeling project.

The Tale Behind the Tale

Let me give you some background.

My Northwest Austin kitchen was original – vintage 1982. Dark brown cabinets (but good quality), ivory laminate counters, and a seriously, seriously ugly vinyl floor. It was clean at best, but depressing at worst. In the summer of 2005, I needed to be surrounded by pretty, not ugly.

My kitchen remodel became a turning point, from doing what I should, to doing what I wanted, while still keeping in mind the needs of my family, and the realities of life and finances. Once upon a time I would have repaired the kitchen counter in the most practical of ways – by replacing it with another laminate and calling it done. Instead, I went FABULOUS, and re-did almost the entire kitchen.

By doing a lot of the work myself, and working hard on deals with vendors and tradesmen, I managed to get it done on a reasonable budget.

While working on the kitchen, I bonded with neighbors, sang a lot of songs at the top of my lungs, and learned a whole heck of a lot about the contrast between what looks easy on HGTV (all of it!) and what isn’t so easy when you’re doing it yourself at midnight and the caffeine is wearing off (most of it!).

Before: The Original Kitchen

Here are a few photos of the original kitchen:

[View with PicLens]

Taking the kitchen part, of course, was way easier than getting it back together. It would have helped if I had had a plan, but I didn’t. This was a spontaneous remodel. As a master planner of every little detail of everything I do (or anything anyone else does, for that matter), spontaneous is generally not part of my project vocabulary.

Some Times You Need a Plan, Sometimes You Don’t

Despite having no plan, I got lucky! So lucky!

A mom from my Girl Scout Troop gave me the name of a guy who had some guys who could come sand the cabinets and remove the rest of the counter (okay, it was a little harder than I had expected it to be, and the counter was integrated with the back splash, so that had to come out, too). After that, I kicked it into high gear – it was GAME ON!

[View with PicLens]

A salesman from a mesquite counter store called to say that a commercial customer had backed out of a big order, and would I be interested in some end-grain 2 ½” thick mesquite butcher block counters, at a discount? Why YES, I would! (So, he HAD taken me seriously when I said, “give me a call if you can ever offer a better price”!)

The mesquite salesman gave me the name of an iron guy who could make the required support structure for the counter, to keep it from cracking under pressure, of say, a small child jumping up and down on the overhanging part. Not that I have any that would do that – do you?

The iron guy, Peter Rehme, of Rehme Custom Ironwork dropped by to give me a quote.

After giving him the tour, and a run down of what I was hoping he could build, he said (I kid you not), “Alison, I have to be honest with you. I don’t do jobs this small”. After staring at him for a few moments while I considered my options, I countered with a proposal that got us both what we wanted: iron work for me, some return on his investment of time for him. Two days later, Peter and his brother showed up with the counter support, a pot rack (!!), some decorative curly brackets, a shelf for over the stove, and a support structure for the new downstairs master bathroom counter (technically, I hadn’t even taken out the old one, YET). I knew that asking for the pot rack was probably pushing my luck, but sometimes we need what we need and I knew I needed a pot rack.

Peter’s iron art evolves from basic iron bars and iron plate, not from catalog parts.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE his sense of style, and his work is top-quality. To be fair, now that I have seen quite a bit of his work, my job really was small potatoes, but I am grateful he was still willing to work me into his schedule. Keep him in mind for when you’re planning your own remodeling project – his website has a great gallery of work, including staircases, enormous gates, and lots of truly custom pieces.

The counter price, by the way, didn’t include templating (making it fit), delivery or installation. It turned into one BIG JOB to coordinate all of the elements involved to get it installed. I love how it looks but I’d think twice about putting in another one, unless ALL of the necessary services were included in the price – caveat emptor!

[View with PicLens]

The Design Center of Austin

One completely unexpected joy of this project was discovering the Austin School of Faux Finishes, in the Design Center of Austin, at old Penn Field off South Congress. The owner of the Austin School of Faux Finishes, artist Lu Goodwin Mark, has a fantastic sense of color and style. Lu teaches classes on the art of fine finishes, for walls, woodwork, cabinet and floors, some faux and some real. I promptly signed up for her classes on European Plasters, plus one on glazes (taught by local master artist Pat Strong) and one on SkimStone, a product that looks like venetian plaster for the floor. After years of classes in hard science (Chemistry!), taking one just for the pleasure of learning a decorative skill was really really rewarding.

If you haven’t visited the Design Center of Austin, take an afternoon and go see what some local businesses have to offer. The buildings at Penn Field house a kitchen remodeling showroom with fantastic upper-end cabinetry (ALNO), a modern lighting store (Alexander Marchant), one that sells really cool bathroom fixtures and another that sells high-end cabinet and door hardware, including some you won’t find elsewhere around town. The Design Center is also home to Vintage Material and Supply Company, which reclaims and sells vintage timber and lumber, including old-growth long leaf pine, sinker pine, sinker cypress, and native Texas timbers.

The Design Center of Austin is located on South Congress, West of 35 and North of 290:

View Larger Map

I must tell you, once I discovered the Design Center, my eyes opened WIDE. Actually, I think I started hyperventilating. This place will greatly expand what you recognize is possible when designing, or re-designing your own home or offices. You don’t have to go high-end with everything to end up with a gorgeous space, but a few high-end touches can really change the entire look and feel of a room.

Get Your Art On

If you’ve ever thought about taking some art classes, just DO IT. You’ll never know how good you might be at something until you try. You might make some new friends, too!

From my SkimStone class, I had the skills necessary to refinish my concrete floors. SkimStone is a hybridized portland cement and goes down in thin layers with a decorative finish trowel. The floors have to be exceptionally smooth and clean and you have to work fast, but the end result is worth the effort, and if you do the work yourself, it is very economical (under $1.00 a square foot, or even cheaper if you really plan your product usage well). Most of the first floor in my house is now covered with SkimStone, with 2″ metallic slate tile edging instead of quarter-round. It is cold in the winter, like tile, but it is durable and when you get tired of it, you can cover it up with tile, wood, vinyl or carpet without having to take it back out.

[View with PicLens]

A Really Big Sink

After the complications of getting the mesquite counter installed, I thought the rest of the remodel would be smooth sailing. I was wrong. The hardest part of the kitchen turned out to be getting the sink in place. A sink! I desperately wanted a farmhouse-style sink and in 2005, these weren’t as readily available as they are in 2009. I called all over, shopped the web and finally found one – a HUGE one – for half the going rate, freight from somewhere in the midwest included in the price! Whoo hoo!

Unfortunately, the sink didn’t arrive on the scheduled day, and with the granite counter guys scheduled to arrive the next morning, I was pulling my hair out. I finally got hold of the carrier, located the sink on a loading dock in San Antonio and talked them into staying open just a little bit late so I could come fetch. One kind friend signed up for the ride (wouldn’t you?) and we drove down to San Antonio. When we got there I asked the one worker left if he could just “throw it in the back” of my wagon for me and he just smiled like I was nuts. It took a forklift to get it into my car and we drove like a low-rider all the way home.

[View with PicLens]

[View with PicLens]

After: An Old Kitchen, Updated

And, here are the final shots of the kitchen. If I can get it cleaned up again this week, I’ll take a few more, from some of the original spots for comparison!

[View with PicLens]

[View with PicLens]

Folks walking their dogs stopped to chat and watch me paint cabinet doors in the driveway (for the kitchen, after a class on faux painting). Others wanted to know what I was cutting up with the table saw on a bright sunny day (a new bathroom counter, mesquite, locally milled). Other days, it was the tarps outside covered with spray-painted silver metallic boards (a luggage shelf for the garage) that captured someone’s attention.

A few days before I met Frank, however, the scene was a little more dramatic.

Let me tell you a little of the back story of my home, to help you catch up.

My house, purchased in 2004, was vintage 1983. Brown. Gold. Swag-chained globe lights. Dark trim, dark paneling. Flat white walls and a pool-table-bar-light gone wrong in the upstairs gameroom. Although the home had been meticulously maintained, it was U.G.L.Y.

One day, deep in the throes of my need for distraction from my pending divorce, I woke up and realized the downstairs half bath counter and sink had to GO. NOW. The counter was a dark cultured marble that had been painted (painted!) white. The paint was chipping, the doors were warped, the knobs were PLASTIC.

I ripped it out. All of it, including the toilet. Why stop when you’re having fun? The drywall guy working on the walls in the kitchen was wise – he ignored the noise coming from that end of the house, even though it took me an hour to smash the counter into pieces small enough to get through the doorway. The cabinet was a little too heavy to pick up all by myself, so I dragged it, inch by inch, out the front door and on to the porch. YAY!

A few days later, I had ordered a new sink and a new faucet and when they arrived, I got down to the business of installing them. How hard can it be, I thought? I’m reasonably intelligent, and I have a Plumbing Book With Pictures and Illustrations! The new faucet was a wall-mounted one, a commercial style, with a swing arm. Very cool. The sink was a GIGANTIC surgeons plaster sink, which I intended to put to use as both a utility sink, bathroom sink and occasional toddler bathtub.

Let me tell you – shoulda woulda coulda. I shoulda ordered a normal faucet. I woulda ordered a normal sink. I coulda hired the plumber right away. Instead, I did it myself, and when I went out to the street to turn the water to the house back on, I inadvertently left the shut-off valve for the pipes open and as I came back in to the house, I could see – and hear – water shooting out of the bathroom door, flooding the bathroom, the hallway and part of the adjacent bedroom.

30 minutes and 30 bath towels later, thanks to several neighbors, I had the water mopped up, fans running to dry the spaces and one huge plumbing lesson under my belt: make sure the shut-off valve is actually shut-off before turning on the water. To this day, I can imagine what Kelley (across the street) might have thought when I came running out of the house to turn the water back off, wild-eyed, wild-haired and soaked to the bone.

Because I am not one to back down from a challenge, the water to my house was off for two days. Two Days. I went back and forth to Lowe’s and Home Depot, because I just couldn’t get the valves properly attached to the pipes – no matter what, they leaked. Finally, in desperation, I called Frank The Plumber, and in about an hour, he had it all back together.

Now, why is this story supposed to be empowering?

Although this adventure wasn’t at the beginning of my single-homeowner journey, it marked a turning point for me. I didn’t get these valves in correctly, but I did manage to get the next ones on right, and the ones after that. I learned how to operate a plumbing blow-torch, and why that particular job should be left to a pro. I learned that I CAN do a lot of things myself, but that it’s okay to call for help when you need it. With Frank’s permission, I examined his toolbox, and then acquired a lot of the basic tools of the trade for my own tool box, and learned how to fix most of my run-of-the-mill plumbing issues, so that I am not dependent on someone who may-or-may not be around to fix something at 10pm on a weekend. Last year, I even installed my own pedestal sink while waiting for another plumber who could never manage to show up on time. I even did that one in heels and a skirt because I didn’t actually intend to put in the sink, but was just doing what I could after work, before the plumber arrived, and then realized I could do it all myself! YAY!

So if you’re ever wondering if you can do something, just remember, You Can Do It, Yes You Can!

Check out the photos!

[View with PicLens]

Resources:

The Austin School of Faux Finishes taught me how to do the SkimStone on the floor. The owner, Lu Goodwin Mark, is a great resource for all faux finishes, and real ones, too. The classes on plasters and glazes are very interesting and instructive.

The wall paint is Palladian Blue by Benjamin Moore. I patronize my local Benjamin Moore dealer, Hill Country Paint on Anderson Mill. Check out these other fabulous spaces that use Palladian Blue.

The Train Rack on the wall came from Restoration Hardware.

The faucet is from Chicago Faucets. Although I LOVE this faucet, I would never try to install one myself again – you really need a master plumber to get the spacing and anchoring right in the wall.