Kitchens, Kitchens, and More Kitchens (Again?)

If you have the opportunity to build a new house from the ground up because you think it would be a marvelous bucket list item checked off your list, then by all means do your homework and forge ahead. I should know. I spent many years working with a group of volunteers to build a church and it was a blessing to the congregation. Just two months after the church was dedicated my dear wife had the brilliant idea to sell our completely renovated home and purchase a delightfully sad fixer-upper because I had all this building experience and she wanted a new challenge. Sadly, she caught me in a moment of weakness as I still had "build a house" on my bucket list and this was likely as close as I would get to doing that. So for the next six or seven years we toiled away in heat and cold, pulling out floors and ceilings, moving walls and windows and doors, putting all our spare time into that complete renovation. When it was all done we both agreed we would never do that again. Once was enough.

Lincoln Church Project

My father seemed to have been bitten by the building bug more times than me. Building his first small home at sixteen, it gave him the down payment for his first family home. By my count he worked on fourteen projects in his lifetime, and from what I could see he loved every minute of it. Of that list of fourteen, two of them were church projects and the rest were homes. I worked with him enough that some of that interest and desire were transferred to me, at least enough to dip my feet into the building project water. Dad was swimming out in the deep end. While I hoped to get my chance at a project or two, I never had any desire to better his record.

The Fully Renovated Mayfair House

Though dad had me putting in the electrical system of a house at fourteen years of age, I really did not get involved much in my early years. After marriage we lived in a couple apartments, then a mobile home, and then a church parsonage. Since none of those belonged to us there were no renovations allowed. I remember being told at our second apartment that we couldn't even put nails in the wall. Kathy said, "Are they insane?" and proceeded to hang up all her wall decorations with nails. When we moved out I carefully pulled out the nails and filled the holes as though the nails were never there. And yes, we got our deposit back. We did some painting and minor repairs in the parsonage but there wasn't a budget for major renovation. 

I would have to say that kitchens played a very small part in my daily life. Both of those apartment had alley kitchens where you walk into the kitchen from one end and run into a wall at the other end. Neither of them could have been over eight feet in length, with cabinets and appliances on both sides of that walkway. Everything crammed into one tiny space. The mobile home kitchen was even smaller with everything plastered against one wall and a small peninsula to guide people into it. I couldn't find even one photo of those three kitchen, hence my statement that they didn't much affect my life. Kathy, on the other hand, would probably say she's the one who spends the most time in a kitchen and therefore was greatly affected by the details of each kitchen. However, she was unable to change them in any significant way so she just did all those kitchen things in silence. That was destined to change.

Warren Kitchen (realtor.com)

We made the upgrade to an actual home when we moved to Warren, Illinos. The house was a bit run down so we did some cosmetic projects. I do remember that my wife wanted to get her hands on that kitchen, wanting to paint the dreary wood cabinets and replace the carpeted floor, maybe even get some nicer appliances. But I put the kibosh on that as neither us or the church was in a position to put much money into the house since it was the church parsonate. I liked the look of the wood and thought it a heresy to paint over it. In hindsight, anything would have been an improvement, no matter how small.

Ophir Kitchen

It was in Lincoln, Illinois, that we got the chance to purchase our own home, twelve years after we were married. I was in my mid-thirties and by this time Kathy had seen far too many HGTV home fixer-upper shows and was chomping at the bit to make this home her own. This two story house had four bedrooms, which was the main criteria for our family that time around. Every room was painted a different color. We had the house sided while I built a front porch and a side porch. We added central heat and A/C. We gutted the main bathroom and replaced everything because Kathy saw a leak and was sure the tub was going to fall into the living room. We gutted the main floor half-bath and made it cute because ... Kathy. The last thing we touched was the kitchen and it was here we disagreed. She wanted to put in an entire new kitchen and I didn't, because I'm an Andreasen and I'm cheap. So we compromised of a sort. I took out all the cabinets, rearranged them in a different layout, added a couple more to finish the new layout, and added a peninsula. This would be the first time I incorporated land masses into my kitchen renovation projects. Add a new laminate countertop, a new KitchenAid dishwasher, new sink and faucet, and new carpet and we had a new kitchen! Kathy was not amused, however, and began to plot building her dream kitchen.

Kitchen at Lincoln Church

Overlapping with some of this was the start of the church building project, which began in 1996 and concluded in the fall of 2003. It was a good thing I did more of the home projects in the early years of Lincoln before starting the church, as it would be tougher once that building project began. When it came time to plan the kitchen project of thge church, Kathy volunteered to help get that one going. She went along to the kitchen place and helped work with the plans. We called this the "Noah's Ark" kitchen because it had two of everything: two sinks, two refrigerators, two dishwashers, two ovens, and two vent hoods. The cabinets were made of hickory and had a unique look. We put it pantries, glass front cabinet doors, and crown molding. I would learn years later how she disliked builder grade cabinets, both the style and color. I did not catch on very quickly to that early tidbit of knowledge, and that would come back to haunt me in the years to come. There was also wallpaper and border to be hung on the walls, a feature that would fall out of favor within a decade. This was also something we would learn, that fads come and go but it's better to stick with the classics.

Mayfair Kitchen

When the church building was completed, we sold our completed two story house and purchased a sad little ranch on the corner of Mayfair Subdivision and so began our own spare-time project. I tried to salvage as much of the house as possible. But as time went on we saw that this would need to be a total gutting to the studs and a rebuild. Nowhere was that more evident than in the kitchen, if you could call it that. Kathy was on a euphoric high as she gleefully planned for her new kitchen. First off was moving the furnace and water heater from the kitchen to another location. Then she wanted the window moved a little to the right. Then she wanted a new door exiting to the back yard. Then she wanted a wall removed. This was going to be her dream kitchen because we'd be in this house a long time! 

If she had seen it somewhere on HGTV it found its way into our kitchen. Stained solid oak wood floors. White-washed solid maple cabinets. Different heights on the upper cabinets. Decorative crown molding at the top of the cabinets. Glass in a few doors. A tile backsplash for the first time (placed on the diagonal—grrrrrr). A baking center. Under counter lighting. A moveable island. A peninsula area for baking. Hanging pendant lights over the peninsula. Trash basket in a base cabinet. A pantry. A sink bump-out. A spice rack. A tray cabinet. A double-oven range. Wood panels surrounding the refrigerator. A wood-look laminate countertop. I'm sure I missed a few things but she had everything in there but the kitchen sink. Oh wait, she had that too, and it was a white enameled sink. But this was the first and last kitchen we would ever do, she told me. So we did it up right. She enjoyed it for few years, hosting friends and a number of Christmas parties. But this was not the last kitchen we would ever do.

Rockford Kitchen

The day we left Lincoln was the day she realized she was losing her dream kitchen forever. Either that, or it was the day she began to figure out how she could get another one. When we moved to Rockford we looked at dozens of houses but finally found one that checked off most of our boxes, and we bought it. The main criteria here was "three car garage" and this one had them. It was here I heard those dreaded words, "builder-grade kitchen," only this time she assigned a color to it. For some reason she thought it looked "orange" and she did not like the look of all the "orange" wood in the house, which included all the doors and the trim. However, this was the first time I had nice wood doors and wood trim and I liked it so I fought to keep it, because I'm an Andreasen and I'm cheap. But I felt bad for her losing her dream kitchen so I said I would give her a new kitchen. This time it was painted white cabinets, but in two colors. Creamy white on the uppers and gray on the base cabinets. HGTV of course. Glass doors again, but with burlap in the glass. Fancy door pulls of varying sizes that she just LOVED! Many of the same features as before, but the main difference being the Corian countertop and the Corian molded in sink. Same white appliances. Brazilian cherry wood floor. It was smaller but very nice. We would be in Rockford for many years and she was thrilled to have another new kitchen. And then she didn't.

Hiram Kitchen

We were there in Georgia, visiting our oldest son and his wife, when we found out we would be grandparents of twins, this with a two-year-old already. Three girls in two-and-a-half years. They would need help. We decided to move to Atlanta and pick up some of the slack. Remind me of us never moving again? But here we were, moving across the country. We found a home we could afford in Hiram, but it also had the dreaded "orange" builder-grade kitchen cabinets with the additional horror of "orange" oak floors. Did we really need to do another kitchen? Was it really necessary? Not to me it wasn't. But Kathy assured me this would be the very last kitchen we would ever need to do. I was not convinced, however, so I hedged my bet. I said I would put in another kitchen if I got to make some of the choices, and they would be based on price. I found an online supplier of kitchen cabinets and discovered the style and color of the cheapest cabinets, which happened to be white painted Shaker-style cabinets. Cheapest appliances were stainless steel and I found the bargain brand and models. She said over her dead body since stainless steel showed fingerprints. I introduced her to Smudge Proof Stainless Steel and death was averted. Believe it or not, we found an inexpensive granite we both liked and it was cheaper than laminate. I always wanted to have granite. We put down tile on the floor since we were on a concrete slab and it was the cheapest option, plus we'd had so many leaks onto the wood floors in the past that we wanted the protection of tile. We got cheap cabinet handles at IKEA. Plain subway tile at Menards. She wanted a barn door and I built it myself from an old door. This was the least money we ever spent on a new kitchen and yet it was as nice as any before it. It's a good thing because we would be in this house forever, right? She was never going to move again, right? Well, not quite. Sometimes life has a way of changing when you least expect it.

I think the new kitchen will be off to the left!

Kathy and I not only felt the need to downsize when we came to Hiram, but increasingly began to think of doing so for the future. We had started downsizing even more so that our kids wouldn't have to deal with so much of our stuff after we were gone. Yes, that may seem somewhat morbid, but it's a reality we all have to deal with. Or at least our kids will have to deal with it. So me, and Kathy, and Jonathan, and Myric came up with a plan to sell both our homes and move into one large house enough for all of us. This would address some of their space needs with three girls, and give us a landing place that we hoped would keep us in one place for years to come. But, of course, it means we would be doing another kitchen when we finished off the basement as the place for us to live. 

So there's another project that awaits. According to my calculations, this will be the seventh overall project to this point. That's just half of my dad's totals, but still more than I expected there to be. Will this one really be our last? We know better than to voice that question ever again!

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New Kitchen in the Basement Apartment

Edit: Though this blog was originally posted a couple of months before closing on the new house and nine months before finishing the basement, I wanted to add in the new kitchen photo here so you could see it and compare it to those kitchens that precede it. It was most similar to the kitchen we had just left and was planned in much the same way as that one. The main difference was the addition of a large island (there's those pesky land masses again) as a place where the three little girls could gather and sit when visiting with grandma. This time she found a new material to use for the countertop, a quartzite that grabbed her attention. "Because she could" if you recall her mantra. She has had Laminate, Corian, Granite, and now Quartzite as her choice for a counter she could live with. Some of the other options were either not the best material for a kitchen counter or were very high maintenance materials. More details of this build are in the "Starting All Over Again" series on the new home build. We finished this kitchen in March of 2020 just as COVID was becoming a household name. 

Arktander

(aka David Andreasen)