Happy Wednesday! Today I’m sharing a status update on the kitchen, which as I promised you will be a fairly slow moving project. We’re having a contractor take down the wall between the kitchen and sunroom in April, so right now we’re just doing a few small things here and there to start getting ready. So far that has included removing the buffet (and turning it into an island), and putting in our new fridge:
This past weekend, my dad visited to help me think about how to build the wall of cabinets I’m planning for the wall where the fridge is. Given the dimensions and constraints I have, nothing pre-fab seems workable.
That means either getting something custom built (which is pretty pricey), or building something myself (which is pretty daunting). Fortunately my dad is an avid woodworker (remember when we built the workbench in my basement?), and he seems excited to take on the challenge with me. It’s totally new for both of us, but we’re both intrigued by the challenge.
We spent the weekend puzzling over the space:
And we drew up some plans that we think will work pretty well (and also involve plenty of learning…).
You don’t actually need to decipher these — when we actually start building, I’ll go through it all in more detail. But in the meantime, I just wanted to update you on the planning!
The other thing I did was try and try and try to find a match for our floor tile. As I mentioned when we took out the buffet, we need some extra tile to patch the holes left behind by the buffet (just a few where the new cabinets won’t go) as well as where the closet currently is in the sunroom since once that’s torn down we’ll have gaps in the tiling.
Altogether we only need 13 tiles, plus our contractor suggested that we should have a few extra on hand in case any crack during construction (because we’re going to have to support the ceiling temporarily with posts while we put the beam in, and the pressure could crack a tile or two).
It’s not a lot, but it’s become a major stumbling block. I’ve danced around it for a little while just casually looking and pretending that when I look harder I’ll easily find it, but this weekend I got serious. First, I remove a tile fragment that I knew would need to come out anyway so that I could bring it in person with me — photo matches just weren’t working.
To remove the tile, I used the DeWalt multitool that my stepdad gave me for the holidays. I have the best family members.
I hadn’t had a chance to use it yet, but it was so easy and effective. He knew that it would be the perfect thing as I got into this renovation.
First I just slipped on the attachment intended for removing grout, which he had also gotten me.
Then I started cutting. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it just slices through the grout without feeling scary or out of control.
I started by scoring a shallow line along the full length of the first side, and then ran back over it a few times pressing harder to actually cut through all the grout down to the subfloor. Here you can see a complete cut toward the top of the tile, and more grout to cut toward the bottom.
It produced a lot of dust, which I took time to vacuum up frequently with my handheld vacuum (I bought a Dirt Devil for $30 recently — affiliate link, read about our policies — and it’s awesome).
Once I’d cut all three sides, I used a screwdriver and hammer to chisel it up.
I wasn’t trying to keep it intact, so I didn’t try that hard not to break it. It did crack in one place, but it came up very easily.
At that point, I was feeling pretty awesome about my mad DIY skillz. I’m a home renovating expert!
That’s when it went downhill. I proceeded to drive around (with Sam in tow, because I convinced him it would be nice to run some errands together — sucker) to a combination of big box and speciality flooring/tile stores, and couldn’t find a match. The tile is 13″x13″, which is less common than 12″x12″. It’s brown, but it has a fair amount of pink in it as well, and has both a pattern and a texture. I did determine that it’s ceramic not porcelain, but that’s about as much as I could figure out. No one at any of the stores had ideas for how I could track down a match. Home Depot did say all their 13″x13″ tile is online only, but there’s no way to order a sample or single tile — so the only option would be to buy full boxes (and pay shipping for them) to see if I can find something that matches. Not super appealing, Home Depot.
So now I’m totally at a loss. The space is almost 400 square feet, so putting down new flooring would add a lot to the budget. Since it’s so much flooring, I’m not optimistic that I’m going to find someone selling inexpensive leftovers on craigslist or something, which would mean paying retail. That means we’re looking at a minimum of $500, probably more…and that seems so silly to have to do over literally 13 tiles. If it were just the tiles near the fridge (which is only four of them) I would just go with a close match since it’s not a super visible area of the kitchen. But when the wall comes down, the space where the closet was will be smack dab in the middle of a beautiful new space. Having mismatched floor tiles would be super obvious. It’s also not a location where it would seem natural to have a different color of tiling intentionally — I feel like it would just look like a random rectangle of different tile.
So…what do you think I should do? I mean burning down the house and moving off the grid is always an option, but I’m hoping I can find something a little less drastic. Any brilliant ideas?
Is there anywhere else in the house – like inside a closet or around a corner – e that has this tile that’s a less obvious place? If so I wonder if you could “borrow” tiles since you need so few. Ulgh, what a drag. Sorry you’re dealing with this!
Sadly there is not, but (BUT) the one possibility I’ve thought of is the tile in the transition area between the bedroom, bathroom, hallway, and kitchen. It’s the same as the kitchen, and we could replace that area with new flooring much more cheaply. My big concern is whether I can actually get that tile up without breaking it. There are about 16 whole pieces there and I need 13, so not much margin for error. But it might be my saving grace….
I’ve been able to get samples of Home Depot tiles by going straight to the manufacturer site and ordering from there. It can still get kind of pricey if you order a lot of samples (they are not all free), but I have always been able to find a whole lot more options online than local stores.
Super helpful, thank you Anni!
Do you LOVE the tiles you have? Maybe all this hassle is a sign that you should bite the bullet and buy tiles that are truly “you.”
No, I really don’t love them at all, and it definitely seems silly to be going to the ends of the earth trying to find tiles I dislike. I need to revisit our budget, because we would have to give something else up to do a new floor (and counters are the only thing big enough to swap out). I’m about to mail off some tile from the basement for an asbestos test (more on that on the blog soon…), so in the meantime I am panicking that all our kitchen renovation dollars in in jeopardy if we have to do a massive basement abatement. Yikes :/
13 inch tiles can be subbed for four six inch tiles with a quarter (third?) inch grout line. Maybe you could selectively pull out some of the good tiles to create a pattern you like in something complimentary? Or even a neutral? Apartment therapy, which I have seen y’all comment on, has had a couple of posts on intentional multi substrate floors. My favorite are the wood/tile ones where the tile seems to intrude into the wood. Maybe you could find an interesting, inexpensive solution that way?
Yeah, I’ve been thinking a lot about this! I’m worried I won’t be able to get good tiles out whole, so I’d need to find a pattern that works with the places where the tiles will definitely be missing (since I won’t be able to replace those spots with good tile unless I can get whole ones out). But I think there are some interesting possibilities!
the idea wouldn’t be to harvest good tiles (though potentially you could, maybe, some), but more to make space to complete your design to make the substitute tiles look intentional, and balanced even in areas where there was no damage. Think a design like this guy
http://st.hzcdn.com/simgs/51d1c7dc00047e0e_4-1694/contemporary-tile.jpg
or this guy:
http://3.design-milk.com/images/2014/07/Tile-Floors-3-Johnsonite-Textile-VCT-600×389.jpg
but, you know, your floors.
Oooh, those are super cool! I especially think the second one could work well, because the location of the missing pieces is so random to the layout of the room that a totally random feeling tile pattern could fit that well. Thanks so much!
I don’t know how old your house is, but is it possible to contact the builder to see where they sourced them?
The house was built in the 50s, but the kitchen was put in sometime within the last 10 years we think. However, we just bought it last year, and we can’t contact the seller to find out where she got the tile because it was a contentious sale. That would definitely be a great option if we could though, good thinking!
I don’t suppose you could contact the manufacturer of the tile? Does the tile have any markings on it that would indicate who made it?
Sadly no markings on the back, but that’s a great idea!
Ok, here’s a few ideas.
1. Home Depot (in MO anyways) will ship anything for free over $49 to the closest store to you. Is that not the case in your state? Also, all online orders can be taken back to the store. We ordered lots of extra tile for our kitchen just so we’d have enough and will be taking most of it back to the store.
2. If you can’t get free shipping online then head to the store and they can waive shipping. This has worked for me in the past. You can have it shipped to their store and then arrange a pickup.
3. We had some missing flooring that was going to be hidden underneath all of our built-ins. We put plywood (the same thickness as the flooring) underneath instead. Could you do this? Is it hidden? If not, could you remove the tiles that are going to be hidden and replace that part with plywood or something similar. Then take those tiles and rework them to the areas that are going to noticeable?
Ok, think I’m done Ha. Yay for progress!
Thanks Ashley! Each case of tiles costs $31, so we could order a bunch of different ones and that would add up to give us free shipping. It’s just so much to be lugging back to the store for the inevitable returns (I wish we could just get a single tile of many different types rather than a box of like 20 tiles of each), but that may be what we have to do! Unfortunately the areas we’re dealing with will be right in the middle of the space in plain view, and there aren’t any that will become hidden that we can rob from. We’ll figure something out, it just seems so silly to be dealing with so much extra hassle for a measly three tiles!
I think that you should redo the floor. After a couple of different houses and renovations, that’s what I would recommend. If your budget doesn’t cover that, could you save up more and then do it? Tiling is not that difficult, and would make for great blog fodder. After all, it’s not like you’re in love with the tile. And after the rest of the kitchen is done and beautiful, perhaps you’ll be sad you didn’t change out the pinky-coloured floors. Waiting is tough (so that you have more $$$), but in the long run, perhaps it’ll be worth it!
Good luck whatever you choose.
Thanks Wilma! I think you may be right. It’s less the work of tiling that I find daunting so much as first having to rip out 400 square feet of existing tile — just getting one out was a challenge. Less about the effort than the time involved — my hope was to have this kitchen done within 2016, but maybe that’s a pipe dream… 🙂
I just happened on this on Pinterest last Friday, which is in fact the next click after my P&D fix each MWF, and think the idea is right up your alley! Just find tiles that match in size and paint away! You love a good stencil ;)!
http://remingtonavenue.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-girl-who-painted-her-tile.html
Super cool and I could see a nice navy and white in your space! Or, tone on tone neutral…no pantone color of the year combo please!
Best of luck!
I do think its worth getting some boxes of tile from HD and seeing if you magically find a match, but if not, then I think MindiP’s suggestion is great. I mean its likely not a long term solution, but it will get you by for a couple years until you save up to re-floor the area. I really liked the stenciling in the link MindiP shared, but even if you just want something plain, rustoleum has these floor coatings meant for garages that I have never used but seem durable.
Good thought, I could always go the plain paint direction! We’re thinking maybe dark navy/gray cabinets and white counters, what do you think would look good on the floor? I have such a hard time visualizing! Maybe we need to do the rest of the kitchen first and then I can do some photoshop mock-ups and we can all vote.
Oh man, you should definitely do some mock-ups and get other people’s opinion, because I have the same problem of visualizing. When I reno’d my house, I picked beige or white everything. I mean its not horrible, its definitely safe, but its also literally vanilla.
The more I think about it, the more I like this idea of painting the floor especially if budget is a concern and you really just need to put in a dozen tiles to fill gaps. Mostly because if your floor tile was laid AFTER the cabinets, then its going to be easier to replace down the line (easy is relative, I’ve only had to pull up a small area of tiles in my house and I hated it. My kitchen and baths were all vinyl sheets and I hated removing that too, but at least with vinyl I could get a larger area up at once so it went faster).
So if it was my house, I think I would patch the missing spots with 13×13 tile in as close of a color as I could get, paint it, (probably in a pattern like MindiP showed-because if its temporary I tend to take more risks). Then a couple years later if I was going to sell the house I would put in new flooring which would have the benefit of being super-up-to-date at the time of the sale. Otherwise then I could take my time saving for flooring I wanted, or not, there’s literally no rush. Also, my grandma’s kitchen in Arizona had these worn, chipped painted Mexican tiles and so even if the paint starts to chip and wear, I think it would just remind me of her. Ok, now I may have convinced myself to consider painting my own kitchen floors. Sorry this was so long, its really your fault for making your commenters feel like part of the process 🙂
I’m so glad you feel like part of the process, clearly I need major help! The feedback and ideas have all been so awesome, I am definitely planning to put more of the kitchen decisions to committee feedback! 🙂
Oooh yes I saw that project too (and we’re totally glowing that you hit up P&D *before* Pinterest 🙂 ), I think it could be so awesome! Do you think it would be off-putting to future buyers? I find these kind of colorful and quirky things to be so fun, but I keep remembering our terrible blue counters and how our seller probably thought they were “fun” too 🙂 But then, you have to plan your home for what you want and not live under the shadow of some future hypothetical buyer, it’s not like we have plans to sell soon!
HI Sage,
I overthink it too as a designer myself, I do residential architectural design for a living. I had the hardest time with my own kitchen. In the end, I went with black cabinets (against everyone’s advice) and polished white marble (against everyone’s advice) – you know why? Because that is how I dress, mostly black and white and I can dress up the space with accessories in different metals and colors, just like my clothes. It’s an idea I heard a long time ago, and I do trust that we will feel more comfortable in our homes if they are decorated how we truly live in our own clothes/style.
With that said, I would probably go with grey or a very neutral cabinet, I’ve had color on cabinets and it began to wear on us after a while.
Look at Benjamin Moore Northern Cliffs: http://www.homebunch.com/interior-design-ideas-paint-color-2/
River Reflection: https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=benjamin+moore+indian+river+cabinets&view=detailv2&&id=48B07E4E83061DEF181F3B010D67F4C28D8C43AB&selectedIndex=12&ccid=xDi097%2bT&simid=607999737447516410&thid=OIP.Mc438b4f7bf93a37969d5ddf8cdfe7b80o0&ajaxhist=0 for a greige neutral. I love the idea of a navy floor, but really on the midnight side of things and not a true blue navy. Blue, like yellow, is very hard to find the right shade or hue. The chroma can appear much brighter depending on the light than it looks in a small sample area.
Or for a more taupe-y grey, Indian River:
http://thecowspot.blogspot.com/2014/06/top-taupes.html
Greys are VERY hard as well! We just painted the exterior of our house BM Kendall Grey, but on the inside, that family of colors didn’t go well. So, in our dining room, I found a Behr color on a whim tried Battleship grey in the dining room and it is the perfect tone. Not every grey looks good in every house – the most popular Revere Pewter looks terrible in our family room and hall and I need to repaint it when I get the energy. All I can recommend is samples, samples, samples in the biggest size that is reasonable!
Or, do the regular designer thing and go neutral on both and dress up with colors in dishes, accessories, window coverings, etc. I used to absolutely hate that idea when I was younger, but now that I am a bit more mature, I see how wise and elegant it can be.
BUT, and this is a a big but – you are young, it’s just paint, kitchens should be bright and fun spaces, so if you want to make a splash – go for more color!
Good luck, I hope some of all your readers suggestions help!
Mindi
Super helpful perspective, thanks Mindi! It doesn’t seem fair to be getting a professional opinion for free! 🙂 I love the grays you linked to, I think especially if I’m going to replace or paint the floor I can go with a lighter gray on the cabinets. My original thought of dark gray/blue has a lot to do with trying to make a workable contrast with our current floors, which seems to be making less and less sense. I do love the idea of a nice bright space that’s fairly neutral and lets me add color through accessories.
I am about to have a bathroom or two
renovated so I can sell my house so I know all
about BUDGET:) But I think that you might at least see what a new floor would cost before you completely rule it out. If you get it at Home Depot or Lowe’s or some other big box stores
you can usually get it for 18 months or more no interest. And see if that payment would fit in your budget. I am only saying this because I so wish I had done it five years ago :):):)
I am sure no matter what you decide it will all work out!
So helpful to hear from someone on the other side who wishes they’d just done it! I keep wondering if I’ll feel the same, daunted as I am right now about the idea of more effort and money. A new floor would be so lovely! Good luck with your renovations! Any other reno advice to share? This is my first one!
Do you have any decent salvage yards in your area? You may find a super economical find there.
Great idea! I will need to look around, I haven’t come across any good ones (other than a few architectural salvage yards that are really pricey). I will keep you posted!
Try builddirect.com. You get 5 samples free. Send 5 samples or all your friends till you get what you like.
Or re-do the floor….
Good luck, but I am sure it will be beautiful. So far, your reno looks great!
What happened with the black pants saga?
Thanks Wendy! The pants saga continues. I know the winner won’t be black because black pants and my cats don’t co-exist very well, but I’m hoping for a nice gray pair. Time will tell….
I don’t have anything new to add as most of your savvy readers have already given many great options. I guess my vote would be to save up and re-do the floor, especially if you don’t really like the tile. It’s such a big part of the look of your kitchen and you don’t want to have regrets after you are done with the reno. Excited to see the process, whatever you end up doing. I think your plans sound great!
Thanks Ananda! It really is a huge part of the room, it seems silly to work around something I dislike if I could just save for longer and end up with something I like a lot more.
I vote redo the floor. We had our kitchen done two years ago, and the couple things we cheaped out on to be economical have bugged the crap out of me. If you can redo the floor for $500, that is totally worth it. Kitchen renovation is such an enormously pain-in-the-ass process that you really want to be 100% satisfied when you’re done.
You may already know this about asbestos, but it’s really not an issue unless you disturb it. Plus, if you confirm that it is asbestos and you don’t end up abating it, you might have to disclose it when you sell the house (probably depends on the state. I know we in OR have to do that with lead paint.) We had suspicious-looking flooring in our 1942 house, and the contractor just went over it with wood in the kitchen and carpet upstairs. Much less hassle than abatement.
People get all batty about lead paint and asbestos, but neither of them are evil unless you aggressively disturb them and sniff the dust they release.
Thanks Joanna! Totally with you on the asbestos approach, that’s what we were thinking too but the reality is that there’s a lot of cracking and breaking tiles along the edges so that makes us nervous. If the whole floor were solid and intact we’d feel better, but as is it seems like we need to test it and pursue abatement if it turns out to be bad news. You know I’ll keep you posted!
Do the whole thing fresh!
Thanks Vanessa!