Yellow or Shout Softly

This will be Mrs. Remodel’s last blog posting for a month as Europe beckons with a wedding to attend and family and friends to visit. Mr. Remodel will not be joining Mrs. R, as he has to do his day job and finish the house. Now before you, dear reader, cry foul, remember that this blog is a tad behind the actual remodel schedule so he isn’t quite being abandoned with a barely finished house. No sooner will he be back from dropping me off at the airport, leaving me to the capricious clutches of airline companies, he will be hitting the waves and eating ice-cream without fear of stink eye from Mrs. R.

Back to the kitchen…
With the cabinets in it was time to put the larger appliances in and attach the sink.


Here is the dishwasher with its stylish little jacket on. It’s a GE and has a latch opening, which is easier on my dodgy neck, rather than a handle you have to tug at to open.



Here is my brand new oven. It is a Maytag with a double oven. With just Mr. & Mrs. Remodel in the home, heating up an whole oven for one casserole dish doesn’t make sense and is wasteful. Now I can use the small upper oven 80% of the time and save energy. But it is gas and I am used to electric so this will be a new experience to tackle.


Here is the fridge housed in its little cubbyhole. It does stick out more than anything else but I wasn’t going to pay more for the less deep model and most kitchens have the same thing so…


Here is Mr. Plumber being eaten by the sink unit cabinet. Wait; no he is installing the brackets for attaching the sink.


Here is the sink all installed with the IKEA faucet and a very handy metal strainer that fits on the sink. The dishwasher has also been installed.


IKEA recommends their butcher-block counters be oiled with a wood treatment oil (IKEA sells its own) to stop it becoming dry and to seal it against water absorption. What I liked about the butcher block in the IKEA store was that it looked weathered with a tinge of grey. Once we put the oil on, the counters turned a darker brown (compare the picture above with the one before that). That was not what I wanted.
If we hadn’t put it on, the counters would be prone to contracting and expansion when water was spilt on it (this is a kitchen after all – and more to the point, my kitchen). But the look I wanted was the unoiled version, although I didn’t know it at the time. Well not much I can do about it but it’s a bit of a let down.


The green door is going to be painted eventually but doors are not a priority right now.

Let’s talk lights. I looked and looked for some pendant lights at a reasonable price with some yellow in them but it was a no go. Apparently yellow isn’t available much in lower-priced home décor items. Goldish yellow is available but not lemon or yellow. So I settled on some white lights at Lowes.
The original idea was to have them all hanging down with the same drop. However in all our planning and planning and more planning we had missed something important. We realised that when the cupboard over the fridge was opened it would hit any light hanging down. Ah!

Mr. Remodel came up with the idea of having the lights hanging at different levels so it looked like we meant it. I liked the idea except that to miss the door opening, that light had to have no chord drop which made it look ‘funny’. And because if one of the lights had that look, another one had to have it too as we had six lights and hung them in long, medium and short (ie zero) drops.


I couldn’t see an alternative solution so agreed but the negative aspects of the kitchen, for me, was growing.


To match the kitchen lights, we bought a longer version which will go into the dining room area above the table.


This settled, the last big decision was getting the lemon tile. For weeks I carried around a lemon paint sample that matched the hue I was after but had to finally admit defeat. There were Mexican-style tiles on-line that claimed to be lemon but I wanted the standard 4” x 4” clean lined ceramic tile. Unfortunately it didn’t seem to be available in lemon.
We found a yellow called Sunflower but it looked a little strong for me.Mr. Remodel really liked it and said it would be great. I had a sample leaning against the wall for weeks trying to convince myself that it would be alright.
I agreed to use it and we ordered the tile.
Mr. Remodel decided to install it with Mr. Fix-It’s help. I was busy elsewhere when they started and when I came out part-way through the job, I was horrified.


One tile sitting against a white wall looked very strong, a whole section of them next to each other seemed to be yelling and also looked very dark. Some of that was caused by the shadow between the tiles. Once the tile was grouted it improved a little.


But not as much as I would have liked.


I was very upset. It was not the look I wanted. I wanted lemon because with white cupboards, I did not want the tile to dominate too much and I feel this tile does.
But ultimately it is just a kitchen. No one died or got a terminal illness and some people don’t have a safe, warm place to sleep so upset will be short-lived.


So there we have a kitchen, which Mrs. Remodel partly loves and is partly ambivalent about. I’m disappointed that it didn’t turn out quite as I had imagined it, particularly the yellow tile, but as I set out my kitchen wares and small appliances, and put some art up it will feel more like mine (plus some of those items will hide some of the tile). But it is still a great kitchen.
What is very clear is that the kitchen feels a lot bigger than the old one even though the counters are no less deep that the old cabinets. It’s probably the lighter colour in part. Whatever the reason, it is roomy, stylish and is another dramatic transformation.

Let’s remind ourselves what we started with.



And how it looks now.