ROSEMONT REMODEL - Part 1

When Paul and I bought our darling home one block off of Main street downtown Willamette, we knew we would someday move, but imagining the next home was really out of my scope until the day we actually found it. It took a home that made me feel like I was already home, even with someone else's stuff in it, for me to be willing to begin the painful parting with the home I was so attached to. 

House shopping is emotional.  The reality HGTV shows don't usually show all the fear and tears of uprooting and the stress of readjusting.  It takes time and patience.   The things that I loved immediately about the new place were the things that made the adjustments all worth it. First, I loved the seclusion of the large burn that separates the house from the street. I love the huge deodor cedar tree that creates a rustic, lodge like feel even before you see the large rough beams and uneven cut horizontal siding of the architecture.  

 The dark wood, double entry doors with seeded glass lead into a room with a view through solid walnut molded windows of grassland, cedars, horizon and potential.  The main living space has an exposed cedar ceiling and a massive stone fireplace. These rustic elements create a grounded, feel with the 3 acres the house it lives on.  If any house looks settled and as one with the land, it is this one and I love that about it. 

There were many many things to love, but the designer in me saw the things that could be improved and my brain went right to work. 

Paul loves the idea of kaizen which means slow change in Japanese. He always suggests living with a space before making changes.  There is a lot of value to this. A home takes on a life of its own and the way elements work together can completely change with lighting and accessories and seasons and just the memories you make that imprint on the surfaces. I have learned that it is far easier to suggest and make changes to other peoples spaces than my own. As I work with a space, my design brain always finds ways to find the beauty, as hidden as it may be, in every surface. I find there is always a way to bring out the subtlety's of an object that can make it come to life, and over time I will learn to love almost anything I struggle with long enough. My new kitchen is the perfect example of this concept. 

When I first saw the kitchen cabinets I immediately knew that cherry was the wrong tone to go with the golden cedar ceiling, the gorgeous walnut doors and molding, and grayed, rustic oak flooring. It was WAY too many colors of wood.  

I knew it needed to be changed.  My girlfriends all agreed. The men and boys in my family fought hard to keep the wood color. Painting wood is still such a tragedy for so many men. Also, the expense of painting cabinets is not a small force to oppose. I ignored Paul's initiatives for a kaizen approach and got a painter on board right away, but they were out quite a few weeks. I wondered if I could live in the kitchen and love it as it was enough to entertain for Thanksgiving and be proud of the space. I started accessorizing and added lots of woods and coppers plus white over the dark backsplash and with all of these accessories, I was able, in my mind, to make the cherry look intentional and beautiful, so then I set out questioning my design decisions again. Why spend the money and time and trouble when it really is "ok" as it is. Why does it have to be an insta worthy kitchen?  Well, my great husband, who doesn't really care that much how it looks really, pushed me to go ahead and get the kitchen of my dreams.  With his support and encouragement, I was set to move forward and paint the cabinets. But before that, many choices needed to happen to get to that point. First, if the cabinet color changes, then the backsplash also had to change.

BACKSPLASH:

 The backsplash was a pretty; dark gray pebble, but it was worn and scratched and would not work if I painted the uppers a shade of white. I got bids.  $8900 for paint and $2500 for tile. Yikes. I still don't swallow remodel costs easily. It was so "almost great" as it was.  The environmentalist/ Chidi from "The Good Place" in me always puts up a fight to things like changing things that aren't broken that will cost a lot, or cause environmental waste. (That's a topic for a long, verbose philosophical future post, but suffice it to say, this topic always slows down my decision making and keeps me up at night thinking and rethinking my decisions.)  In the end, painting won out, and redoing the backsplash got a cheaper, solution.  Paul's aunt Jolene is a very talented faux finish specialist and can make paint look like any real surface. Since I love to paint, I decided to take Jolenes endorsement of my skills and do my best to make my gray  pebble backsplash look like a rustic white/ cream colored pebble backsplash. I'm now crossing my fingers that my talent will prevail and I will be able to pull it off.  The first brush stroke of primer on stone is a bit scary.  Courage Mel.. believe in your crazy ideas. 

  

Shanon Edwards and I pulled off the fun task of lightening the wood and stone around the Eilers Way fireplace and it looked as natural as could be. You would never be able to tell we put paint on that stone. So if worse comes to worse, I'll call in Shanon for reinforcements.  

CABINET COLORS: 

I decided to paint the uppers with Magnolias Linen and the lowers with Sherwin Williams Greenblack to match the existing island.  I really fought my long lived desire to have deep green cabinets, but decided it would be too much green if I did all the lowers green so I decided to treat myself with the green of my dreams in the mudroom and stick with the Greenblack that looks so good with the dark slate for the kitchen.  

CABINET FINISH: 

Everyone I asked suggested that I go with semi-gloss on the cabinets. I took a bold stance and asked for satin. Yikes, we will see if my gut instinct will give me the look I'm after.  I did not want any sheen. I think it will add to the rustic/ modern vibe I love so much.

THE HOOD

The stainless steel hood also was not bad, but if I'm changing the kitchen, could I make it better?  LOL. Well, yes, yes, I think I can.   I love it when the hood is a centerpiece and if it can add to the rustic/ lodge feel of the home while bringing in the warmth of the wood, especially the cedar, then it would break up the white uppers and really make a  statement. I took Paul to one of my favorite architectural salvage stores to look for a carved or rustic piece of wood to make the front 6" of the hood a real statement and bring in the warmth of the wood I did not want to loose. I wanted it to tie into the beams and flooring in the living room.  We searched the whole store and I was almost going to give up, when I decided to consider a strange piece that was not 48" x 8" like we had been looking for but an old triangle pediment that came off of an old colonial home in Syracuse New York.  I thought maybe I could incorporate it into the upper section of the hood. It was not cheap but I loved the carving so I grabbed a 6" long piece of cross cut walnut for the front of the hood and splurged on the carved pediment.  Now I had to find a carpenter that could actually make it into a hood.

LIGHTING

The next big decision I needed to make was about lighting. I felt the house deserved a whole new lighting package.  The existing lights over the island are cable lighting; I think WAC from the 90's. They were chosen to be minimalist and add a modern spin to the lodge feel without interrupting the view to the living room and TV. The designers had the idea right, but I don't like the modern element. In the living room, they put in halogen cable lights from the same series and they splay the light in a nice way, and have the halogen reflectors that make pretty light, but not even light so there are always lots of shadows and the halogens get really hot and use a lot of energy.  The rest of the house has halogen can lights installed with a system called smart dimmers.  The are too smart for me because they took a few weeks just to learn how to turn them all on to their brightest.  Even at their brightest, the actual lamps are so high up into the can fixture that, again, there are tons of shadows and no even lighting.  Also, again, they use tons of energy because they are halogen. The brightest it gets looks like candle light, which I'm sure is what they were going for. To be honest, that look really attracted both Paul and I to the house from the beginning. It is cozy! It's lodgy and earthy. We like that, but I also want to be able to turn the lights on bright and see the space.  We are wanting more from the lighting than it can do.  

What to do.. 

BACK TO THE HOOD

I found a great carpenter to put the hood together, and I decided that I should make some modifications to the cabinets themselves while I had him here. I had him remove the large angled cornices from the tops of the cabs and then add mdf to the ceiling to fill in the gaps and make them look more built in. I  added some simple moulding detail to keep it from looking too much like an afterthought, (even though it was) and hopefully, when it is painted, it will look intentional and modernly seemless. 

Making the triangle into the front of a hood took some figuring, but after many coats of bondo, you can barely see the line where the new plywood meets the triangle. After paint, I'm hoping we will be able to still see some of the rustic, crackly finish showing through on this beautiful old piece. We were careful not to sand it to perfection. 

The carved scroll design on the hood started to throw me for a loop. Like I said, it was definitely not the piece I had gone in search of, and coming out of the salvage yard with something entirely different than planned that was based on whim and my tendency to be super distracted by pretty things, made my wheels grind a little bit. Yes, the piece was gorgeous, and yes it would work as a hood, but what have I done??! Was this style of carving too colonial and delicate for a mountain lodge?  And is our house is actually a lodge? Maybe I should have approached this with more Kaizen.  I realized that having the words to describe your design style from the beginning and a color pallet is essential, even if it is your own home. Each piece you purchase has to fit the beginning plan, even if you love it. It is so easy to get off track.  I worried, "have I made a huge mistake? Of course, that weekend is the weekend I ran into this at an antique mall. 

 

It was not wide enough to have been the front of the hood, so I allowed myself some grace and forgiveness, but this is what I had in mind for the hood from the beginning.  That would have been real cool right?

so I asked myself, how LODGE do I have to go? Can I find a good middle ground. The triangle pediment reminds me of a gorgeous modern farmhouse, which I love and have been designing for other people, but when I get really thinking about it, my house is not really a farmhouse at all, or is it? I have 3 acres, they are not all wooded. I do have a huge garden.  It could be a farmhouse. It's only the beams and huge fireplace and stone making it a lodge right? It could be... although why do I have to be held down to the chains of design style? It can be a combination.  Well.. the hood is done, so it will have to be a combination. While working through the grinding of these wheels, I chose about a million light fixtures that bring in this farmhouse/ industrial/ rustic look, but none of them strictly said lodge or mountain cabin or "Sundance".  I was trying to make too many styles work.  Confusion reigned. So many options I love and only one house to put them in.

The island is large and can handle two, even three awesome pendants. Over the dining table, I want a new chandelier, the living room needs some sort of lighting that is flexible, meaning dim or bright and even. It also has to work in an 11' high ceiling with 1' deep beams that are 16" apart.  Last, I need 2 sconces for the stairway.  I have been dreaming lighting plans for weeks now. 

More to come...