I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe… Corian with gold flecks on fire off the shoulder of Amana… I watched gaudy granite blocks glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser oven door. All those moments will be lost in time, like quartz counters in a divorce… Time to make countertops.
This was an easy decision for us. If you watch recent home improvement shows, the distaff half of the renovation couple doesn’t care about anything except putting $100/square foot quartz countertops in every kitchen that heaves into view. That, and tearing out all the walls to make room for more quartz countertops, and buying throw pillows.
We wouldn’t put $100 per square foot counters in our $11.50/square foot house, even if we had the dough. Some things cross a line from extravagance to obscenity for us. We just need a hard, cleanable surface to put the peanut butter jar down on. I bought a sheet of matte black Formica, and cut up a couple of the leftover sheets of 3/4″ plywood, and made some countertops. It only took a couple of hours, and we could put them into action immediately after putting contact adhesive on the plywood and the Formica, sticking them together, and running a router with a bearing bit around the edges to trim the overage.
Of course we were working during the famous “You can’t find anything at the store” period we all enjoyed a couple of years back. No one had any laminate adhesive. Nobody. The big box stores around here were out, and even the internet outposts didn’t have any. I tried the local hardware store on a whim, too. Way in the back of a rusty, sagging shelf, in the nether regions of the store, at the end of the aisle where they keep the mis-tinted paint and Mexican light bulbs, under a flickering, dim fluorescent tube that was about to breathe its last, I found a gallon of the goo from a brand that went out of business when I was in high school, I think. The store didn’t know they had it. It didn’t have a price on it, so they made one up on another whim at the register. Luckily for me, in Maine, the biggest number a clerk can think of is always less than list price. I stunk up the house with contact cement fumes for a couple of hours, and the job was done. Say, does anyone want to buy 3/4 of a gallon of off-brand contact adhesive? I’ll meet you in a parking lot at 2AM if you bring cash. But I imagine that ship has sailed, and you can buy as much contact adhesive as you can afford now, but no eggs.
Plain black counters looked fine. We’re sticking with a mostly black and white color scheme anyway. We solved two problems with one item next to the stove. We needed a marble slab to roll dough and pasta on, and it’s smart to have an enormous target to plop down hot pans from the stove without worrying about scorching anything. Done.
With counters in place, we can install backsplashes. We’re not fooling around with our backsplashes. We’re tiling. Tile is interesting. The nicest-looking tile is really cheap. Subway tile like this cost less than $0.15 apiece and looks great. If you want to spend a lot of money on tile, you have to buy really ugly stuff. I guess everyone does. Home Despot has aisles full of it. You have to hunt around for standard stuff like this, which is as fundamental a building material as I can name.
In design, you have to take all sorts of things into account, that people generally don’t. They select based on monkey-see from the teevee. This leads to problems with scale, and proportion, and color, and orientation, and texture, and several other things they weren’t thinking of when they whipped out the gold card. Simple shapes, in the right proportions, with a glossy, smooth finish, over large areas, look great. I buried four metal doodads into the wall framing to accept shelves later. The hardware was cheaper than brackets to hold the shelves would have been. The light is gonna come in those two south-facing windows in the morning and light up those walls like a jumbotron, I tell you what.
The spare heir helped. Here he is out on the screen porch off the kitchen, cutting tile I marked out for him. Must be the weekend, he’s a scholar. We bought a cheap tile saw at the home center. It cost more to rent a tile saw for a few days than to buy this one. It’s 50% toy, but you can work with it. The diamond blade costs more than the machine if you have to replace it.
Now we’re getting somewhere. It looks like someone’s birthday, because I spy with my little eye two pie tins with half a cake in each. My wife bakes a lot, so we’re going to make a place to mix flour with other stuff right there. I’ve watched her do it over and over, even though it was hard, so I know making it easier is worth the effort. I’ve seen plenty of baking centers put into kitchens, abandoned before they were used once. This one won’t be.
We tiled the walls at the sink, too. I see the small appliances are still wandering around until their final destinations are fixed. We’ll get to them. Right after the floor, I imagine.
[To be continued. Thanks for reading and commenting!]
One Response
Amen, brother, on the tile! After my glass-fronted kitchen cabinets were installed, I hired Ronnie, the Tile Guy, to tile every inch of exposed wall space with a simple blue and white diner checkerboard pattern. Ronnie cost more than the tile by a long shot, but he’s a perfectionist and he’s quick (gotta get it done and paid up before deer season). Since he was on site, I had him do the floor with a coordinating blue-grey tile found on sale at the building supply. Looks a lot more expensive than it is.
I think building a good kitchen is a lot like French Provincial cooking: inexpensive quality ingredients, carefully and simply prepared.