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I spent all day Saturday making new countertops for our kitchen. Here is the new desk. The drawer unit is new, the previous base cabinet was a standard height cabinet so the desk was two tiered and not terribly useful. Now the desk has a 4' wide top. I took the old base cabinet and added it to the island and made a new top for the island as well. It is about 8 square feet bigger now as I made it deeper and wider. Still a lot of work to do to finish up this project but we're making good progress. We had the hardwood floor refinished and the area covered with hardwoods expanded over Christmas. That lead to painting the family room, living room, powder room and soon the rest of the kitchen, hallway, stairway and upstairs hall.

I started out Saturday morning with a 5x12 piece of laminate, two pieces of plywood, some cherry 1x2's, a gallon of contact cement and a pint of wood glue. At the end of the day I had my counters, about 3 square feet of left over laminate, maybe half a square foot of plywood cut offs, 5 feet of cherry 1x2 and a quart of contact cement left over. I'd say I planned the materials out pretty well. Volume wise I probably had more saw dust than other waste.

The cherry base cabinet *should* eventually darken to match the upper cabinets. I still need to apply finish to the cherry banding on the counters.

Here is the expanded island with the base cabinet from the desk added to the left side. Painting is a work in progress, so the kitchen walls will be repainted once I get the other counters in and the drywall repaired from the backsplash.

I'm leaning towards using tin ceiling panels as the backsplash. The new counters won't have a 4" backsplash of laminate. I may do tile, still thinking about that. Our plan is to update the kitchen to get the kids through college and then think about a renovation. At that point the builder grade cabinets would be 20 years old.

Looks very nice.

I'm an advocate of wallpaper for a backsplash. If you get vinyl coated it cleans easily and if you get tired of it, it is easy to change. I like being able to change it per my whims.

Thanks, not a fan of wallpaper.

Looks nice Sparky. How come your projects are smaller and more manageable than mine.

http://countryplans.com/smf/in....msg166601#msg166601

This message has been edited. Last edited by: redoverfarm,

Nice project Red.

I've had some ambitious projects over the past dozen years or so, unfortunately a number of them haven't been at the Casa de Sparky. When my son started kindergarten 12 1/2 years ago at a private school I took on building maintenance there. It was a 40 year old converted store that was about 50,000 square feet of awful. When that closed we converted our church's original sanctuary into a coffee house and then I took on being a Scoutmaster for 3 years. Now I'm turning my attention back to my own place. After I get the kitchen/dining room/family room work done I plan on finally pulling permits to finish my basement. I built a couple of screen porches for friends during that time too, still don't have one at my house, go figure.

Back in the 1980's I helped my parents renovate a 80+ year old house. That cured me of "this old house fever" I've owned 4 houses and only one was previously owned.

Well with the cabin taking the last 6 years I thought it was time that I moved back home. I had already finished 850 sq ft of the 2004 remodel and am using that portion. The remaining garage, apartment and a 18X26 shop (that I need) is still shelled. Funny how when you don't really need something you are slow at finishing.

I also have a basement and it is so far down the list the next owner may have to do that one.

With the garage apartment it is like trying to pour 10 gal of water into a 5 gal bucket. Just getting kitchen, bath, family/dining room and bedroom will be condensed in comparison to a regular house. But hey when I was married 3 of us lived in a 10X50 mobil home so I guess it is doable.

Like the old saying " When you finish everything you die" I am going to try to avoid that.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: redoverfarm,

Looks great, Sparky. I'd say you accomplished a lot in one weekend.

Thanks Bob, I really should take a couple of vacation days to push this project to completion.