Seat of the Pants Kitchen Renovation

This probably isn't the most wise way to renovate your kitchen, but last Saturday darlingest husband and I started ripping out the tile in our kitchen.  As you can see from the "before" picture, it covers most of the room -- like 5' high!  Kinda like a grungy operating room.  Oh, really not a nice description...

So, I had this plan that the tiles would come off ever so gently, and maybe we'd put up some cottage-y beadboard moulding up and it would all be a piece of cake -- like in one of those DIY shows.  Not so fast.  A few tiles came off ok, but then others came off with huge chunks of plaster -- you could still see the horse hair mixed in from 100 years ago.  And it became obvious we were taking it down to the lathe...

Window wall -- down to the lathe, baby!

We were going to try to do the renovation in stages to save $$, but we're finding out that's kind of impossible.  We thought we could wait to replace the yicky cooktop and doll-size oven, but we realized we'd have to take it out now to be able to finish the wall...

Here's a cool surprise, though...  When we took out the base cabinet we found this groovy old wallpaper (yes, I'm a sucker for old wallpaper) and a very cool chrome tile backsplash, albeit caked in old adhesive.  There's a signature from the same wallpaper guy who put the wallpaper in Griffin's room -- this one is dated 1948 -- right after the last owners bought the house.  I think it's funny I put in a backsplash just like this in my old kitchen, and I was thinking of something similar for this one.  You know I'm going to do whatever it takes to see if I can get that glue off...

Check out this very sweet wallpaper!  I love the metallic silver...

Some of my Favorite Things

I found this amazing pink and blue dresser on trash day in Oak Park - just set out on the curb (I am constantly amazed at what people will throw out!).  I've learned by now that you have to grab it when you see it, so even though the kids were totally complaining, I stopped and loaded it up in the back of my car.  I thought about repainting it for about one second before I realized what a mistake that would be.  And I love the drawer pulls...

I found the lamp at my fave resale shop of all time, The Brown Elephant, or as we jokingly call it, L'Éléphant Marron.  I had it rewired at Dressel's - I later found out it's a Mogul lamp and it takes these giganto light bulbs - it also gets bright enough that you probably do surgery with it.  My friend Holly was checking it out when she realized that it had all these little holes in the scroll-y parts - she was sure it used to have prisms - I would never have realized that (thanks, Holly!).

 So I found these cool turquoise colored ones on eBay.

This is one of my all-time favorite things, slightly creepy as it may be.  It's a Perma-Vue - an old-fashioned grave decoration that you would put on someone's grave, and the heart and flowers inside were protected in the glass block (it also used to have big, folding metal spikes on the bottom to hold it in the ground, but I took those off).  I've never seen another one anywhere.  It was a wedding present (um, the first one, not the recent one) from very good friends, and even though my mom was thoroughly horrified, I have treasured it ever since.  I love anything with hearts on it...

Griffin's Bedroom - Cool Surprises

What a cool surprise!  Once Griffin and I got all the paneling pulled down we found this scrap of old wallpaper behind the radiator - a seashore vibe with lighthouses, shells, and sailor's knots - perfect for a little boy's room.  The rest of it was painted over with white paint (why, why, why?!), but this little piece was saved.  I was wondering what year it was from until we ripped down the painted-over wallpaper and found this...

A hidden message from the wallpaper guy! So cool!  I love things like this...