Play Kitchen Progress

I've been working on the play kitchen when ever I can get a spare moment. Its been such a fun project. I'm getting more comfortable with the power tools but I still have to say my favourite part is the decorating and accessorizing. With the base cabinet for the sink built, I could finally get into the fun stuff - picking handles and knobs and fabric.


We found this faucet at the Habitat ReStore. It was the perfect teeny tiny size and only cost $15. Score! For the handles, we made a trip to my favourite source for cabinet hardware - Lee Valley Tools. Lee Valley is a DIY dream store. Its full of all sorts of tools and gadgets and gear for woodworking and gardening. Their online catalogues are worth a look and you can order many things online and they deliver internationally.


We ended up picking this handle. It'll be used for the play stove door and the fridge door. I really love the vintagey look of the hardware. The rivets on the handles give a utilitarian look I quite like. We got these knobs for the dials on the stove, and we picked up this long handle to act as a rod for a dish towel on the side of the play sink.


And here is the fabric I picked. Its so yummy I could eat it up!! The fabrics are from the Meadowsweet 2 collection by Sandi Handerson for Michael Miller fabrics. I purchased a bundle of five 1/2 yard pieces and an extra yard from etsy seller freshsqueezedfabrics. I hope to sew a cover for the opening under the play sink, make coordinating tea towels, and maybe an apron for Chloe too! Pretty ambitious considering I haven't sewed anything in 5 years... and I'm not even sure where the sewing machine is... and if I did find it, I don't know if I could remember how to thread it! I guess power tools aren't the only things I need to practice with.

In The Home Stretch

I'm on pins and needles folks. Granite countertops are going in tomorrow (tomorrow!) and appliances will be in at the end of the week. That means we will have a functional kitchen soon. HandyMan worked his tail off to get the trims and baseboards finished. It was a bit of a hassle because our new drywall is thinner than what was there originally so the door frames sat out from the drywall. But HandyMan, being the perfectionist architect that he is, shimmed everything up and made sure all the awkward door trims lined up. I'll post some pictures of the trims and granite tomorrow, but in the mean time, here's some of my favourite details in the new kitchen...

The ribbed glass door fronts...


Full extension drawers with dovetail joints AND soft close. Plus, the cabinets are frameless construction so the doors cover the entire front of the cabinet box...


Pull out shelves in the pantry...


Pull out spice drawer...


And the pendant light over the sink.


And here's a sample of the drawer handles (though the ones we got are in a brushed finish). Don't you just love the rectangular cup pull? They tie the whole vintage/deco look of the kitchen together.


I'm so ready for this to be over -- take out food lost its appeal weeks ago, lol.

Getting A Handle On Things

This is not my kitchen. It is the beautiful, covetable kitchen of Katiedid. I love the materials, the colours, the style, the lighting, the open and closed shelving. But most of all I love the handles. Look at them... simple, classic, clean. A perfect fit with the shaker cabinets.

It is amazing what a difference something as simple as a handle makes. But it's the details that make a room work. Katiedid's kitchen is splendid because of the restrained colour palette, the well-thought out lighting, the drama of the carrera marble backsplash, and the clean lines of the layout. Take any one of these things in isolation and you have something nice... put them all together and get something memorable.

I'll be mixing it up a little, using the pulls for the uppers and doors, and these rectangular pulls (a different take on cup pulls) for the pot drawers and utensil drawers. The whole look of the room will be clean-lined and angular.

Like I mentioned before though, sometimes my timing sucks, and I only recently decided I just had to have these handles. That meant a little back and forth with the cabinet manufacturer to see if we could revise our order and cancel the pre-drilling for the knobs. Luck was on our side because our cabinets were the next batch to be processed. So, we'll get the handles we want but we'll have to drill the holes ourselves after the cabinets are installed. For now, I think its a good trade-off... but ask me again when one of us chips the finish drilling into our brand new cabinets :-o