anniversary part 4 - the service kitchen (butler's pantry?)

OK people, I hope you are ready for a major project! This is the only room that we have fully decorated start to finish. It took forever!

We actually began what became phase 1 of the project before Thanksgiving. I roped my mom and stepdad into coming to visit to help. We had been watching this show called Saving the Manor, and they were doing amazing things using flat pack cabinets, and we were fascinated. I felt like I could easily create something amazing, the same way they do in the show! (If you have watched the show, please reach out to me to discuss the outdoor shower episode, I have so many weird mixed feelings that I need to unpack.)

I ordered enough cabinets from Ikea to build an island and a sideboard in the room that the previous owners used as a dining room.

While this is an appropriately sized dining room for most families, we bond with our family and friends on the basis of food and dining so we wanted plenty of space. I also have a dream of seating 16 at a new dining table someday - this may be unreasonable, but a girl can dream. That is a super long way of saying that we are using what was the formal living room for our dining room which left this room without a purpose.

The kitchen here is a long galley - honestly, it doesn't work great for me. At the old farm I built my dream kitchen (cue choir of angels). It worked perfectly for the way I cook and entertain and nothing will really ever measure up until I do it again. The major problem with the galley kitchen is counter space, so I thought we could use a big island in this room adjacent to the kitchen for cooling pans of biscuits or cookies, transferring food into serving dishes, setting up a buffet, etc. I also thought a shallow sideboard would be great for extra storage which we need because of my hoarder level collection of china and silverware.

Here they are! the island and sideboard! Intimidating, no?

So my parents came, and we ate sous vide turkey breast with crispy skin and quinoa stuffing, and then I put them to work building cabinets!

Once we got all of the carcasses built, I realized two things: A. I ordered one wrong cabinet, and B. that the room would be greatly improved by a lot more cabinets and a wall mounted pantry area. The project went on hold for me to order and receive a second round of cabinets (Phase 2) which almost doubled the cost of the project.

I used the lull in cabinet building to hang the wallpaper and clean the chandelier. It's nice to summarize a lot of work in a single line. "Then I hung the wallpaper" like it was something that took an hour or two.

At this point in the project - 85% completion, I started making plans for another project. This is why nothing ever gets done. I was thinking about doing a ceiling treatment in the dining room (when we get to it) and that I should try to tie it in with what was turning into a super fancy butler's pantry. Once we hung the molding, I decided to mix some Tricia custom paint using leftover paint from the basement to paint the ceiling around it. I was worried it was a bit twee, but unapologetic old lady style is my vibe so we went with it.

Now we have arrived to the point where the cabinets are all installed and I am ready to call the stone people to come and make templates. The plan was to get pricing on carrera marble and quartzes that look kind of similar and make a decision. HOWEVER, we got the quote for the perimeter fence at this point and decided that this already over-budget project was not getting another dime! Time to get creative!

We ended up building the counter tops from plywood and then I covered them in marble-look contact paper. I know that when I tell people I've done this they think I've finally lost my mind, but it turns out that my wallpaper skills translate to contact paper! I am really happy! We obviously can't put hot pans on it, but I think it looks good and it appears to be wearing really well! I am not in any hurry to fork over a bunch of money for stone, so we are keeping it!

Also, you can see in the photo above that the island isn't centered under the chandelier. There is a big ceiling rose (a rose themed ceiling rose no less!) and the cutting and patching required to move it 12" was significant. We decided that centered in the room was just fine and honestly I haven't thought of it since then.

official after photos

I forgot to mention the sconces / wall lamps! I collect antique or vintage lighting designed by EF Chapman, so I am always cruising Ebay looking for treasures. These babies popped up and they are perfect!

To try to make the cabinets look like fancy built-ins rather than kitchen cabinets, I built these legs which hopefully accomplish that. There is one angle where you can see the Ikea legs behind the legs and it drives me nuts, but aside from that, I am happy with how they turned out.

Here you can see the legs on the island.

Rather than using plain panels for the sides, I ordered extra doors to add some interest and look like paneling.

The pantry cabinets that were added during Phase 2 of the project. They are all wall-mounted and then I built the mesh radiator cover. I'm not sure how being over the radiator would affect the cabinets in a normal household, but since we keep our central heating set very low and use the pellet stoves to make the house comfortable, I don't anticipate a problem.

epilogue

I feel like I talked a lot in this post about things that "I" did. This is accurate, but I haven't mentioned all of the things that Chris did in this project! We don't typically work together, we divide the work into Tricia jobs and Chris jobs. I usually do things that are fiddly, or where I don't have a concrete idea of what I want and I'm figuring it out as I go. Chris does jobs that require brute strength, or jobs that take patience or figuring out. I usually have an idea of how to do something and if it doesn't work out immediately, I get frustrated and give up. The breakdown for this project looks like this:

• Tricia - built cabinet frames and drawers
• Tricia's mom - peeled the protective plastic from doors and drawer fronts - literally the WORST job ever!
• Tricia's stepdad - installed new electrical receptacle, and built some cabinet frames, but when I was mean to him about following directions he decided that I could do the rest myself (seems fair)
• Chris - installed cabinets and hung doors
• Tricia and Chris both installed drawers, there were like a million of them!
• Tricia - installed stupid edge banding, hung wallpaper, and built (and painted) cabinet legs and radiator cover
• Tricia and Chris - installed ceiling molding
• Chris - painted ceiling rose, Tricia abandoned it after realizing it was going to take longer than attention span would allow
• Tricia and Chris - disassembled, cleaned, reassembled chandelier; painted new ceiling molding and blue "frame" on ceiling, and built and installed plywood counter tops
• Tricia - installed wall lamps and covered counter tops in contact paper
• Tricia - takes credit for everything