April 03, 2012

You've Got to See This Kitchen!

I have found that I can’t work AND blog, and right now I really need to be concentrating on my kitchen.

In the meantime, I’d like to introduce you to an online friend of mine, and her wonderful kitchen. Mama Goose as she is known online, is an amazing woman. Not only is she creative, talented, and resourceful, she is also strong and resilient. You see, Mama Goose suddenly lost her husband in the midst of her kitchen remodel, and with her life turned upside down and her kitchen torn apart, she turned to family members for help, and tackled projects that I can’t imagine doing even with the assistance of my husband. Mama Goose gives a lot of credit for finishing this kitchen to her father, brother-in-law, and brother. They answered questions, helped her with the heavy lifting, taught her, and encouraged her. What a great family and support system!

Please pin from her site if she allows it. There is a link at the bottom of this post. Thanks!

Before:

And After:

Mama Goose and her husband began with an addition of a dining room/family room. This is the little sink they put in that room, right behind the kitchen sink to use when the main sink is unavailable. They put marble tile on the counter and a great flower tile backsplash.

Her father took out a wall between the old kitchen and dining room. Mama Goose says, “He framed and sheet-rocked the new opening, moved outlets, and told me stories about the good ol' days--his way of trying to help fill the void in my soul. At that point I was still in shock--if he hadn't stepped in I could never have done everything that I've accomplished since then.”

Mama Goose and her husband had found the perfect set of cabinets salvaged from an old school.

They bought marble tile which she honed herself to give it a warm glow

And here is the old cabinet partly built into the new kitchen with the marble tile counter:

And finished:

She found a great marble-topped table on Craig’s list,

and her husband converted it to a storage island for the kitchen:

and the other side

Another Craig’s List find is the vintage oven that needed restoration.

When she finished, it’s a conversation piece in the old dining room, and storage too!

Because she wanted a vintage, unfitted look, she found a new refrigerator with rounded sides, and built a cabinet around it that resembles an old kitchen hoosier cabinet. Then, for the microwave, she built a cabinet that resembles a bread box


Are you beginning to see how awesome this woman is? Well you haven’t seen anything yet.

She moved the stove from one side of the kitchen to the other, and then, get this! She transformed an old feed bin from her barn

into a vintage barrel range hood

She covered it herself with sheet aluminum, painted, added straps and towel bar, and installed a vent insert in it. How cool is that?!!! Mama Goose says that her brother-in-law helped her mount the range hood and answered a million questions.

Next she needed a counter top for the workspaces beside the sink and stove. More resourcefulness and she bought some vintage table tops from a high school science lab, complete with dried bubble gum stuck to the underside.

They are black resin, and with her brother cutting the slabs to fit the cabinets, she measured, templated, sanded, and buffed, to finish the counters. Her father designed and built a jig so she could rout runnels into the piece by the sink.

And then she began routing the top, over and over again until she was at the depth she wanted.

And here is the top installed in her kitchen

And more around the corner, along with the recessed shelves she built for her spices.

Since not everyone clicks on the part to see the comments, I am going to paste one of them here. I had forgotten about this until Nancy in Michigan commented.

Those counters are not soapstone, but are resin made for chemistry labs. It is hard and very heavy, can be sanded and polished - and as Mama Goose taught us -even routed. The amount of sanding she did on those resin tops and on her marble tile counter on the right side of the kitchen just blows my mind. She must have vibrated for days afterward. Mama Goose bought shiny marble tiles and honed the stone with a hand-held sander. Then, after laying the marble tile onto her counter, she developed a method of using epoxy resin to fill where the grout would go. She then used a pin (if I remember right) to scratch into the epoxy. The whiter scratches extended the white veins of the marble tiles through the epoxy "grout" lines so that the counter top looks like one solid piece of marble. You cannot see that it is tiles in the photos. See photo 7, above. Mama Goose has shown us all how to work hard to get what you want on a small budget, a whole lot of courage to try new things, and unlimited heart. Please check out her album. Her creativity will inspire you.

To see more pictures of this kitchen project, check out her photo album here.

Note: Permission was granted for me to use Mama Goose's photos here.

13 comments:

  1. Thank you, Marti, my friend, for the lovely words and thoughts about my kitchen. As I've said before, working on the kitchen was therapeutic, and working in it is a pleasure. Our extended family of 24 or so shares a monthly meal here, so the kitchen gets a work-out. I wish my husband could be here to see it--he'd be very proud of the kitchen, and of me, I know.

    Blessings to you,
    Anita

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  2. This is my very favorite kitchen project! Mama Goose is incredible and I would love to be 10% as creative. Her kitchen is a lovely expression of all the work, she and her family have put into it. I'm so glad she had the help to get it all finished and I know it will be used and enjoyed for many years, to come! :)

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  4. Marti such a lovely write up. I remember the thrill as each new project progressed. I believe this is my favorite transformation.
    And Thanks to you Mama_Goose for hanging in there. You really did a wonderful job.

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  5. This kitchen continues to delight and inspire me and a lot of other folks. Taken as a whole, it comes together nicely. And, when you look at the details, they too are outstanding and quality workmanship. Mama Goose rocks!!

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  6. Wow, as the line from an old song goes..."she's about a mover." (Can't recall the name of the song but it floated into my head while reading your post.) I don't think I could do all that in my entire lifetime. Sure wish I could though.

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  7. What a beautiful job! And I am so jealous of the soap stone tops she was able to find! They will take all kinds of abuse. I would love to have that kind of surface in my kitchen!

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  8. What a sweet outcome to such sadness. It's lovely that her family and friends pulled together and helped her complete the kitchen. It's just beautiful!

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  9. Those counters are not soapstone, but are resin made for chemistry labs. It is hard and very heavy, can be sanded and polished - and as Mama Goose taught us -even routed. The amount of sanding she did on those resin tops and on her marble tile counter on the right side of the kitchen just blows my mind. She must have vibrated for days afterward. Mama Goose bought shiny marble tiles and honed the stone with a hand-held sander. Then, after laying the marble tile onto her counter, she developed a method of using epoxy resin to fill where the grout would go. She then used a pin (if I remember right) to scratch into the epoxy. The whiter scratches extended the white veins of the marble tiles through the epoxy "grout" lines so that the counter top looks like one solid piece of marble. You cannot see that it is tiles in the photos. See photo 7, above. Mama Goose has shown us all how to work hard to get what you want on a small budget, a whole lot of courage to try new things, and unlimited heart. Please check out her album. Her creativity will inspire you.

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  10. I think she’s one of the most resourceful individuals I’ve ever read about in home remodeling! I mean, she made some of those beautiful pieces from scraps. I love how she played with the color and shape of every item she had. It’s sad what happened to her husband, though. I bet everything she did with this kitchen was dedicated to her family, and most especially, to her husband.

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  11. Oh my… This is the most beautiful kitchen I have ever seen, I would love to have a kitchen like this and hope I will have the possibility do make one like that! Every piece in it is unique and carries on the history of what it has been, oh my… Thanks for showing!

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    Replies
    1. I know! I think that's what I love most about the kitchen too.

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