Kitchen: Sorta a room now
This weekend I got about half as much done as I had hope to. How many of you are surprised? Believe it or not, the Irishman is. You see, everything in the house is so crooked and wonky that he underestimated what he was up against. Scribing and cutting 2×3’s into wedge shaped shims everywhere! Anyways, he said he can see why it’s taking so long. Anyways, here’s this week’s progress.
So yeah. One wall. And it’s level. And there’s OSB behind the drywall, so installing cabinets should be easy.
Now some things changed since my plan from a week or so ago. I thought the beam would peek out of the face of the soffit. But it isn’t square to the wall, and on the other side of the room it’s too close to the wall to get the same look there. So instead I decided just to build the soffit deep enough to wrap the one beam, and run it all the way across over the window. I kinda liked the old plan better:
But this is the real world. And in that world I have another dilemma. You can see in the drawing above, I have a soffit above the cabinet and a pipe chase to the right. They’re drawn in my imagination at the same depth. Let’s try to figure out what that would look like in the real kitchen.
So you can see that the soffit comes a solid 4 inches past the face frame. Fine, because the soffit is already almost 9 feet up off the floor. It doesn’t exactly close things off. But would I want to run the box around the pipes to the same depth? I don’t think so. I think I’ll make it as small as I can. More or less the same depth as the cabinet, or maybe even a bit shallower It’ll be fine. But please tell me what you think.
And one more view. I have these shear blocks in between the beams at one end of the room where they’re damaged. On the side of the shear block I’m dropping the ceiling height to hide the damage and make room for recessed lights. You can kinda see that taking shape here.
So I’m open to your ideas. I love my exposed beams. The soffit isn’t moving, but I can still himm and haw over the depth of that pipe chase. Wherever it ends up, I’m going to make the opening to the living room a bit narrower because I’m putting wood trim around it. The pocket shutter idea around the patio door is not happening, but the pipe chase will make that window on the side of my kitchen centered on the wall. And that’ll be a nice thing to have, too. So let me know where you think my pipe chase and doorway should be.
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ok, my two cents. Build the pipe chase the same depth as the cabinet, ideally wrapped in wood so it looks like the corner of the cabinet. Also, sand those beams (even if just to knock the plaster shadows off) before you do anything else in the kitchen. Much easier to do it now that worrying about gouging the drywall and getting even more dust on everything – and a mistake I have yet to fix in my kitchen…
OK, I was planning on leaving them as they are, but since I have piles of that wood lying around I can experiment with giving it a light sanding.
And one other thing about that pipe chase: it’s going to center the window in the wall, so the cabinets on either side can be the same size. Wrapping the chase in wood may actually throw that off. I also thought about building it in drywall and then adding really shallow shelving in front of the chase. But it would be really, really shallow and only good for knick knacks.
You are way above my pay grade with this situation. Maybe if I were in the room I could understand what it is you need to solve -I know you’ll figure it out. Anyone who can yank a crooked house into submission won’t be daunted by a little ceiling problem. I searched your pictures for the pin it icon but couldn’t find it. If you get your pictures pinned you should get some responses. Keep on keeping on Chad-you are accomplishing a miracle! You are the male version of the Rehab Addict Nicole can’t remember her last name?
The pin it icon is at the bottom of the page. You hit that and it gives you a page with all the images in the post to choose from.
See, if I wanted to have the icon on individual photos, I’d have to self host the blog and put actual work into making it. What I have now is free and really easy to use. I’ll consider making the blog nicer if I still have material to write regularly after my “Phase 1” improvements are complete.
I hit the like icon but the only other things I see are the twenty twelve theme and blog at word press neither of those are a pin it icon the one I am familiar with is a red pin it icon in the top right of each picture. Sorry to be so dense but I really would like to pin your pictures you deserve it for all your patience and hard labor.
At the end of the post, before the comments. “Share this” and a row of social network buttons.
Can you bring the cabinet forward so the frame is flush with the face of the soffit? It is a short cabinet so it doesn’t look like it would intrude on counter space. In lieu of that, definitely try to at least make the chase cabinet-depth or less.
Actually that’s just an old cabinet that came with the house. It’s flimsy and the back broke off and it’s covered with a sticky layer of grease and dirt. I would clean that off if it were a good quality cabinet but it’s not. I just held it up there for reference. The real cabinets will be much longer and so shimming them out won’t work.
Make the pipe case small as possible. Add filler piece to match cabinets to cover it from the front flush with cabinet face. Forget the window symmetry — it won’t bother you visually. Jo @ Let’s Face the Music
Actually the narrowest the pipe chace can be is almost exactly what I need to center the window anyway. I might lose one inch in the name of symmetry around the window. I was debating the depth, but I’ve mostly decided to make it as shallow as possible too. I don’t like the idea of making it 16 inches when something closer to 8 will do.
smaller and shallower sounds good to me – I love the beams too
[…] stayed intact I sacrificed most of mine to have original floors that don’t creak, insulation, walls I can anchor kitchen cabinets to, and exposed brick. The only exception is the 3 small walls at one end of my upstairs hall. The […]