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Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Kitchen After: The Movie

After being blown away by my directorial debut, Kathy asked to see footage of the finished kitchen and upstairs bathroom. I had to shoot this one several times. There were script problems from day-one. The caterer never showed up and so the Best Boy and Key Grip walked off the set. Everyone knows you can’t shoot a film without a topnotch Best Boy and Key Grip. Bunch of prima donnas.

I did shoot this one three times because it was coming out too long. The first one was 6-minuets long, which makes for a huge upload. I don’t know if anyone’s noticed this about me, but I can be long-winded at times. I thought about just shooting 6-minutes and then cleaning it up in post-production, but I don’t have a post-production department, so that wasn’t going to happen. I was aiming for 2 minuets, but I settled on 3. It still seems rushed to me.

Some things about the kitchen: First, it’s still not complete. I mention how I’m moving the fridge eventually. This whole back of the house is like one big puzzle and some items are not in their proper place at this point. The fridge is one of them. I also want to put towel racks on either side of the island but after looking and looking I couldn’t find anything I liked and then sort of forgot about it altogether. Shooting the video made me think of this again, so the hunt is on once more. Also, the cast iron stove is about a foot too close to the wall. It needs to come out, and insulated metal panels, like tin ceiling panels, will go behind it in front of the beadboard. This is low priority since the chimneys are chopped off in the attic at this point.

The one thing I would call a design flaw with the kitchen is the space between the stove and the wall where you would pass to go in to the alcove where the fridge will eventually be. On paper this seemed bigger, but in reality it is tighter than I would like it to be. It’s not a serious issue, though. If someone is standing in front of the stove cooking and someone needs to get to the fridge, someone might need to step aside a little. So long as it doesn’t come to blows, it shouldn’t be a big deal. It’s not like 3 people are racing to the fridge at one time.

Others might think the lack of cabinets and counters are a big design flaw. Well, I won’t make excuses for the kitchen. I love it the way it is. I just didn’t see a point in putting in acres of cabinets and counters that seemed unnecessary to me. In my last house the POs put in crappy cabinets and counters but they put in a ton of them. Every wall in what was a moderately sized kitchen was lined with cabinets and counters. I lived in the house for 3 years and never had anything in more than half of them. I swore I wouldn’t do that in this house.

So, here’s the kitchen. For newer readers of the blog, the kitchen was what I worked on and blogged about for the first year or so of the blog. It wasn’t exactly a gut-remodel, but it was very, very extensive.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks so much, Greg, it was a great movie. I really love the redwood countertop around the big sink. The island is also magnificent.

Sam said...

Really, really nice, authentic kitchen. You've inspired me to do a video tour of our kitchen, when we are finished in a few weeks.

Anonymous said...

Hey Greg I've been lurking for awhile. Thought I'd wait until I updated my blog then I would post a link. But I don't seem to be doing that. It is embarrassing how long its been...anyway, just wanted to say that I am enjoying your blog and am inspired by the amount of work that you are doing yourself, as well as the deals that you are managing to find!


Kim

Anonymous said...

Wow - that really brought your kitchen to life for me. Seeing pics just didn't do justice to the "big picture". I love everything about it, literally. Well, except maybe the 80's porn closet but even that has it's redeeming features, like you can hide your recycling bin! I think you've got plenty of cabinet and counter space. People with too many cabinets just stockpile weird things in them. Barring a natural disaster that wipes out every Walmart in existance, you know we'll never eat 3/4 of what's hidden in them.

I tried to shoot video of our bathroom a while back, but it was before we had good lighting and the quality was terrible. Yours came out great.

Hearing your voice was pretty cool too; you've got a great narrator voice :)

Greg said...

Thanks everyone. I love the kitchen.

Anonymous said...

The kitchen is beautiful. Love the copper sink. We are redoing our kitchen and bathroom this summer but nothing like yours. I think we have 5 layers of linolium (sp) on our kitchen floor from PO. Lovely!

Beth

Chris said...

I think I can sum up your kitchen in just one word...Awesome! Great work!!!

kingstreetfarm said...

Wowee wow wow. I liiiike.

Your work is just so impressive. I love seeing what a true passion for an old house can bring out! Great taste, too. Every one of the finishes is exactly how I would have done it. Not that I'm the arbiter of all taste, but at any rate, I really love what you have done with the place!!

Nadja and Sean said...

AWESOME! I think you have inspired us bloggers to knew heights- I want to go out and buy my camcorder right now! Your cabinets are fabulous... And the kitchen island, oh yeah, and the e-hutch, and, well, pretty much everything else too. including the kitty.
:) n

Jocelyn said...

Thanks for that tour. You really need to submit your kitchen for a magazine contest(if you want to)- I think you did it on a budget too, which makes it all the more impressive. Totally amazng in fact.