Our New 1930 Kitchen

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NoSmoke
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Post by NoSmoke » Sun. Dec. 11, 2016 6:59 pm

Poor Katie, we started gutting our kitchen 6 years ago and it has taken until now to really get it finished. Even now we have to sand the floor. Part of the reason was due to coal...we wanted 100% radiant heat in our home and this part of our house (24 x 40) needed radiant put in the slab-on-grade. That mean moving her kitchen to 3 "temporary" kitchens before she finally got this one. But it really has worked well. With 4 daughter and 2 adults, our kitchen just must work, so we added some things you typically don't see in a kitchen.

Breakfast center
Pantry
In Island Deep Freeze
Bridge
Double or triple island (depending on configuration)

All this we accomplished while trying to maintain a 1930's look, Katie's favorite era. We did not go completely all out as period refrigerators, stoves and the like is expensive, but for a timber framed home, I think we did okay. You can be the judge.

In the first photo, it is of our slate foyer, looking at the breakfast center and pantry. You may note the hand pump for a faucet that I replumbed to deliver hot and cold water out of the spout, and the mini-fridge to the left and bottom to hold just our creamers for our coffee. Then you have the toaster and microwave to reheat coffee, warm bacon, or toast bread. Beside the mini-fridge is a roll out trash, so...standing in one spot you can fill the decanter, throw away the old grounds, put in new grounds and have coffee without making an extra step. As for the slate, that came from the rock walls in our pasture!
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This small island houses our deep freeze. Katie did not want to alk anywhere to get at frozen items. Take off the countertop and she has access to a deep freeze. In the mean time it serves as an island, and has an overhanging top where a stool serves as a seat. Note too the "bridge" that is in the flipped down position. This allows Katie to walk between the islands if need be instead of walking the out around them if it is flipped up.
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This is the bridge in the flipped up position. This allows the double island, and the single island (that houses the freezer) to work together. Katie' family is from out of state, and when they come up, a lot of them come up, so we do a lot of buffet-style meals. This allows our kitchen to have vast buffet lines that allows people to eat quickly. It works.

You will also note our second and main sink, black concrete countertops, dishwasher and big refrigerator in the background. I should point out that with the exception of the plywood to make the cabinets, the wide pine flooring, timber framed beams, window trim, butcher block tops on the islands, and even the gravel for the concrete countertops, all came from off the farm.
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This is the view from our dining room looking into the "living room" though we just call this 24 x 40 kitchen/dining/living room our great room. No open concept in this house, it is just plain open. As for the farm table, yep black cherry grown on the farm, sawn from our sawmill, and now in our house. This house will never be done, but as much as we can, we do from materials on the farm.
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NoSmoke
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Post by NoSmoke » Sun. Dec. 11, 2016 7:15 pm

While we were at it, we decided to make extra room in the kids rooms. We only have a 3 bedroom house and have 4 daughters, so they the two oldest, and the two youngest share rooms (obviously Katie and I have the third master bedroom). This is off in a separate 28 x 40 addition from our great room...think of our house in the shape of a T.

So to gain room in these bedrooms, we installed loft beds in order to get the beds up higher and thus they can get their desks and toys below them. Heaven forbid we do what we had to do as kids and get rid of our old toys, nope we just make more room so they can be even spoiled more. Having the loft beds however does allow for more room to put stuff. (These are only 12 x 16 bedrooms).

The picture shows only one loft bed done, but the other 3 are identical with two in each room, located on each side of the room. They really work well.
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Post by CapeCoaler » Mon. Dec. 12, 2016 12:23 am

We too will be bunkin' it...
We have enough bedrooms for all three...
But because of honorary triplet status...
They all run as a pack...
So bedrooms are all play/fort status...
Kids gotta be kids for as long as possible...
Plus we need to have a guest/office room...

 
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hotblast1357
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Post by hotblast1357 » Mon. Dec. 12, 2016 6:48 am

How about an exterior picture of the homestead?

Did you put the plank floor right over the concrete slab?


 
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Post by NoSmoke » Mon. Dec. 12, 2016 9:52 am

hotblast1357 wrote:Did you put the plank floor right over the concrete slab?
Yes and no.

I put down what we call sleepers (here in Maine anyway), or 1 x 3's hilti-gunned into the concrete slab every 16 inches. I alternated the ends so that as I put down the pex it would make the loops on the floor and still allow the flooring boards to be securely screwed to the sleepers. I simply used zip ties to secure the pex to the sleepers. For the outside edges of the house, I poured concrete in the 3/4 inch space between the old slab and the wide pine flooring, but in the inside of the house, I simply poured in sand. The only reason I did it this was was so as to save a lot of mixing of concrete. I was not sure how it would work, but it works incredibly well. The sand has enough mass to to get warm from where it is packed around the pex and radiate it to the room.

The bedroom addition, the 28 x 40 one, was built after the great room part of the house was built so it had its pex installed as the slab on grade was poured from inception.

 
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Post by Sunny Boy » Mon. Dec. 12, 2016 10:47 am

Very nice job, NS.

Four daughters, a wife, and no kitchen. That sounds familiar. :D

That was my last house. Turned the dinning room into dinning room/ kitchen for a month while I rebuilt our kitchen. All the cooking was done on a hot plate and a microwave, with the six of us eating in the same 12x14 room jammed with high chairs and other tables to cook on. And the living room became the storage for rarely used kitchen stuff.

You have a very forgiving wife. Had it taken me any longer, my then- wife would have killed me in my sleep. It was bad enough her having HER HOUSE turned upside down, but the worst part was having to cart all the dishes and cookware upstairs to wash them in the tub after every meal ! :shock:

Paul

 
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Post by hotblast1357 » Mon. Dec. 12, 2016 1:45 pm

NoSmoke wrote:
hotblast1357 wrote:Did you put the plank floor right over the concrete slab?
Yes and no.

I put down what we call sleepers (here in Maine anyway), or 1 x 3's hilti-gunned into the concrete slab every 16 inches. I alternated the ends so that as I put down the pex it would make the loops on the floor and still allow the flooring boards to be securely screwed to the sleepers. I simply used zip ties to secure the pex to the sleepers. For the outside edges of the house, I poured concrete in the 3/4 inch space between the old slab and the wide pine flooring, but in the inside of the house, I simply poured in sand. The only reason I did it this was was so as to save a lot of mixing of concrete. I was not sure how it would work, but it works incredibly well. The sand has enough mass to to get warm from where it is packed around the pex and radiate it to the room.

The bedroom addition, the 28 x 40 one, was built after the great room part of the house was built so it had its pex installed as the slab on grade was poured from inception.
So the pex is above the concrete, below the boards? How is the slab insulated?

 
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Post by NoSmoke » Mon. Dec. 12, 2016 6:20 pm

Yep, you have that right, the pex is above the cement and below the boards.

The concrete is insulated underneath the slab with 2" Styrofoam. Here anyway, almost all concrete slabs are even if they are not radiant floor heated. That is so the frost does not get under them and crack them. It is the one step I do not have to worry about because even though radiant heat was not big when I first started this house in 1994, every slab on grade gets Styrofoam.

But today if there is an existing slab and no insulation under it, they have thin sheets of insulation board with grooves cut into it for the pex tubing and are reflective to isolate the heat from the floor below and reflect the heat into the living space above.


 
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Post by hotblast1357 » Mon. Dec. 12, 2016 7:05 pm

Do you have a 4' footer around your slab? Or 2" foam board that goes down 4' around your slab?

To stop the infiltration of frost from the sides?

 
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Post by NoSmoke » Tue. Dec. 13, 2016 7:07 am

It is a common misconception, frost comes from the top down and not from the sides. If you stop the frost from penetrating from above, you do not get frost underneath. To see what I mean, take a sheet of 4' x 8 feet 2 inch Styrofoam and lay it on the ground in the fall. In the middle of winter, shovel the snow off it and then take that same shovel and dig a hole underneath the Styrofoam because the soil won't be frozen. It isolates the heat from the soil below (57 degrees) enough from the cold above to keep the ground from freezing. I use this stuff over all my waterlines. I bury them 4 feet down as required in Maine, but because they lay under my plowed driveway and do not get the benefit of insulation from snow, the frost goes deep, yet I have never had my pipes freeze.

My slab is on grade, and while the center is 6 inches thick, the outside part, about 2 feet from all sides, tapers down to 1 foot thick...kind of an inverted dish shape. That extra concrete is to help hold up the walls where the pressure is. Everything underneath the concrete has insulation, but I also lay a vertical piece of Styrofoam along the edge of the concrete to help retain the heat. It is cheap insurance. At only a foot wide, a sheet gives you 32 linear feet of run.

 
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Post by hotblast1357 » Tue. Dec. 13, 2016 7:11 am

I was under the impression that it was needed to go down 4' also cuz frost can come in under the slab from the slides, I almost think it's code here.

Maybe this is why your ground around your slab never freezes? The heat is coming out the sides due to no insulation around the perimeter??

 
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Post by NoSmoke » Tue. Dec. 13, 2016 5:55 pm

Oh I am sure I am losing some heat out of the slab, 2 inches of Styrofoam insulation can only do so much. But why does a sheet of it laying on the ground keep the frost from penetrating underneath it if it comes from the sides? But if code requires it, it must be done I guess. It will not hurt, just a little more in insulation costs.

I have no building codes here, or at least anyone who cares. Last year I built a 30 x 50 barn 70 feet from the road with an unobstructed view, all without a permit, and not a soul showed up to ask me about it.

Funny story about that barn. When the USDA showed up to install the concrete pad (technically called a Covered Heavy Use Area with End Walls...yeah everyone in the free world except for government people call them BARNS), the Soil Conservationist looked at my land and said, "Hey that looks kind of flat, you are probably going to put it there right?" "Sure", I said, but anyone with an IQ would have seen the 20 x 30 flat spot in a field on a 6% grade and deduced it was most likely my leach field. Not these guys. So then they say they have to dig some test holes to see if it passes a peculation test. I am nervous now because little white pipes lay just below the surface but they gleefully yell out. "You should put a gravel pit here, its nothing but gravel." Now this was the State of Maine Soil Engineer for the NRCS; don't you think sometime in his college education he would have learned the difference between smooth rock tumbled by a glacier, and rock broken mechanically into shards by a jaw and cone crusher?" So today I have a nice roof over my leach field, complete with concrete pad, mangers and baaing sheep.

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