MelissaH's Kitchen (Renovation) Dreams

[BekkiM]

Thanks for the update, MelissaH.  Please do post back and let us know how the second round of self-cleaning turns out.  They delivered a big-ass dolly yesterday, so it's possible that they're actually moving my GE Monogram range into the kitchen today (or possibly tomorrow) and I'm looking forward to discovering its quirks.

←

Well, I discovered a big quirk yesterday. The oven door's still locked this morning. I called the number for service, and the first thing they recommended I do was kill the power by flipping the breaker and keeping it off for at least 30 seconds. When I came back upstairs, the "door lock" light was still on. So now I'm trying recommendation #2: running a short (1-2 hours) self-clean cycle, turning it off and letting it cool, and seeing if that does the trick.

The person I spoke with said that sometimes the door will refuse to unlock if the self-clean cycle gets interrupted somehow. We've had problems with power failures this week, but I didn't think we'd had one yesterday. Nonetheless, in about an hour and a half, I'll be able to turn the oven back off, and a couple of hours after that it should be cooled down enough to open. IhopeIhopeIhope

MelissaH

←

You know, I had similar problems with my GE Profile ovens before. I had the repair guy out 3 times--he kept ordering a new locking mechanism, which he'd install, then it would fail again. In the end, the lazy S.0.B. simply disabled the self-clean function and called it good. I have no idea why I didn't insist that they replace the ovens (all of this work had started when they were still under warranty), except that maybe I hated the kitchen so much that I was apathetic. In any case, I'll be waiting on tenterhooks to find out what becomes of your saga, since it was one of the reasons I almost didn't buy the Monogram. On the other hand, this time I won't be shy about insisting that they get it right.

Good luck!

[MelissaH]

Joy!

All's well!

I gave the oven a quick 90-minute self-clean cycle, during which I got some work done. I turned the oven off, went to do some more work, and came back half an hour later. The door locked light was still on, and—sure enough—the door was still locked. I jumped in the shower, and realized that I still had my glasses on. (Don't laugh too hard. I generally wear contact lenses. I just plain forgot, until I tried to get my face wet and then wondered why my eyelashes weren't getting blasted.) So after my shower, I needed to properly wash my glasses, which I prefer to do in the kitchen. And this time, the light was off and the door opened. It was all of 15 minutes later than the first time I'd tried.

It's so tempting to take a hacksaw to the oven door latch.

Moral of the story: make sure you pick a day with stable power to run a self-clean cycle. Once you hit the clean button, don't stop it for ANY reason. And stupid people who force companies to idiot-proof...or do I mean lawyer-proof? their equipment make me really angry!

[MelissaH]

Peanut oil. I decided to try using peanut oil to re-lube the oven rack slides, since they (and not the rack themselves) are apparently the source of the rack stickiness post-cleaning. It's got the highest smoke point of the oils I keep around, so I decided to give it a shot. (If I'd had grapeseed oil, I would have used that, but we don't have any family or friends allergic to peanuts to worry about.) I poured some onto a folded paper towel, and greased all four rack heights, on both sides of the oven. And the racks slid slicker than...well, we won't go there.

I used the oven for half a turkey breast. Put it on a rack over a cookie sheet, with some wedged and oiled potatoes. Convection, 375 degrees F, till the instant-read thermometer hit 165. Not a wisp of smoke to be seen.

MelissaH

[FabulousFoodBabe]

It's so tempting to take a hacksaw to the oven door latch.

←

I think eG could make a fortune by having sayings like this screened onto aprons for sale.

MelissaH, I felt your frustration through your entire post, even though it made me smile. A friend is redoing her kitchen in Monogram appliances, and has asked for any quirks she should know of. I'll pass it on.

[MelissaH]

A friend is redoing her kitchen in Monogram appliances, and has asked for any quirks she should know of.  I'll pass it on.

←

The quirk I'd tell her about: make sure the oven is set up exactly the way you want it BEFORE you hit the clean button. I think that may be where my problem started. I hit clean, and then realized, "Oops, I wanted to leave the racks out this time to see if it makes a difference in how well they slide." I turned it off, pulled the racks out, and got the door closed again—but only after the latch had started its slide to the lock position. (You can see the latch when the door's open.) The door still closed without a problem, thanks to the way the latch is shaped, but I wonder if I inadvertently messed something up in the safety/lawyerproofing switches.

Thankfully, it was a relatively easy, if time-consuming and energy-inefficient fix.

MelissaH

[pax]

Ridiculously beautiful cookers. I've been "shopping" for my new kitchen and found these. They are pretty, but I'm afraid I will probaby not be phoning off to France to order one.

http://www.divadeprovence.com/

Edited July 2, 2008 by pax (log)

[MelissaH]

We have a new addition to our kitchen. Behold:

And for a closer look, albeit with colors that aren't quite as true-to-life as those above:

This is a hand-woven rag rug, made by Walt and Ronda Rose of Louisiana Loom Works (http://www.customragrugs.com/). We discovered their shop on Chartres Street when we made our second visit to New Orleans, way back in March of 2003. Truth be told, it wasn't the rugs that first drew my attention—it was the cat in the window. I was in town for a conference, and was deep in withdrawal from my own two cats. And lo and behold, Miz Williams was there, lounging in the middle of a rug, showing off her gray fur, white paws, and blue eyes. So I came inside, asked permission, and gave her some love. And lo and behold, there was a second cat there also: Miz Williams' daughter Feffa. We talked cats for a while, and then I asked Ronda the magic question: "Where do you like to eat?" She steered us to places that are still high up on our list: Napoleon House, Clover Grill, and a great little now-departed breakfast spot on Exchange Alley called Lulu's that we still miss. (Every time we go back, we add more restaurants to the list.)

On that very first visit, we found a rug that we purchased for a wedding gift for two of our very good friends. Every trip back, we'd go and look, but the time was never right for us: either we knew we'd be moving soon, or we'd just moved and were a little tight for cash. Fast forward to March 2008, our first trip back since Katrina.

The shop is still there. Ronda says they were the first in the French Quarter to reopen after the storm, waiting only as long as it took for power to be restored. Miz Williams and Feffa still rule the store, but they've added a couple more refugee cats since. Peace mostly prevails. We decided that this was finally going to be the year we'd get a rug for ourselves, so we started looking at materials.

First choice: fabric. We knew we wanted something to go with the Lion of Flanders theme for the kitchen, and this plain yellow fabric was available. We looked at some prints, but the plain yellow was our favorite of everything they had enough of. (The fabric is mostly odds and ends from factories, so they rarely get the same things in twice.) In a way, I would have liked a print because the prints morph into something completely different when they get woven, but I'm quite happy with the yellow.

Once we had the fabric chosen, we needed to choose thread colors, as well as which thread color would be used to finish the ends. Yellow, black, and red were no-brainers. But there were two colors of red to choose from, and we wondered about including a little green because the main color of our floor has a significant green tint. We brought home a snippet of the fabric, as well as a bit of each of the thread colors we were considering. Using both natural light and the lights we installed in the kitchen, we considered our options. In the end, we selected the perfect shade of red, as well as a nice green. We also measured the exact dimensions we wanted the rug to be. And while we were doing that, we decided we wanted a smaller mat to match, for the dining room table, to help tie the space together. We phoned in our thread choices, as well as the measurements we wanted. And then we waited.

In the middle of July, we got our rugs! And we're thrilled that we did it. The mat looks great on the dining room table. And the floor rug is so much nicer than the old bathroom rugs we'd been using. It feels good underfoot, a piece of non-skid material holds it in place nicely, and it's machine-washable when the need arises. I'm just sorry it took us so long to finally get around to ordering a rug of our own.

MelissaH

[SusanGiff]

By sheer coincidence, I hit on this thread (wandering away from a search I was doing), saw your rug, and knew immediately where it had come from. It's beautiful, and I completely second your endorsement of Louisiana Loom Works. We have three of them in a beach house, and they're sturdy and beautiful and so cheerful. Best of all, they support an excellent local business and remind us of our trips to New Orleans, always a good thing. Your kitchen is gorgeous, and I love the way the rug echoes the floor. Nice job!

Now I'm going to see if I can find a place for some rugs in the house we just moved into. Thanks for the reminder.

[MelissaH]

We just replaced the lamp over the sink.

A couple of months ago, we noticed that the UFO on the left was slipping. Upon closer examination, we realized that the problem was in the mechanism that holds the UFOs onto the lamp base. There's a light bulb socket housed inside a porcelain housing, which has screw threads on the outside. The lampshade (in our case, the UFO) slips over the housing, and then there's a metal ring that screws onto the threads to secure the shade in place. We still aren't sure whether it's the threads or the ring that got stripped, but something did. As a result, the UFO was hanging (literally) by a thread.

We wound up buying a new fixture. It looks about the same as the old fixture, but in a brushed nickel finish rather than the black, and with transparent wire housing on the danglers. We like the way the nickel matches the hardware on the cabinets, and the clear housing adds to the more modern look. The mounting hardware also looks about the same as the mounting hardware in the old fixture, but we discovered that appearances are deceiving in that case. My arms can tell you that one also.

When we went out to replace the fixture, we also found some compact fluorescent bulbs with candelabra bases to fit into this fixture. We hadn't gone that route before, because at the time we put the lamp in, the only CF bulbs with candelabra bases had a sort of elongated shape, and didn't look good inside the UFOs. The bulbs we found have a normal round shape, and look proper, like the rounded bottom of a cartoon flying saucer. Since this is a light that often gets left on for hours at a time, we liked the idea of using CF bulbs in this location.

And, oh yeah! The yucky off-white carpeting is no more. We ripped it out and replaced the flooring throughout the dining room, living room, and hallway with bamboo. Major major improvement!

MelissaH

Edited March 16, 2010 by MelissaH (log)

[gfweb]

So, @MelissaH, 6 years out from the renovation...have you any advice before we jump in and start tearing stuff out of our kitchen?

Edited July 6, 2016 by Smithy
Corrected callout (log)

[MelissaH]

11 hours ago, gfweb said:

So, @MelissaH, 6 years out from the renovation...have you any advice before we jump in and start tearing stuff out of our kitchen?

 

Make that 10 years out. We did the kitchen the summer of 2006.

 

First, measure everything twice. Then measure everything again. Then go back and triple-check the specs of everything you plan to put in, and make sure it all fits.

 

Spend your money on the things that aren't as easy to replace. This means flooring, cabinets, plumbing. If you need to economize, I still think countertops are a good place to do so. We finally replaced our laminate with a quartz composite last summer. It still cost about what a small used car would have cost. We liked our single large bowl sink enough that we put in an undermount version of the same thing when we replaced the countertop.

 

We still love our range and hood, and think they're worth what they cost.

 

We have never run out of either workspace or electrical outlets, so we must have enough of both.

 

Be cautious with appliance sizes. Our refrigerator crashed earlier this year. We were glad we didn't box the fridge in with cabinetry so we had wiggle room. That allowed us to choose the refrigerator we wanted rather than getting stuck with the one refrigerator on the market that had the same dimensions as the old one. When the microwave gives up the ghost, we will have the same deal, since it just sits on a shelf in a large cabinet rather than being built into a perfectly sized box.

 

You can plan where you think you're going to store things, but actual usage may dictate otherwise.

 

A soak in Oxy-Clean does a great job of degreasing stainless hood vent screens.

 

And make sure you have a plan in place to eat AND CLEAN UP AFTERWARD for your no-kitchen period.