New kitchen no longer on back burner

VIRGINIA BEACH

Bill and Linda Greaves started literally from the bottom up.

The Brighton on the Bay couple decided to redo their kitchen while keeping the room's existing ceramic tiles.

Easy? Think again.

Finding make-over pieces like granite and back splashes in white and black to match the 22-year-old floor was next to impossible. Brown and green would have been another story.

Instead, much of the three-month do-it-yourself project was spent shopping, finding good prices and putting it all together to transform the kitchen into a brighter, cooking-friendly and eat-in room.

"We were trying to do it as nice as we could for as little as we could," Linda Greaves said.

The Greaves' honeydew-colored kitchen made the most of their space and reused some key elements, like the tiles, stainless-steel appliances, the center island and cabinets. They added a computer desk work station.

The end result hit high points with judges, who chose the Greaveses' project for Best Kitchen Makeover in The Virginian-Pilot's 2011 Do-It-Yourself Contest.

Other categories in the competition for local DIY enthusiasts were Best Bathroom, Best All About Me Project, Best Outdoor Project and Best Low-Budget Project.

"We wanted it to be bright and airy with a special accent of the back splash to set off the existing SS (stainless-steel) appliances," Bill Greaves wrote to the newspaper for his DIY contest entry, which won the couple $500.

The Greaves have lived in their Virginia Beach house for 18 years without much work on the kitchen during that time. The center island was too small to eat at, with just enough room for a double sink and a dishwasher below.

They couple put a small table near a window so they could eat in the kitchen, but, Linda Greaves said, she never liked it.

The light-colored cabinets were in great shape, but the finish was worn out, Bill Greaves said. The back splash under the cabinets and wallpaper and lighting looked dated.

Linda Greaves painstakingly peeled off all the wallpaper, while her husband spray painted the cabinets white.

All the doors came off and were hung outside on a clothes line for their paint job. The trim and portion above the cabinets were done by sealing off that area from the rest of the kitchen and the dining room, and taping off the inside of the cupboards to miss the mist.

The couple laughed when they retold the spray-paint story.

Bill Greaves ventured in to the "cocoon," as he called it, with a respirator and glasses, but gave no thought about what would happen once the paint started to spray.

He emerged with white hair sticking straight up and looked like the Michelin tire man without the rolls, chuckled Linda Greaves. When he took off his glasses, he looked like a raccoon.

"I should have taken a picture of you," she said.

"No," her husband respectfully said with a chuckle of his own.

Finding the right back splash at a decent price proved to be another time-consumer.

After traveling to several stores and falling in love with 1/4-inch-by-11/16-inch stainless steel tiles in two different tones of stainless steel and white, the couple finally found a store that had brand-new3-by-3-inch gloss black tiles.

The pair loved them, eventually using a stack pattern and incorporating the smaller tiles as an accent

Bill Greaves hadn't done tile work in nearly 20 years and patience to line up everything and apply the 10 pounds of black sanded semi-gloss grout needed to make it all blend and stick together.

Bill Greaves did most of the work by himself, including rewiring for new pendant lights above the island, installing crown molding, replacing hardware and painting the center island black to hide the dishwasher.

He also had to replace the garbage disposal, and rewire it, after he found it had a hole in it and had ruined part of the flooring underneath the island.

The couple found a granite slab, which they used for the counters, desk top and the center island.

It was big enough to extend the island out enough to eat at and for an overhang to hide the trash can underneath.

The island now has a piece of stainless steel mounted to it so the trash can lid doesn't damage the island every time it's raised to throw something away. A contractor installed the granite and under-mounted stainless-steel sink.

As for the desk, Greaves bought two wall and base cabinet unit kits to match the existing cabinets for the computer station. He "removed the raised wood door panels on the wall unit and added glass and interior self-contained lighting," he wrote in his entry. "The three drawer base cabinets units were too high for a desk, so I cut off the top-drawer unit to reduce the height to a standard desk height of 29 inches."

A neighbor cut the glass for the cabinets, Bill Greaves said.

The couple said they eat at the island every day, and love to watch their 4-year-old granddaughter, Grace, enjoy it when she visits.

She spins round and round on the island's modern bar stools.

Toni Guagenti,

tguagenti@cox.net