I love a bargain!

I don't like to shop, but I love a bargain. Well, let me amend that. I do really enjoy combing through consignment stores and thrift shops looking for incredible bargains but I don't care about shopping for new stuff. Generally speaking contemporary stores are geared to sell you things you don't really need and didn't know you wanted until you saw it arranged on a display table in bright packaging = ooooh pretty. I mean, if you're shopping for a new sofa and you need a new sofa, that's one kind of shopping. But wandering around Wal*Mart or Macy's encourages one to fall victim to the machinations of marketing gurus and advertising hacks. Give me a Salvation Army Thrift Store or a mom and pop antique shop any day. And salvage stores are fun when you have a big project, like a kitchen renovation.

My husband Russ and I are cut from the same cloth in that regard. We both love old, idiosyncratic stuff. We would happily spend hours together driving around from one target bargain destination to another and probably don't do it as often as we'd like. At one point several years ago my husband found a solid set of cabinets at a salvage store for $40 and couldn't pass up the deal. He figured they'd end up in his workshop for storage. Little did we know they were going to end up as part of our kitchen cabinets in our little farmhouse in town.

Before we bought this place I pilfered one of the larger cabinets for an island in our rented lakehouse. For two years we rented a charming cottage on Lake Winnipesaukee. We got reduced rent in exchange for fixing up the place a little bit -- something that suited both Russ and myself. Russ, who is nothing if not handy and creative, fixed up the doors of the old cabinet and placed beadboard around the sides and back and then trimmed out the bottom. A good coat of white paint and viola! I had an island that added much needed countertop in our modest little lake cottage kitchen. I will say this, a little time, paint, and hardware can go along way. Oh yeah, some new flooring too. Another bargain Russ found because the flooring had some minor flaws. The lakehouse kitchen went from this:

To this:

When all was said and done however, at that time we couldn't afford a decent countertop to the island so I had to live with plywood for two years. I kept it covered with seasonal tableclothes and made do. That island moved with us to the new house and it became one end of the massive island that was going to become the focal point of the new kitchen.

Despite all the bargain hunting we did splurge on a few things in our new kitchen, the main thing being a six-burner Imperial gas range that was going to live in the middle of the huge island. I love to cook and I love being in the kitchen and it was extremely important to me to have a kick-ass domestic goddess zone to call my own. Three things I really wanted: a beastly gas range, an electric wall oven, and a slate or soapstone sink. The slate sink was in, now came time for the range.

The island was a project that was months in the making.

An Immoveable Object

First things first. That sink has got to go.

After we passed papers my husband sat down with some grid paper and a pencil and began planning the layout of the kitchen. After we passed papers I started shopping. In my marriage we are nothing if not gender stereotypes and since I'm the cook in the family my husband was delighted to have the opportunity to create for me the kitchen I've always wanted. While I'm not an incredibly picky person, I do like what I like and there were some things that weren't negotiable for me when we were looking for a house. I wanted a big kitchen. My husband wanted a big barn. Living at the lake house was dreamy in a lot of ways but ultimately it was a summer cottage and as such, it had a summer cottage kitchen, meaning it was small. The only real working kitchen counter space I had was an island my husband built for me using a salvaged cabinet he had originally purchased to use in his (some day) workshop in the (some day) barn. That island was now earmarked to be the cornerstone of our new kitchen island in the new house. So while the new house was only offering a Naked Kitchen at least it was a big Naked Kitchen.

But back to that sink. Yes it was an old-fashioned porcelain sink that is common to farmhouses but this girl had certainly seen better days. I played around with the notion of repairing her and sewing a little skirt to hid her silly legs and extended belly, but on the list of things I knew I really wanted was a slate or soapstone sink, so Bessie the porcelain sink was destined to live out the rest of her life as the barn sink or perhaps a garden sink. The placement of the sink in Naked Kitchen was one thing that wasn't negotiable because we didn't have the resources to move the plumbing, nor was there any real need to do so.

As mentioned, we were working on a limited budget so my shopping was not based on casually flipping pages in a catalogue or making pilgrimages to Ikea or Ethan Allen. No, I was hardcore, camping out at salvage shops, foraging at local antique stores, and feverishly clicking away on Craig's List and eBay. What I realized while I was bargain-hunting was that I was not only looking for good deals but I was being "green," a term I really kind of hate because for some people being green means using their plastic grocery store bags more than once, like to pick up their dog's droppings or lining their bathroom trash can. For people like my parents, who grew up during the Depression, being "green" is just common sense -- don't throw something away if there's still some life in it. I was remodeling a kitchen during the Great Recession so I liked the idea of being both frugal and reusing items that were still useful.

My first major score in that regard was a slate sink I found on Craig's List.

This sink was listed on Craig's List for $850 at a location about an hour north of the new house. The owner discovered the old girl on the floor of his garage behind an antique car. I found a similar but longer sink a couple of hours away in Maine for only $600, so I used what little persuasive charm I had to talk the guy down to $600 for the sink that was geographically closer. It worked! So my husband and I hopped right into the truck and picked up our first major purchase for the new kitchen.

Of course all recycled items need a little TLC before you can lock and load, but this sink proved to need remarkably little work. There are a couple of significant nicks, but in our opinion it adds to the old house charm we're looking for. Some Brasso on the "Monson Maine Slate Company" plate on the front of the sink and a good rubbing with mineral oil brought out her natural rich beauty.

What we didn't realize until after we bought the sink was that it would be a challenge to find fixtures for the 18 inch faucet openings...

Creating a Kitchen

I'm a complete victim of lifestyle/decorating magazines -- This Old House, Handyman, Old House Journal, Martha Stewart Living, Country Living -- I've always loved reading magazines about fixing up old homes or getting all crafty during certain holidays, so when we knew we were going to buy a 220 year old house I began to study these magazines like scripture, memorizing styles that I liked, studying color schemes, wedging sticky notes onto pages that had something on them I'd like to replicate, and otherwise fantasizing about my dream home. And just as often, reading about how to modernize something quirky that goes with an old house, like floors that aren't level, having one electrical outlet per room, or figuring out how to eliminate mystery drafts.

Because it doesn't quite look like Martha Stewart's Maine estate "Skylands" (yes, I know the names Martha has for her homes) our new house fell a bit short of "dream" status. In all honesty though, it's pretty close, or as close as I want to get without the the benefit of a full-time housekeeper and groundskeeper. AND! the property came with an unusual bonus... a naked kitchen.

We all know that the kitchen is a key selling point for any home so we surmised that Naked Kitchen (see right) was probably one of the main reasons why the house had been on the market for so long. Naked Kitchen was basically one large, long room. No counters or cabinets at all. All this room had to offer was a standalone refrigerator, a lonely gas range, and a spindly looking old-fashioned porcelin sink with it's belly and pipes shamefully exposed. When we first went through the house I desperately wanted to grab a curtain and cover it's scrawny 2X4 legs and provide it with some dignity. While the cranberry-painted trim had a period look the walls were sponge-painted a yellow gold. Very, very wrong.

But my husband and I are optimists. We tend to see all the possibilities in something rather than all the problems so for us Naked Kitchen was a selling point. We could make our dream kitchen because all we had right now was a big blank slate! There was just one problem: budget.

The house was a short sell and we were shopping on a short-sell budget. For the past two years we had been renting a small cottage on a lake in central New Hampshire, a cottage that got much smaller when my older stepson dropped out of college and moved back in with us. With a certain budget in mind my husband and I started househunting, one of those couples in a position to take advantage of the disaster zone that the housing market had become in recent years. We had been casually looking around for 12 or so months and even considered an old farmhouse that had not yet been outfitted with indoor plumbing or heat. Yes boys and girls, believe it or not there are still some folks who live on the farm like it's 1910.

Anyway, we fell in love with this house almost immediately. We lumbered through the tedious process of purchasing a short sell property and when we finally signed the papers Naked Kitchen became our challenge. The mission: Create a kitchen we could love on a shoestring budget.