Beautiful!
Wow. Very nice!
I’m going to check that out. Love the piece you made, great detail.
Thanks 
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This is the recipe I used.
And this is for inspiration. Look up Fairy Houses, you’ll find a ton more.
Why did the spray lacquer do this? The black spray paint went on yesterday morning–more than 24 hours ago, so was completely dry. This didn’t happen on the legs, just the top. The legs are solid wood but the table top is some compressed wood fiber thing. I sprayed the lacquer on and watched the crackling start as little dots and spread like a movie disease. My only course of action now is to wait for it to dry and sand it down.
Now I’m afraid to put any type of top coat on the top of the table. Any advice and/or explanations?
My only guess is that there is some kind of wax/solvent in the compressed wood stuff that is interacting with the solvents in your spray lacquer. I’d try sanding back and then giving it a coat of some sealer, Kilz maybe, then hit it with the black.
Thanks! I’m thinking of sanding it down, giving it another blast of black paint and sealing the top with a beeswax/mineral oil mix I’ve used on much smaller, not so heavily used as a tabletop, things. The lacquer would have been much more durable but you gotta work with watcha got.
Ok Dopers, behold the awesomeness that is my kitchen:
Looking from the dining room into the kitchen. Note the amber glass panels that make up the cabinet doors as well as the fugly 1970’s paneling on the back of the lower cabinets, under the bar:
From the other side of the kitchen proper. Note the vent stack coming up through the counter next to the sink🤦
The cooktop. Note the avocado green color, the controls for the burners located on the vent hood and the faux brick “tile” behind it.
The wall oven. Same vintage as the cooktop. Top of the line… for 1967:
So from a strictly functional standpoint this kitchen needs updated. The cooktop and oven are original to the house (1967) and they are no longer relaible. The heat is very inconsistent. I asked the guy at the local appliance repair shop if the cooktop could be fixed and he laughed at me and told me that configuration didnt exist (I didn’t have a pic of it with me at the time). The fridge is 16 years old and leaks, and the dishwasher has an acrid chemical smell that emanates from it after it’s been ran. So all 4 major appliances need to be replaced.
However, the kitchen also embodies every late 60’s / early 70’s crappy design stereotype imaginable: avocado appliances, faux brick paneling, yellow countertops, and amber glass cabinet fronts. Oh, and there’s also a built-in cork board next to the oven 
.
So. I’m soliciting ideas on how to give this kitchen a makeover without doing a full down-to-the-studs remodel. Any thoughts or epiphanies that my fellow Dopers have I’d love to hear them.
Also, assuming I do something to update this kitchen beyond just replacing the appliances, do you all want me document my progress in this thread? Would that be interesting to anyone?
I would watch and wait for the next installment with bated breath!
I think the biggest bang for your buck in updating the look would be replacing the faux brick, especially since it is such a small area, yet right-in-your face.
Easiest and cheapest would be to paint the bricks. White wash and toned down reds. Make it look Farmhouse Chic.
Second easiest and expensive would be peel and stick tiles. They are also the least permanent. You can pretty much pick your own design with them.
The hardest and most expensive option is to remove the brick and put in something else. How expensive and/or difficult would depend on how the brick is stuck on to the wall. With so little space to fill, you could go crazy with fancy glass or Spanish tiles or friggin’ silver and gold plated madness.
I’d find it very interesting! I actually like the Amber glass doors, though I realize a lot of people would want to completely open up the space. But apparently open concept kitchens are trending out for 2023. Are you thinking of keeping the layout of appliances the same?
Oh yeah… heh. I forgot the 5th pic… the faux brick covers the wall separating the kitchen from the living room.
My wife and I agree removing that and restoring the original drywall would lighten up the kitchen immensely. The “brick” is just 1/4" thick fiber board with the brick pattern pressed into it. We have no love for it at all.
I like the amber glass too, and they match two built-in pendant lights we have over the fireplace:
The trouble is that they are glass, and I have two teenagers who think that “fragile” only applies to computer electronics. They don’t treat them gently despite nunerous pleas and threats so its just a metter of time before they break. They also are quite dark – they filter out a lot of the natural light coming into the dining room.
We aren’t planning on removing those upper cabinets completely because we need the space. But we’d certainly like to give them a facelift somehow.
Which is another issue: the kitchen is dark. We need to do everything we can to lighten it up but I’m not sure what all that can/will be.
As far as the appliances go, yes we’ll keep the layout the same. We talked about putting in a traditional range where the cooktop is, but that would not only mean cutting up the lower cabinet to accomidae the new range but obviously we’d lose that cabinet space. Even if we removed the wall oven and turned that into cabinet space it wouldnt make up for the space lost in the lower cabinet under the cooktop.
Yeah, the more bricks kills my super fancy backsplash plan. You can replace the glass cabinet doors with sliding doors of your choosing and repurpose the amber glass elsewhere. You can take all the cabinets and doors down to bare wood, white wash and white wash it-- yeah, still farmhouse but it doesn’t have to look rustic, just a light wood color-- that can lighten up the room. Or paint it a more light bouncing color.
My kitchen is also very dark and one of the best things I did for that was hang two pendant lights, plug in ones as an electrician was not in the budget.
Since you said (IIRC) that the appliances are unreliable, I would start there and replace the lot.
My second priority, were I you, would be the counters and backsplash. I would replace them both at the same time.
After that I would suggest you give yourselves, and your bank account, a bit of a rest. You may find that those changes make you happy enough to stop there.
If not, I would replace those amber plastic sliding doors in the overhead cabinets, and paint or replace the ‘brick’ wall.
Your ‘work triangle’ looks pretty good and your cabinets look like they’re still in good shape and don’t need replacing, but if you just don’t like the look, you can paint them, or even replace the drawer fronts and doors with new. Also replace hinges and pulls with something you like better.
Somewhere along the line you might add more overhead lights and/or under cabinet lights to brighten things up.
I am not a kitchen designer, nor do I play one on TV. These are just my opinions.
I ran out of time as hubby’s birthday was the 29th. That’s the charging station I gave him for Christmas atop the table that got all screwy when I tried to top coat it with lacquer. Ended up sanding the bottom and respraying it black. It is not pretty. Had to top coat it somehow, don’t want the paint rubbing away. That ended up with 2 coats of beeswax and boiled linseed oil paste. I wanted to buff more and maybe add another coat. Asked hubby to bring it back upstairs to my craft room so I could finish it up and let the wax harden a bit, but he told me he loved it, it was fine and I was obsessing.
The black box is a shower FM radio/Bluetooth speaker.
Wait, he pointed out that you were obsessing. And you were able to just… stop? You get DIY’er of the year award.
I gave it to him and he wouldn’t give it back! I even had him look under the table to see how ungood it was. That’s when he told me to stop obsessing.
Dump him
But I love him!
My wife bought me a custom-made cover for a face cord of firewood for Christmas. (She got tired of watching me mess with a tarp.) A face cord is 8 feet by 4 feet by 16 inches. The cover is 8 feet by 5 feet by 24 inches. I need to build a frame for it. I’ve ordered couplers for the corners and sides, and I’ll buy PVC pipe locally when they arrive next week.
I bought The Missus a 6 foot by 6 foot greenhouse for Christmas. (The link says 8x6, but it’s 6x6.) She’s picked out a place in the yard for it. The thing is, the space is where rubble from several construction projects by me and the previous owner was dumped. I don’t think it’s particularly stable. I have some time, because I have to build that wood stack frame and chop wood first, and because I need to wait for better weather, so right now I’m considering two courses of action: 1) Hire our handyman to build a 6x6 deck, complete with concrete-seated posts, that I can erect the greenhouse on; or 2) Level the area myself, ensuring it’s a stable area, and building a frame like the one I made for the woodshed (pictures upthread) and have the handyman’s brother fill it with gravel. Either way, (deck frame, or ground frame) I’ll put on an OSB floor painted with deck paint.
I’ll post pics when I do the projects.
Concur that the “brick” is atrocious (I’m not in favor of things that look like something else, without any of the functionality) but may I please let you know how jealous I am of that big ol’ undivided sink? Want!