Pulp Kitchen

Pulp Kitchen

As we sometimes allude to, we often like to do a little “side project” work while we are in the middle of a major renovation (Pulp Bath Reno 2), and of late, we’ve been doing a few upgrades to the Pulp Kitchen, recently adding the tile backsplash to the wall behind the stove and counter. Well, this week we decided to get busy with two more of the “wishlist” items planned for the kitchen, those being additional wallpaper covering and an “arch” add to the wall separation between kitchen and breakfast nook area!

So get busy we did. The wallpaper, a no brainer, going with a “nature pattern” full of colors but not too busy, and we’ll accent certain walls with it. For the arch, just looking to ease the transition from the existing “squared” division of rooms and give it a really cool look!

On the arch, to start with, we have about a one foot drop in ceiling height between the kitchen and nook areas, and a wall divide that is eight inches wide and stands out approximately three feet from the exterior wall. The “drop down” ceiling extends over the refrigerator/above storage cabinets, so the arch can only be installed on the one side. That all said, we’ve had some prior “arch” experience dating back to the Pulp Greenhouse and through the 1800 Project, having discovered a fantastic company down in Texas called “Archways and Ceilings” who can pretty much fabricate any style or type of arch imaginable (if you get a chance, please checkout their website). In our case, we chose a Dual Radius arch, which would normally go on opposite ends of a pass through, again, only doing the one side on this one (but we went ahead and placed the full order just in case something did not going to plan).

Now I should mention, it is much easier to install arch framing in a “new” construction environment as it is essentially “framing” and it is a lot easier to make everything flush prior to installing finished walls. You see the arch frames have thickness to them, which gives them strength. So what to do when you already have a finished wall? The answer being, open that wall up and see what is behind it!

So open up we did. What we found was a a couple nice wood stud and beam uprights on the vertical side, good, on top, however, a pretty hefty steel beam, not so good. Steel beam nice for holding things up, not so nice for screwing wood arch frames in to! Luckily, there was enough room to the steel beam to add some strapping above and adjacent to the arch frames (using construction adhesive and screws through ceiling sheetrock) so we’d have a decent surface to eventually land the arch frames and later finish sheetrock. With that, we installed the two arch frames, adjusted them 3 times, oops, after realizing that they were not at the same distance apart at top and bottom (which allows for the finish sheetrock to look uniform) and got ready to compound the joints, of which there were many!

Which gets us to the next phase, and that is making it all look good and ready for paint. It’s been an on-going hope of mine to get better with making finished sheetrock walls look finished! If you’ve tried this yourself, you know it’s not an exact science (well maybe it is, now that I think about it), the key point being, if you don’t do it all the time, there is a pretty big learning curve! Applying compound to joints, sanding it smooth, trying to level out all that is not level, and then doing it again and again….not so easy! And then there is the dust from the sanding. Good times all around.

End result, not too shabby (with a little room for improvement)! Mind you, I spent 3 days applying compound then sanding. I had pretty much enclosed the space with painters plastic (think “Boy in the Plastic Bubble”) and was a constant walking collector of sheetrock dust plus we still had to wipe down the entire kitchen/nook space, ‘cause that dust still gets out, but overall, feeling good. And the wallpaper looks great so far (couple more sheets to go)!

Some progress pics adjacent and below. See you next week!