I Am Tin Man

No sooner had we put up the new shelves in the kitchen than they had to come back down again. The tin tiles we ordered arrived yesterday and they got installed today. Ta-dah!

These are reproduction tin ceiling tiles that we're repurposing as a backsplash. The county health department is okay with that, and we like the look better than your traditional tile, Formica, or composite material. The hardest part was picking a pattern (there are lots of different ones) and then picking a finish color (there are lots of different ones).

The other hard part was cutting openings for the electrical outlets. I carefully measured -- twice -- and then jabbed a starter hole in the tin with an ice pick, before using tin snips to cut out a rectangle. The trick is to cut through the tin tiles without bending or distorting them too much. Tin snips are not good for delicate surgery. I've got the sliced fingers to prove it.

These are individual tin tiles, embossed with a round-ish pattern and hand-finished in a sort of copper color. They're glued to the wall with industrial adhesive; I may add a few nails, too. In a day or so, when the adhesive dries, I'll run a bead of silicone around all the edges to make the backsplash watertight and keep crumbs out. Then the lower shelf will go back up. Should be nice.

If You Can't Stand the Heat...

The downstairs kitchen is nearly functional now. In fact, we cooked part of Thanksgiving dinner and most of Christmas dinner here. It was very handy having the double oven, big burners, and industrial-sized refrigerator right outside the dining room table. Makes it easier to cook and serve without dragging everything through the house.

(Side note: In all the time we've lived here, we've never eaten meals on the same floor we've cooked them. Food always seems to go up/downstairs. In the very beginning, both kitchens were nonfunctional, so we plugged in a cheap toaster oven and carried our TV dinners up to the second floor to eat. Then we remodeled the 2nd-floor kitchen but started carrying everything back downstairs to the family room. Lately we've been moving ourselves out of the ground floor in preparation for opening the business, so now we eat on the 3rd floor. Crazy. Christmas was pretty much the first time we've been able to eat without climbing stairs.)

The maple countertops went in just before Christmas, and the sink right after that. Once the plumbing and electrical work was done, I hung the cabinet doors and started loading everything up. Last week, we built some shelves; those got hung yesterday. We're still waiting on the tin backsplash, but apart from that it's just about ready to go!

We also got a freezer. At first, I wasn't sure we'd need one, and didn't want to waste what little space we have, but really, the need became apparent after awhile. It's a freestanding unit, much like the refrigerator, with a stainless worktop. Unlike most residential freezers which keep food at around 5 degrees, this thing operates at -10 degrees and below. It's cold! Makes it very handy for chilling beer glasses on short notice.

One side effect is that it keeps the kitchen nice and warm. Because physics. Any refrigeration unit will put out more heat than it takes in, so having a big refrigerator and freezer in a small kitchen keeps the place toasty. The place is noticeably warmer now (in January) than it was just a few months ago. I'm beginning to wonder if that extra heating duct that we put in last year will be necessary after all.