Everything but the Kitchen Sink
Historic Tax Credit Adventures.
Dancing through the list of rehab projects to put into Part Two of the Tax Credit application I went for things like rehabbing the kitchen and bath, (both allowed for consideration). While John stayed focused on those items that you can’t really see like H.V.A.C. Yes, I knew it needed to be on the list but ouch, the staggering price for something invisible to the eye.
I frequent a place in Cincinnati called Building Values, a non-profit with a large collection of architectural pieces from old homes around Cincinnati. It’s a gold mine for people like us who are looking for specific items from old home. Baseboards, six-panel doors, banisters, cabinets, stoves; the list goes on. It’s a place that requires creativity.
On one such trip, off in a corner of the warehouse, a copper vent hood, like one that might have been in the house of The Brady Bunch, caught my eye. I took a picture of it to show my husband since he’d be the one creating my vision of a kitchen island made from the hood.
Rorschach tests are a fun mind bender. I see things that no one else can see in those pictures, an old lady, a young woman, maybe a frog? John wasn’t convinced that the hood could be converted just from the picture.
Back at Building Values, he scrunched up his nose and I could tell he struggled with the concept. With the clerk’s help, we turned it on end so that the broad base became the top and the point of the triangulated piece became the bottom.
“Do you see it, John?” I nearly begged him to understand what a real conversation piece it could be in the kitchen. Afterall, friends of ours had turned a beat-up grand piano into a kitchen island. We could do this.
“I guess?” he said.
I convinced him that we should take it home and play with it, which we did. He worked on finishing touches of the basic island: wood base, cantilevered to hold weight, a bar counter on one side and utility counter on the other between other home projects and his job as a construction project manager. That’s before the fridge decided to spew water from door while we weren’t home.
The replacement, hardwood floor throughout the first floor stayed wet for a number of hours. Once cleaned up and dry the wood cupped. Not sure what to do from there, we moved the vent-hood island aside to saw a small square in the floor, see what shape the floor beneath might be in and discovered tongue in groove white oak.
Another pivot in a rehabber’s story. We pushed the island back into place and started talking about how the kitchen needed to be rehabbed. I tried to quell my excitement. I had managed the rehab of our kitchen in the previous house, laying painter’s tape where an island would be, cabinets, and appliances after living with a poor layout for several years. It was my biggest regret to leave that kitchen.
Could I have the kitchen I wanted in this house? Maybe. We put it on the growing list of items to be considered for tax credits and hoped for the best. Once we had all of the estimates compiled and considered just how far our dollars could stretch in a two-year period, some things needed to be put on long term hold. The kitchen would be one of them. We moved the half-finished island back in place, put a tablecloth over vinyl, over wood, and have lived with it ever since.
To take the replacement floor out would mean that cabinetry and appliances would need to go, countertops too. Our list was already budget busting and our sweat equity would need to go into other projects, like restoration of windows, all 17 of them.
We’d bought the place at a middle price, not low, not high. Now we saw clearly that it wasn’t low enough to justify some of the things we would need to do. I started to believe that my husband’s statement about being carried out in a pine box (meaning he was tired of moving and wanted to stay in one place for the longevity of it all) would come true. And maybe it will in twenty or thirty years.
When we read through the items we listed on our application, we looked at each other with that, this is going to be a daunting project look and sent it in. Within a few months, we received notice that we’d been approved. The work could begin, and my secret floor beneath the bowling alley style replacement floor wasn’t going anywhere.