This Old House Comment/Observation

The current This Old House series is about renovating a brownstone in Brooklyn, New York. The architecture and general New York approach is not something I would be comfortable with. Those house do not look comfortable to live in.

The wife of the couple who is doing this remodel has her own unique view of all things that go in this house. To paraphrse her remarks concerning kitchen cabinets, "I specified cherry for the cabinets. Because cherry stains so nice. I could make them just the color I wanted."

Apparently cherry is not a pretty enough color for her. Most of her design decisions follow along this kind of logic. Maybe when she gets done with this project, she could hire herself out as a prison designer.

Reply to
Lee Michaels
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Lee,

To be honest to her, perhaps she wanted to match the cabinets to a color of the old wood that abounds in their rooms. I think the cherry cabinets are in the ground floor apartment. They are very dark but they seem to complement the rest of the dark woodwork.

I have some friends who are doing a remodel. Their cabinet maker is also "staining" cherry. I've told what a sin that is. They don't seem to care about that at all. They are going for a "look".

MJM

Reply to
MJWallace

I wouldn't know because our affiliates have gone to their usual MO of showing the first two or three episodes and then stopping for their crap specials while they beg for money. It hasn't been on for I think

3 weeks and it's not scheduled for the next 2 weeks either. At some point I in the future after having given up on it I will stumble upon one of last episodes where their decorator is explaining how she managed to make the current one even uglier than the previous.

As long as the checks are good I'll stain the cherry whatever she wants. I've got a quart of "deep ocean" that's been sitting around for years she might like.

-Kevin

Reply to
LEGEND65

I quit watching years ago when the kitchen appliances started costing more than my first house. I can't say if they have gone back to their more reasonable roots, but the show was definitely suffering from mission creep. All I can think is that the contractors were bored by trying to save money all the time and wanted a chance to do jobs with bottomless funding.

Reply to
scritch

The kitchen cabinets are Green, Sea Foam green it appears.

Reply to
Leon

As I remember there was a house they did several years ago, where the owner had to declare bankruptcy because he could not afford the taxes on all of the expensive equipment they installed.

Does any one remember the outcome that situation?

Reply to
Keith Nuttle

Keith:

I looked for that "case" for awhile but found nothing. Are you sure it was "TOH"? It could have been Extreme Makeover".

There was a house done by EM in our area and the couple had a problem in the property tax reassesment. I think they were able to figure it all out, tho.

The reason TOH does the high-end remodeling, is that they want to show as much as they can the "state of the art" in fixtures, etc. Obiviously, it is no longer affordable remodeling. Tho they do something more moderately at times, like last year in New Orleans.

MJM

Reply to
MJWallace

MJWallace wrote: ...

... There was one in the Atlanta area the idjuts took out equity LOC for the entire amount at about the peak evaluation point and then declared bankruptcy...

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Reply to
dpb

It is not a "sin". It is a choice. A perfectly viable choice.

It's their cherry, they can do what they want with it, including painting it.

Just because neither you nor I would, doesn't mean they shouldn't.

scott

Reply to
Scott Lurndal

Not a sin, but stupid, maybe? Why pay for cherry, if you're going to paint it? Who can tell if it's cherry, maple, teak or poplar under a good paint job?

It's kind of like zinc plating a diamond.

Reply to
-MIKE-

Pretty much how I saw this show's evolution. What started as a DIY program quickly became a pie-in-the-sky contractor's wet-dream.

"Today, we build a pre-stressed concrete walled NASA control bunker in the basement of this simulated chrome-moly log cabin on the majestic unspoiled shoreline adjacent to Marina Del Ray, CA. BTW, the owners are 3 oceans away entertaining the czar of Russia on their 80 million dollar yacht and haven't a clue what a 16 box nail is. Now, here's a word from our non-commercial PBS supporter."

nb

Reply to
notbob

Scott:

Perhaps, "shame" is a better word? The wife puts a table cloth on a cherry table we bought in Amish country about 2 years ago. I never see the beautiful wood at all. I just saw an exhibit of Shaker furniture and I like the patina that furniture takes as it gets used.

As someone else noted, if you're building in cherry and staining it, why not poplar or maple, etc.

Bottom line, it's their money as I told them. If they like it, who am I say otherwise. I just think they might want to reconsider. MJM

Reply to
MJWallace

Amidst all the "noise", that is the only part that matters. They paid for a job to be done a certain way so that's what they ought to get. If you don't want to accept the job, someone else will. It doesn't matter how anyone else thinks it should (or should not) be done.

Ed

Reply to
Ed Edelenbos

That's ridiculous; zinc isn't going to stick to a diamond! (sheesh)

Yeah I tell ya, every time I refer back to these pictures of the cherry rocking chair I made for my little brother:

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kick myself for not using stain! That way he wouldn't have had to wait the extra year for it turn three shades darker than what shows up in the photos... He practically wore out the underside of the rockers waiting for it to happen! I'm such a selfish bastard.

Reply to
Steve Turner

That may be so. But on this particular job, they are making a big deal out of saving money. Recycling od doors, reusing anything from the old house they can.

It doesn't make sense to pay MORE for cherry to stain it. As was pointed out by others, there are a lot of other woods that can be stained that cost far less. For somebody who is supposedly economizing, she screwed up big time on the cherry cabinets.

Reply to
Lee Michaels

cow. Think you know a guy and then he pulls rank on ya with a piece of work like that. NICE!

Reply to
Robatoy

....and I forgot to mention that there is a fine example of why cherry is my non-plus-ultra favourite wood. There are more exotic species, some birds eye maple can be breath taking, but only cherry does what it does and that picture of your chair shows it as clearly as anything else I have seen.

Reply to
Robatoy

"Lee Michaels" wrote

Topical, because it appears I'm most likely faced with a similar situation as we speak.

AAMOF, just this morning I identified the *wood* in an e-mailed picture of "this is the color (stain) I would like for my kitchen" as nothing other than cherry, but stained, even to someone as colorblind as I am, to something that does not resemble cherry.

(What did you think, Leon?)

Besides, I think the budget is getting a bit tight for cherry, which may be good because she seems more interested in color than the type of wood. However, and although I've seen a very nice kitchen made with birch plywood, stained with a "cherry stain", the face frames didn't quite stain the same, even to my color challenged eye (and she wants hardwood "batten" doors/drawer fronts on top of that!)

... translation: a *lot* of cherry may be stained whether I like it or not, and the thought of using two different types of woods makes her much desired "final look" a toss up, IME.

Life definitely used to be simpler ...

Reply to
Swingman

Again, it's *her* economy so it's *her* choice. Apparently the cherry didn't look like she wanted and she is the one who's got to live with it. To her it made sense. End of story.

On jobs I've had, I've tried to explain "false economy" and how doing such and such will save a few dollars. Sometimes the customer goes for it, sometimes not. I don't ever remember turning down a job because I thought the work was stupid. (ps: note I did not say I never thought a job was stupid)

Ed

Reply to
Ed Edelenbos

For about my last ten years in business I did almost nothing but build cabinets out of cherry.

What most of my customers thought of as "cherry" was the deep and dark color of cherry that was at least more than five years old.

There were some that could be educated to the idea that it starts out light and then darkens over time.

Most wanted that aged color immediately.

So, having a family to feed, I stained their cherry.

Here is the recipe for aged cherry using TransTint dyes in one gallon of nitro lacquer finish:

2 tsp medium brown. 2 tsp red. 1 tsp blue. 1 tsp yellow.

This gives you a deep red color without much brown.

If you want more brown, do the obvious.

Regards,

Tom Watson

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Reply to
Tom Watson

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