Friday, January 27, 2012

Our Jimmy John's Kitchen (Part 3)

Our Jimmy John's Kitchen design...
for our home...
is coming along nicely!

You can catch up with our plans and progress at...

Part 1- The Why.
Did we seriously have Jimmy John's cater our wedding?
The design plans, and some catastrophic before shots.

Part 2 - The How.
BOLD COLORS - How can you be sure you will love them?
Here's 10 easy steps to fool-proof color picking!

Part 3 - The What.
You are here.
Jimmy John's is a restaurant. Ours is a home. How do you make one into the other - ON A BUDGET?! See pics of the restaurant and the annotations of what we felt were the most important aspects we needed to replicate in our kitchen. Details about windows, walls, curtains, stainless switch plates, ceiling fixtures, etc.

Part 4. The reveal!
See the Before and Afters, the Master Project List, "Where can I buy it?" list, and...announcing the Next Project!

A few of you took the time to e-mail to let me know that you aren't blessed to have a Jimmy John's near you yet! So, I should probably show you what we are shooting for!

Here's Jimmy John's.
It's an energetic place with fun and wacky signs.
Great subs.
Colorful, free-spirited, sorta loud - pretty much like our family!

I annotated the pic, but it's a little difficult to see. There were a few items we felt would be crucial to our design. Basically, we really wanted the crazy signs - the pickle was a must have - and lots of stainless steel. Lastly, we needed to find a way to replicate the feel of the tile work, but not the cost and labor that actual tile would involve.

THE WALLS
Okay, so let's get down to the nitty gritty.
First the "before shot" of our blecky colored walls.

Meet my husband. Yes, the walls really were that green yellow puke color. It was there before we moved in. First, my husband took down the 70's mirrors and sanded and spackled the area. We had already chosen our paint colors - we started with a base of off white.

You can tell where are priorities are.
Paint, brushes, tape, coffee maker....

We decided to paint faux tile.
It was cheap, relatively easy, and wasn't a permanent deal. What to you call that piece up there above the cabinets?? Is that a soffit?

Whatever that's called, (I'm gonna call it Bob), we painted Bob a rich tomato red - so colorful funny signs would pop against it. We kept in mind that having Bob painted red, the kitchen could easily get too dark - so we only painted a few brown and black "tiles."

The taping...was fun. Not really.
It wasn't complicated, but it was difficult to get straight lines since we had to bend over - or lay on - the counter top to get to the walls. I designed a really random pattern in Paint. Then we taped and painted one row at a time, let it dry, painted a second coat... We taped inside some squares and outside others, so that the "white" space would remain empty.
It required a lot of taping and re-taping. But, it worked!

We chose to make the faux tile a checkerboard pattern, not identical with the actual Jimmy tile, but hopefully staying in the spirit. (Please ignore the clutter...)
What do you think? Get the jimmy vibe?


STAINLESS STEEL WALL PLATES
We replaced all of the wall plates for the outlets and switches. We added GFCI's were we needed 'em. (I don't have a before pic - just imagine the original plates from 1959 covered in paint so badly that you can't even plug in your coffee maker!) The stainless was a bit more - but I really like how they turned out.


THE WINDOWS, WOODWORK, AND CURTAINS
As you heard with the wall plates, the folks who lived here before us didn't exactly keep the place up. This includes the windows. My hubby started in on the windows while I was at work.


Taped to each window is a swatch of curtain.
We had already narrowed it down to 2. Each had the colors we were looking for, tomato red, green, and yellow. Now, I'm not a big painter of woodwork. But, here's a before shot of a different window that in the same condition as our kitchen windows.


Nice, eh?
I like rustic charm, but our windows look much better in chocolate brown.


Oh, and I should mention that hubby cleaned the original window pulls.
He also refinished the cabinets.
I had no idea they could look so good!


LIGHT FIXTURE
Jimmy John's uses a lot of different lights in their restaurants.
In the very top photo there's an amber pendant light. (Home depot had that one, but we passed so we didn't bump our heads.) In the next photo up there, the JJ's had silver retro pendants.

We elected to go with a retro-inspired nickle flush mount. (Home depot.) I chose this partially because it reminded me of the vintage art deco fixtures in Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry. Wanna see how they compare?


Not bad for just seeing something in the store and thinking,
"Boy, that reminds me of the Museum lights. And we love that place!"
Here's our sad little light bulb - what was in our kitchen when we started.


FUN, COLORFUL SIGNS
One of the most important pieces for our Jimmy John's kitchen is the logo sign. Without it, well, it just wouldn't be a Jimmy John's! We lucked out and Santa brought us this METAL logo sign a very nice 15 inches wide. (Thanks, Santa!)


Our 14 year old is getting pretty handy with a hammer!
Here's the sign in its full glory.


We put it front and center just like we had planned.


Making the signs took hours.
And, hours. (And...you get the idea.)
I'm gonna save the reveal of the signs for our next post.
Here's a sneak speak at the rough copies of a few of them.




We'll have our full reveal right back here on Tuesday...this week!!
And, we'll be linking up to the...
Imagine the Impossibilities Challenge.


So, what do you think of our progress so far?
Have we captured the Jimmy John's feel?

Click the blue button below...
to let us know!


Linking up to:
Boogieboard CottageThe Girl CreativeMad In Crafts Pin It
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...