The Light

At the end of the tunnel! Its visible! The kitchen project that never ends is nearly over. The "TO DO" list would fit on one hand these days. I have a secret plan to be finished with ALL of it over the Thanksgiving holiday. That will be appropriate because we kicked off this project with a trip to the fancy lumber store over the Thanksgiving holiday in 2008. The remaining items:

1) Make a kick board for the peninsula.
2) Make a little spacer block for the crown molding. (5 min tops)
3) Route out the glass doors and assemble them.
4) Order the glass.
5) Trim, route, and assemble the remaining frames for drawer fronts.
6) Stain items 1,2,3, and 5.
7) Attach spacers to drawer fronts.
8) Install all that stuff.
9) A little caulk maybe.

Okay two hands.

Over the hump

Despite lack of blog posts to serve as proof, work on the house has been progressing at the speed of light!! Ok, not that fast. BUT, I will get my appliances back and in their rightful positions, not the living room, THIS WEEK. Maybe even tonight. This is huge folks.

The biggest hurdle we jumped was the slate floor. We spent one entire weekend, all day both days, putting down the slate that I bought off Craigslist, hmm, over a year ago. It has sat there peacefully in the laundry room ever since. This was tough work... joint pain, back pain, muscle pain, you name it. In fact it took several days for us to recover, but we were determined to be done by Sunday night. Here's a shot of me right at the end of the process. (p.s. You can even see evidence of a mysterious allergic reaction that had moved up to my face by the end of the ordeal. So yes, monday morning was spent getting a benedryl shot and steroid pack.)


Allergy or not, I enjoy the tiling process. You get to work with mud. And, its all about appearances, rather than small details like if your grout lines are absolutely perfect. That doesn't really matter. You are going for the overall affect here people. August hates it for the same reasons. Thus, for once, I got to play the role of worker and August got to be the assistant.


Since then we have grouted the kitchen area only, because the grouting ain't so fun. But, in order to speed that appliance install, we did get it done where it counts. The latest effort is the backsplash. I found some glass tiles in a hurry and because we are tile experts now, we bought them Sunday, installed them Monday, and grouted them Tuesday. Tonight, Wednesday, we will clean them off one more time and then install the range in front and never take it out again.

Progress

It was a bit of a saga but the countertops in the main part of the kitchen are installed, grouted, everything. The drama? Turns out that its hard to be precise and perfect when you are working with a substance called "mud". Used to having everything right down to the 1/64th of an inch, tiling was a little out of our comfort zone. Some of the grout lines were larger than they should be, some of the junctions weren't quite lined up, some of the tiles are slightly lower than some of the other tiles. However, the nice black grout went in and it fairly well smoothed everything out. And even August thinks that everything looks okay now.

And as of last night, even the sink is installed. hallelujah! The desk area (i.e. kitchen annex) is also *almost* done. Should be done by Friday. What in the world will we do with our 3.5 day weekend?? I'm sure will think of something. Shelving is high on my priority list.

The desk area...

And a random shot of me, to prove that I do occasionally do some work myself.

No excuses

That's right, I can't think of any really good excuse for my lack of blogging lately. The kitchen is coming along fabulously. The pics I'm about to show you are from.. hmm.. two weeks ago?? Here's an updated kitchen to-do list:

• Sink - done!
• Microwave - done!
• Range - done!
• Refrigerator panels - halfway
• Install peninsula, sink base, lower cabinets
  
• Install pantry and desk cabinets
• Build shelves
• Crown moulding
• Tile countertop, backsplash
• Floor moulding
• Slate floor
• Build glass-front cabinets / bookshelves

Sheetrock and Painting

Well, it feels great to be putting things together again rather than taking them apart. The sheetrock is up and finished and we're on to painting. Our sheetrock mud and tape jobs generally turned out a lot better than we had expected. Some of our joints are less noticeable than the original ones! Glad to be done with it though, sheetrock work is no fun.

No Floor

Kitchen renovation is underway. We are currently adding additional bracing to the joists wherever we can. We should be done with all that by tonight. Next stop is sheet rock and electrical. Less than three weeks to our "deadline" where we intend to have all cabinets and appliances back in their proper places. AAAAH!

Musical Chairs

Do you like those little puzzles where you slide the tiles around to make a picture? That's our house these days. The living room furniture is now in the spare bedroom. The dining room is in the living room, right next to the major kitchen appliances. Cabinets are filling the dining room. What's in the kitchen? Almost nothing!! In fact, the kitchen floor is now in the garage. It was a busy weekend.

Still looks normal?..............................Pan out a bit!

Everyone should have a couch in their kitchen.

Time Travel

We got a touch of demolition fever last night. Hope you enjoy this journey through the history of linoleum:

1. Current kitchen floor ~ late nineties

2. One layer down ~ late eighties

3. Two layers down ~ late seventies

4. Three layers down ~ 1971, baby! Under this is only subfloor... we think...

Who needs slate? That yummy green goodness looks like its in mint condition.

Success!!

Appliance shopping is officially done for this kitchen renovation. I have prevailed and successfully purchased all four in good used condition off Craigslist at excellent prices. They even match. Well the fridge technically doesn't. It is a counter-depth model though, so that should make up for the slightly different shaped handles.

Let's look at the math:
Fridge.......... $900
Range.......... $500
Microwave.... $100
Dishwasher.. $285
---------------------------
Total............ $1785

But don't forget, we sold the old ones:
Fridge............ $175
Range............. $40
Microwave...... $100
Dishwasher..... $50 (estimate)
---------------------------
Total...............$365

That puts our total investment at $1420. Yay!! That's a good deal folks. A new fridge alone would cost that much. Plus they each have bells&whistles. As I said, the fridge is counter-depth, and also the interior lights dim on and off. That way you don't get flashed in the eyes.. Very important. The range has the second smaller baking oven underneath. The microwave isn't that special except it does match the range. And the dishwasher, well it doesn't have any buttons on the front. A "must have" feature, I assure you.. :)

So any of you out there with a similar situation, I HIGHLY recommend that you check Craigslist early and often. Bookmark the URL for whatever you are searching for, and check it whenever you get a chance. For example, this is my new bookmark: Stainless Sink

Making a Mess

This weekend we decided to start the kitchen demolition. The old kitchen had those empty sheetrock boxes above the cabinets.. That's 12 full inches of wasted nothingness, which I intend to reclaim. Also above the peninsula I want to see straight through to the dining room. No wall of cabinets. So there's some ceiling patching that has to be done. Everything went fairly smoothly. A few wires had to be re-routed. We also decided not to actually finish the process because there will be a few more wiring changes, new recessed lighting, etc, that would actually be a lot easier with big holes in the walls. Here's some shots of the soffit removal process:

The Slow Transition to Stainless

Well, after much stalking of the Denver craigslist, my kitchen conversion to stainless steel is 50% complete. Money-wise, its much more than 50% b/c the fridge and the oven are the two big ticket items. Both of these I bought used, with much deliberation. I insisted on getting a counter-depth fridge which, for no apparent reason, doubles the cost of the new ones. Being "counter-depth" its about 6 inches thinner than a regular one, and my tiny kitchen needed those 6 inches back. And so this week I finally found the stove I want at *almost* the price I wanted. It has a double oven, the smaller one for baking. It did an excellent job on a frozen pizza last night without having to warm up the whole big oven. Now all that's left is the dishwasher and microwave