Day 25

We have lower cabinets installed! We also have the granite which will go in tomorrow. It's all moving so fast now. We love it!

Day 24-We have cabinets installed!

I came home from work today to upper cabinets installed! They look awesome! My uncle came out to lend a hand in light of a pending deadline. He will be installing the granite and is leaving town this weekend and we wanted to get the counter top in before rather than after he gets back. He is coming out tomorrow with the granite, they will finish installing the lower cabinets and whatever else they can do!

After my uncle left, Randy and I installed the cabinet doors. Randy also installed the hood for over the range. As I type, he is out purchasing the sink which we need to have so that my uncle can cut out the counter top. We decided on a stainless steel, single, undermount sink.

So, I'm hoping that we will be able to move back into the kitchen this weekend! Yay!

Oh, and I'd like to add that we plan to also paint the dining room the same color as the kitchen, so there won't always be that bold line of color that you see now between the dining room and kitchen.

Days 19-22

We have a kitchen floor AND a new pantry door! Randy was very busy while I was away this weekend! I wanted him to write this since he is the one that did all the work, but I guess he is too tired..can't imagine why?? Randy took Thursday and Friday off work. Thursday he spent installing a new pantry door. Remember the other ugly one? Well, we have a new pretty white door! We still have to paint it and add trim around the door. Randy said he spent Friday cutting the tile. He initially was able to borrow one from someone, but it was too small, so he had to rent one instead. Saturday was spent tiling the kitchen and laundry room and today he did the grout. I was a little hesitant about the grout color choice (even though the color made my list) because I thought it might be a little too light and it would stand out too much. But it looks awesome!!! We are so happy with the look of it.

So this week we have to get our cabinets installed because my Uncle is hopefully coming out this weekend to install the granite countertop. So, now I've got to go pick out a sink. It's all coming together now and I could possibly, hopefully, have a new kitchen in the next 10 days or so. WooHoo!!

I'd also like to take this time to remind you all that we still have a lovely, working white fridge which will not match in our new kitchen. The accountant (BofA) says that we can't afford a new black fridge (which will match), so we are still taking donations to put toward our new, donated, working, black fridge :)

Oh, and did I mention....that Randy has never done any of this before? Um, yeah. He rocks.

Day 17

Wow, I can't believe I've been without a kitchen and laundry facilities for this long. I think it's starting to get a little hard, especially the laundry part.

So, I came home from work today to find that Randy had finished setting all the backer board and screwing it in. He learned not to follow the directions on the bag of thin set and used his "gut". The process was much easier for him today than it was on Sunday. He said it took 4 hours to lay the thin set and screw all the boards in. Might I add, that when I got home from work, not only did he have the kitchen stuff done, but he also had mowed the lawns in the front and back and pulled out a dead tree! Wow!

Then we spent the rest of the evening dry laying the tile to decide on a good pattern. Not so easy but it sure looks pretty! We had to shift it around several times and still haven't found the exact right spot. We decided on a diagonal pattern because, well it looks better! But we then ran into problems transitioning from the kitchen to the laundry room and also around the edges. So we still have some modifying to do, but it definitely feels like it's coming together a bit more.

I probably won't update again until I get back from Oregon on Sunday. Randy plans to set the tile this weekend while me and the dogs are gone.

Day 15

Another productive weekend is behind us. Although, we both did take it a bit easier this weekend. The next step for us is the floor, which we have decided to do next weekend (well, Randy decided) because I will be out of town and can take the dogs with me. I guess you aren't supposed to have anyone/dog walk on the floor for 72 hours. So being gone allows the time to do the floor with out an extra 8 feet in the house.

Anyhoo-over the week Randy cut and laid out the backer board (HardyBacker) so it was ready to go today. He mixed up the thin set, which the first batch turned out to be pretty thick, thin set, despite following directions. We managed to lay the backer board in the laundry room and just a bit into the kitchen before we ran out of thin set. We then had to put screws in it as well, which earned us both some blisters on our hands.

Also did some touch up painting. Last week when the tape was pulled down, it took some of the paint with it. So we had to fix that up as well. Hopefully no more painting!

I included pictures of the kitchen from the usual vantage point as well as a close up of the laundry room floor. Sure doesn't look that exciting, but boy was it a lot of work!

Day 9

I came home from work to find a painted kitchen! Randy put 2 coats on the kitchen and in the laundry room. WooHoo!

I have the hardest time choosing paint color. We chose this color together and even held it up to bright white to make sure it was different enough and it was. But, the color is very light, lighter than I anticipated. You can barely tell a difference from the white ceiling. I included a picture of the corner and you can see a slight variation, but not much. I just hope it's not too bright of a contrast for the rest of the kitchen. But yay! One more step done!

Days 5-8

Well, not much happened during the week as we were just too tired after work to then work on the kitchen.
<----------------is the hardwood floor that Randy did an awesome job at cutting out.

And yes...the picture of the washer and dryer w/the drumset is my current kitchen. But we started working again this past Friday and worked consistently through Sunday evening. We did a lot! Let's see what I can remember...

Friday during the day and into the evening, Randy worked on wall patches, took off some tile, went shopping for some supplies, experimented with wall texture and some other stuff that I'm too tired to remember at the moment.

Saturday we took another trip to Lowe's to get more stuff. We really did a lot of work. Randy finished pulling up the hardwood floors where we are extending the kitchen. We prepped the walls by using joint compound to even everything out. We did lots of sanding, got some drywall patches fixed, some more sanding, scraping and overall prep of the walls. That night we textured the walls. We used a hopper (new word for me-my how my vocabulary is increasing!) and boy did it come out crazy! Now, this was the first time either of us have done it so we had NO basis for comparison, but we think it turned out pretty good. I think our initial thought was to do a knockdown texture, but we ended up with a LOT of product on the wall...so I'm not sure what you would call what we ended up with, but it works! I think we finished up around 10:30 p.m.

Sunday we went out to breakfast because, well um...we don't have a kitchen and cereal is getting old. Then back to Lowe's to get some paint, primer and a sprayer to use for paint. We've never used one of these either, but thought it might be easier..um NOT. Apparently, it was pretty slow in the application. So our lesson we learned was just paint the old fashioned way with the rollers, works much better. We spent the rest of the day priming the walls and ceiling of the kitchen. Then Randy painted the ceiling (2 coats) and the line of demarcation where the cabinets were attached to the ceiling are gone! You'd never even know there were cabinets up there. Then after we were done with that we remembered that we need to still paint the laundry room. So we took down the cabinet and cleaned the walls up. So our walls are primed and ready for paint. Hopefully we will get that done this week sometime.

And now for our current dilemma...our fridge is white and the rest of our appliances are black. The fridge is fairly new and works great...but c'mon...it will not look pretty!! So I've seen on the home shows where the fridge is spray painted but Randy shut that one down. So I think we are on the hunt for a new fridge too and would like to let you know that we are open to donations so that we can buy this fridge...


Fridge