Lazy Night Off

Ok, so after getting excited about moving forward, by the time we had gotten home from work and had dinner, I really didn't feel like painting. So instead I sat and watched The Biggest Loser. I had been given advanced notice that the contestants were going to be using one of the products I sell in their challenge, and wanted to see it in action. If you watched, the pedaling kayaks that they used to get from the boat to shore before they climbed "the mountain" were Hobie kayaks. So that was kind of fun. After that show, we watched a couple of old episodes of The Office, followed by Grey's Anatomy. So nothing happened on the kitchen. It's ok, though, because I learned that the missing cabinets won't be here until at least this weekend, so it'll be more hurry up and wait.

Tonight, though, we ARE going to prime the walls.

Time for painting!

Now that the construction work in the kitchen is finished, we are able to do the final prep work on the walls and ceiling. Joe patched some of the holes and rough spots in the plaster Sunday night, so we sanded everything down last night, added a second patch to spots that needed some additional attention, and painted the ceiling! It's so hard to see where the paint is applying evenly, even with tinted ceiling paint (which we both love, by the way - it goes on pink and dries white, so you can see where you've painted!). Tonight we'll do a final sanding on the walls, wipe them clean, and prime the walls.

We're keeping our fingers crossed that the few extra cabinets we had to order will show up in the next day or two. That way, we'll paint the walls and trim tomorrow and hang cabinets on Thursday and Friday! We're still deciding what type of countertop we want... but we have a couple of days, since no one will make them without taking a template of the installed cabinets. We won't have counters for at least another 1-2 weeks, but we'll be able to load everything back into the kitchen this weekend, if all goes well. Between our new kitchen table that I picked up yesterday and our dining room table, we might actually be able to cook this weekend!

I'll take pictures after everything's primed and looks fresh, so tomorrow you'll be able to see the kitchen finally coming together and looking better, not worse!

Renovation Messes

Joe and I are learning first hand how much the rest of the house suffers when doing a major renovation project! Things have been like this since we got home from St. Louis over Christmas. We don't have that much extra space, so every spare inch is covered in appliances, things we don't want to store downstairs in the basement, and all of our new kitchen cabinets!

Even the spare bedroom is full of cabinets and all of our dishes!

I can't wait for this project to be over, and actual be able to clean again!

Bringing in the Professionals

What's that, you might ask? Oh, that's just the hole in the attic floor, that goes directly to the kitchen below! The contractor's employee started tearing out the soffit today, which on the garage side of the house, is not exactly finished. When you're standing in the kitchen and look up, you can see through to the roof joists in the attic!
This is a picture from the kitchen looking up. The gold part is the bottom of the soffit, and the gray is vertical across from the actual wall. Since the wall space behind wasn't finished, that's the attic through the hole!
It's a good thing we're not paying by the hour. This is about all the guy got finished today, along with poking about a dozen holes in the soffit on the other side of the kitchen (as shown in the few pictures above). Hopefully tomorrow he'll get the rest of the soffit down and the wall sheetrocked, as the low tonight is supposed to be 19 degrees, and we have all that cold air in the attic pouring into the kitchen!

Slow Progress

So it's become apparent the kitchen definitely won't be finished this weekend. Since Tuesday, Joe's uncle John and aunt Julie came over, and John helped Joe determine a plan for doing all of the electrical work. That, along with buying some supplies, took up most of Tuesday night. Last night we went out for dinner. After splitting a pitcher of Ponak's margaritas, which are by far the best in KC (and really dangerous!) we opted to head home and watch a movie. In bed. We were asleep by 10:30! So much for celebrating the new year in style! I guess 7 hours of driving from KC to St. Louis and back again in 1 day was just too much.

Joe was getting a little nervous about doing the finishing work on all of the plaster in the kitchen, since neither of us have done any of that. We called our favorite contractor, who kindly enough came over this afternoon. Apparently luck was on our side, as his business has been really slow, and Joe was in the middle of re-wiring an outlet when the contractor showed up. Anxious to not have to fix any more of Joe's work :), the contractor managed to give us a very good and fair price on not only taking the soffit out, repairing the ceiling and finishing the trim work around the two doors that Joe had torn out, but also adding 5 recessed lights in the ceiling, running the electrical for the microwave, cabinet lights and ceiling lights, touching up the holes in the plaster (that will be hidden behind the cabinets when those are installed) and hauling away our extra demolition trash! Essentially, his crew starts work Monday and will probably be finished by Wednesday or Thursday, and the room will be ready for us to paint. I still have some prep work to do on the walls, but since I will be working a boat show all next week, I'm glad to know that the kitchen will be getting closer to completion while I'm not able to do the work.

This afternoon we also headed to Nebraska Furniture Mart, which is quite possibly the largest furniture/appliance/electronics store in the country. It's absolutely enormous. The store also price matches everyone and is constantly running sales. We were able to get our new microwave and counter height kitchen table with chairs there, which we'll pick up a week from Monday. Our new goal is that the cabinets will be installed next Saturday, so we can finish the room on Sunday! Here's hoping nothing goes wrong that keeps us from finishing the room in another 10 days!

New Floors are In!

The floors are installed! We had to estimate where the base cabinets will go, but since they're on feet we wanted the floors to extend to most of the way around the walls. It's a night and day difference over what we had before!

Our new(er) pantry space with a complete floor! I think I'm more excited about this space than anything else!

Next up - electrical tonight, framing the doorway to the pantry and patching plaster. Oh yeah, and we also need to take the sofit down. We're hoping to be able to work on the walls on Thursday and Friday, so we can hang cabinets this weekend!

Demolition Pictures

As promised, here is the before picture of our kitchen (which is really a "during" picture, as the stove and fridge are out of the room, and the floor has been torn up.

Pantry in the hallway. The pantry space had been added in the past, but the doorway was only 11 inches wide! We are opening the wall and changing the layout of the space to be much more effective.

Me scraping wallpaper glue off the walls. We discovered after removing the first cabinet that the gray paint on the walls was actually covering a layer of wallpaper below. We're taking that all off, patching rough spots in the plaster, and will then prep the walls for paint in a few days.

Bottom cabinets totally removed! There are some fairly large gaps in where the subfloor doesn't meet the walls, so we will be filling all of those spaces in. Hopefully we'll fix that mouse problem once and for all! (wishful thinking, I know!)

Our new kitchen in the back of the car. I actually had to remove about 6 boxes to be able to take this picture. All of the kitchen cabinets, light fixtures, drawer pulls, faucet, even the kitchen sink are inside!

A little backwards, but this is our kitchen floor during demo. The white with black was peel and stick vinyl tiles, on top of a cardboard layer, on top of those lovely red and brown clay tiles. You're seeing the tar residue on top of the subfloor, which was all that was left from the tiles.