A little kitchen update

I was just showing the kitchen to a friend using the blog and realized just how much more we have accomplished since I last made an update. It is crazy how fast things change without realizing it or I just need to pay attention to this blog more. Maybe I will make myself a little reminder once every couple days to write a new post, we'll see how long that lasts.

We have tile, a few new drawer fronts and doors, a functioning sink(!), installed dishwasher and trash compactor and a fun chalkboard.

Geoff and I laid the tile with help from my brother and father. SO much easier than I ever expected.

We are incredibly happy with how the tile turned out. The picture below is just after we finished grouting so there is a bit of haze going on there, but what a difference. We are so happy with our decision to lay the tile in that direction, it makes the room fell bigger.

Here is  our awesome sink and faucet, we lover the single basin!

I was able to install all the baseboards, and on the right I started building the shelf.

Dishwasher and Trash compacter are installed.

Still have tons left but we will get there one day!  ;-)

Slowing down

We have been working hard trying to get the kitchen finished before moving on to any other projects. We have finished: tile, appliances, cabinets, counter tops, sink and faucet. Now I am working to get the breakfast bar with shelves built.

The shelf has started off with a few issues. I am having a hard time getting my brain back into building mode again. I have felt very defeated the last couple of days because of this shelf, it has been very frustrating. I forced myself to walk away from the project for a few days because I feel like I am trying to rush the project just to get it done. I need to slow down and look it over more.  Luckily, I am forced to stop for a bit until some items I ordered come in. It is probably a good thing, I am now forced to reconsider some of my decisions. I rushed installing the base pipe supports and definitely paid for it. Garrett and I got them installed  fairly quick and I was so excited to have it finished. I placed a random board on it to make sure it was level and this happened...

We forgot about the outlet and did a perfect job of splitting it in two.  I have considered  lowering the shelf (Geoff says no), raising the shelf (I don't really want that) and finally notching out the shelf for access. We will most likely be doing the third option.

While we kill time waiting on the shelf pieces I have been working on other small but important items for the kitchen. I can now focus on the finishing touches that will make the kitchen unique and feel complete. Garrett and I removed the center of one of the old cabinet doors, that way we can have glass cabinet doors for two of the upper cabinets. I am pretty excited to get these done. 

As you can see here, I still need to sand it down a bit and stain the frame to match the cabinetry. Additionally, I need to route out the back for the glass to sit in. I really feel like this will add some character to the kitchen, well at least some visual interest. 

Kitchen update...

Happy New Year!  2014 holy mole I can't believe how fast 2013 went. I swear I just started on this kitchen... O WAIT! that was 2012.. OOPS!

Well yes I am still working on the kitchen but I have made ridiculous progress on it since the last time I posted about the kitchen. (Sorry for the iPhone photos I will get better pictures up when I am done with this project. Hopefully that is soon.)

We completely rearranged the whole layout. Moved the fridge, moved the range over so that it was centered with the window and sink that are across from it, moved the pantry cabinet and added a new appliance. Thanks Joyce Ann for the trash compactor. 

Yes those counter tops are concrete and yes we made them :) They have been awesome so far!

This is where the refrigerator used to live. Now we have the pantry and a little wine cubby that we built.

We moved the drinking cabinets  to the left of the microwave and now you can see where we moved the refrigerator. (Excuse the messy counter tops I am in the process of painting the interior of one of the cabinets.)

I promise that sink is not really going to be blue! that is just the protective cover on it because we have yet to install it.

 There are 2 blank spaces on either side of the sink, the closest one is for the trash compactor and the other is for the dish washer.

I have a bunch more photos to so you but I thought a quick little update would be nice. :)

This weekend we are planning on doing our tile so once that is going I will try to post more pictures! 

Four Day Weekend!

 I am very happy with the progress that we made on the house this weekend. Some of the projects have taken a lot longer to finish than others. The backyard has definitely been a long running project and I am sure it will be for a while. Over our four day weekend we ordered a dumpster and hauled off all the concrete from the backyard. Almost all of the concrete was from last April when we removed the swimming pool. It was a lot of work and thanks to all the help from our family and friends we got it done. The final total tonnage for the dumpster ended up being 9 tons. I can hardly believe that we moved that much concrete into that dumpster but we did.

While Geoff and our friends moved all that concrete, I stayed inside and helped my dad install our newly finished wall cabinets.  I cannot get over how great it is to have storage space again. Here is a picture of the two cabinets that we are using for all of drinking glasses. The plan is to put glass inserts in the cabinet doors and have glass shelves.

Also on the list of projects was a workbench in the garage. We are really bad about randomly throwing tools in places and forgetting where we put them. Having a place for all of our tools is definitely going to be a nice addition. I painted the wall the night before and in the morning we built a frame out of 2x4's and mounted those to the wall studs. For the top we screwed down a piece of OSB. We also mounted a shelving system. We haven't finished it yet and we still need to organize all the tools but its a great start.

The last two things we did this weekend were finally installing the baseboards in the guest bathroom and also adding two shelves to the cubby. We still need to add the actual top to the shelf and paint them white but we can do that another day.

How was your Presidents day weekend? Get any major projects done?

Kitchen Pantry

The pantry in the kitchen took up more space than it gave for storage. It was built with 2x4's and sheet rock which took up about 5 inches on each side that was not usable space.  

It also went all the way to the way to the ceiling which really cut up the room. It made the room darker in there than it should have been. Remedy? Remove it! 

We got all of the sheet rock removed then Garrett had a heck of a time removing the studs.

 After he got all of the structure removed I cracked out the tile from the area. It came up so easy.

We bought some sheet rock and repaired the wall. We bought a pantry cabinet for storage and we love it.  A lot of light is able to pass over the cabinets. We are actually able to fit that pantry cabinet and an 18 inch base cabinet in that space now.

 

Yay for more storage and more counter space! Now I just need to get moving on refinishing those cabinets so we can be done.

Cabinets

Our cabinets have gone through quite a journey. When we bought the house they were white and had seen better days. There were drips in the paint and it was super grimy. 

We really wanted dark cabinets so we decided to paint them dark brown.

After a while we decided we hated the brown paint, we badly wanted wood cabinets. So what did I decide to do? O you know strip off the paint and start over. So I borrowed some leftover paint stripper from Geoff's uncle mike. It was a clear gel with strong fumes. Lucky me, guess what I found? another layer of paint under the white layer.... Yes.. 3 total layers of paint and yes that is pink. Pepto-Pink, White and the dark brown we had painted. This first stripper was crappy and I really gave up the idea of wood cabinets.


This first stripper was crappy and I really gave up the idea of wood cabinets. Then a friend of mine, Angela, from Love can make any house a HOME told me about Citristrip. I bought a big bottle for $20 and its amazing stuff. I have been able to strip 8 doors, 7 drawer fronts and 5 cabinets so far and still have a lot left.

After a few things had been stripped I thought I would just strip them down and paint them a better color, but after all of that work to get the paint off I could not just paint them again!  I was able to get all of the paint out of the grain using a wire brush and some paint stripper. After a lot of work I finally had these two cabinets perfect and ready to stain.

I chose to use Minwax stain in Red Mahogany. I really wanted to try to match our dining table because I love the way that wood looks. I applied 3 coats of stain and 2 coats of satin Polyurethane also from Minwax. Over the weekend I started the staining process and today just applied the second coat of poly. I am going to give them a few more days to completely dry and then start hanging them. 

I am so excited! It is always really fantastic to see all your hard work paying off.

Kitchen Plans

After our last update you now know that we are working on the kitchen. This is a huge project to tackle, so having a plan is really important. We finally made a few important decisions and came up with this plan.

To save money we have decided to use the existing cabinets and rearrange a few to better fit our needs. I have been slowly stripping off layers of paint from all doors, drawers and cabinets.

To add more storage and counter space we found unfinished oak cabinets (which match our cabinets) at home depot for next to nothing. We bought a pantry cabinet, a base cabinet and an upper cabinet to add to the mix.

After a lot of thought and a lot of changes we came up with is kitchen configuration:

Removing the built-in pantry and replacing it with the three new cabinets will add storage, counter space and really open up the kitchen.

Removing the upper cabinets and the over the range microwave will make this space feel more open while maintaining its functionality.

Adding cabinets and counter space to this area will finally bring functionality to a space that currently has none.

 Here is the whole kitchen layout put together, which really makes me want to get this project finished ASAP.

Small update. Big Project.

Here is what I have been working on for a few months now. Just a little preview of what I have been slaving over since July or August of last year.

I have been slowly stripping all the cabinets of three layers of paint. Brown, white and hot pink paint to be exact, Yes the former owner actually had their cabinets painted hot pink at one point..... I don't really know what to say about that...  It has been a tedious task but it seems to be paying off. We plan on staining them a dark red-brown to match the color of our dining table.

We also decided on a new plan to put up floating selves and a range hood. So we took the microwave down with all the cabinets on that wall.

The cabinets look great and I can hardly wait to start staining them, but I think I might get them all stripped and sanded before staining any of them. We will see though I'm already getting anxious to see how they look. These two cabinets might get stained sooner than later so I can get them re-hung. I also think I am going to paint the interior of the cabinets. These two specific cabinets will have glass fronts for our "bar area". I am also thinking of putting a mirror in the back of each one with glass shelves. I think that the mirror would really help brighten the kitchen by reflecting the light from the window.

The House is Comin Along

The kitchen isn't really that clean, except for the floor (thanks mom!), but it looks pretty nice in this pic for some reason.

On Sunday Matt came over and did a good job painting a lot of the trim. This corner is in the kitchen, pretty clean!

Here's the little temporary fridge we finagled. It keeps my water, beer and milk cold so I have no complaints!

Here's Matt finishing painting.

After he painted the trim we decided to put the handle on the front door. We had been needing to drill a hole through the door to install the handle and since you can't really mess that up, we had Matt do it!

Yup, he's actually using a measuring tape. Something I probably would not have done...


It didn't take long before he had the whole thing installed. I'm working on getting the video turned, but for now you'll just have to tilt your head!

On Monday night I decided to try and get my office finished. This entailed painting the rest of the trim, edging the tops and bottoms of the walls and painting the shelving unit. I thought I had taken more pictures of the process but apparently I didnt!

By next update I hope to have the shelving unit finished and the master bathroom finished!

Gettin 'er done!

On Wednesday we took away nastiness and added color!
Geoff priming the breakfast nook ... goodbye Kentucky blue!

and hello ... err .. primer!

After Geoff finished priming Sara got to adding some color in the living room and office ...

and then Geoff put a hole in the wall when he was removing the old towel rack ... and we called it a night.