Kitchen Pictures

Remember that whole story about the kitchen island not being finished?!

Well today I put the final touches on. The counter top finally came in and we put it on the base cabinet. But then the weather conspired against us and we had to wait all winter for decent weather to paint the cabinet. We FINALLY got that painted and I ran into a couple of other snags.

The contact paper in the cabinet was ages old. Picture gold and cream from the 60s. But because it was so old, it was stuck to the cabinet. It was acting glued on. So I needed a thick or dark enough contact paper to put over it so it wouldn't show through. That took some searching. But I finally found a thick white and tan paper that worked. Custom cutting and muttering later, I had a pretty inside. New hinges and door stops were put on and then we started looking for knobs.

I liked the old fashioned design of the old knobs. But the color wasn't right. I like pulling tiny pieces from the old design to incorporate into the new things we've done. So after looking EVERYWHERE for new knobs that I liked, I broke down and bought paint for the old ones.

And I LOVE the look. So here is my new kitchen completely finished.

We absolutely love this island. It's on casters so I can roll it around or move it completely out of the way. We also have two more chairs that we pull in for supper, but they are tucked away in the dining room when we aren't using them. 

My kitchen is a dream. It was a nightmare getting here, 

but I'm so thankful to finally have my dream kitchen. 

And my fight to keep the weight down attests to the food coming out of this dream kitchen. =)

You might remember this little guy as a candle in one of my older posts. But when the candle was gone, I couldn't bring myself to throw him away. So he became a planter for a succulent.

It's Finished

Well in all honesty, it's been finished for a little while. But I've been slow taking pictures and even slower getting them onto my blog. But it's finally ALL finished and so without further ado ~

My new kitchen!

 The pictures aren't lying. This kitchen is huge!

 

 I love having my microwave off the counter. It was worth it to opt out of having a second oven so that we could get rid of the old microwave.

 Look at all of that counter space and that gorgeous tile. I'm in love!

 These sinks are seriously deep.

 I have a dishwasher! Haven't had one in over four years. I know I kept saying that I would be happy if I could get a new oven and could honestly live forever without a dishwasher. And while that is true, I'm not complaining one tiny bit about having one.

The previous pictures were right after it was finished. These next few are after it's been used for a little bit. Curtains, small appliances, etc. add a more lived in look.

 This cookie jar belonged to my grandmother years ago. I think of her every time I look at it.

 My mother-in-law bought this little candle for me. Isn't he precious?!

There is one small large piece missing. Our island. After a lot of looking and discussing, we decided to use one of the old kitchen cabinets for our new island. We have totally changed this house from top to bottom. Once we finish the outside the lady who owned it wouldn't even recognize her old place. So I like keeping small elements of the old home to remind us of what it use to be. So we took the knobs and handles off the doors and sanded it down. And then we haven't had a day since that has reached the right temperature to paint it. So it sits all ugly and bare in my kitchen until the weather warms up. We also ordered a really nice piece of butcher block to replace the ugly Formica counter top that was on it. Naturally I picked one that was out of stock and would take at least 2 months to reach us. Those two months ended the end of December. Still no word on when it will arrive. So those pictures will come at a later date.

Getting closer!

I've been so incredibly busy that my updates have been non-existent. So here are a few kitchen updates.

We took down all of the paneling and replaced it with drywall.

 I had to paint the ceilings in most of the house.

 I somehow failed to get a picture of the other layers of flooring. But then most of you probably don't care. =)

I finally settled on a textured, grey, rectangle tile. It was special order, but it only took about a week to come in. Because the tiles are so large, it was faster to put down. So that was a plus.

I was almost giddy this morning because the cabinet guys arrived to install our cabinets. But almost immediately they ran into problems. I had ordered 42" cabinets and 36" were sitting in my kitchen. The lady I had worked with the entire time was no longer working there and there had been a major break down in communication. So after about 45 minutes of discussion I opted to go with 36" instead of waiting 4 more weeks for new cabinets to be ordered. I might have hid in the bedroom and cried a bit. I was so frazzled that by 11am I left the guys there and ran away from home.

I returned to find a lot less finished then they'd told me would be done. Turns out none of the instructions (where/what extras I wanted) were written on the paper so they were winging it, but ran into a snag. Long story short, they are coming back tomorrow. I think we've fixed any issues that might come up. But at this rate, I'm not holding my breath. Wednesday they will come in to measure for the counter top and sink. Then I wait another week or two for that.

 On a side note - they couldn't get the tall pieces into the house without lifting them over the porch railings. So I told them they could remove it since we would be doing that in the next month or so. They were quite happy to save themselves the extra work of lifting up those solid wood cabinets. And I was happy to have another step taken out of the way in our next renovation project.

 Jon is in Chattanooga tonight and I'll be down there tomorrow. We finished one townhouse only to start another one. But hopefully this one will be the last for a while. In the mean time we are juggling a way too many balls. And dealing with way too much stress.

Demo has begun!

We are still working on the townhouse in Chattanooga, but this past weekend was Dominic's birthday. (I wrote this last week, but didn't get a chance to post until now.) And he requested that we stay at home. Since his cousin was coming up we knew he wouldn't be hanging out with us all day. So we asked if he minded us starting on the kitchen demo. 

We haven't finished the demo yet. Jon is back in Chattanooga tonight and it looks like we'll be spending at least one, maybe two more weekends down there before it's finished. But we are ready for our house to be back to normal. So we are working on it every few seconds we have to spare.

When we put down the flooring in the house a couple of years ago we put it in the kitchen as well. But we knew when we redid the kitchen we would change it to tile. So we removed that and the two layers of vinyl.
The floors underneath the two layers of vinyl was particle board. Not a good choice for a kitchen. So we removed that as well. 

 

 My desk is outside on the patio getting a coat of paint. The refrigerator is in my living room. Most of our things are in boxes. It makes for a crazy living area. But it will be totally worth it when it's finished.

I desperately needed something to put in my make shift kitchen for our food and dishes (paper plates). So I had Jon move a couple of the cabinets into the dining room. It's actually working out really well. We took the leaf out of the table to make more room. It's not like we are going to be entertaining. =)

This gave us the idea of using the bottom section for my island. Not sure if it will work. It will need a new top, new hardware, and some serious painting. But it could work, so I'm going to try.

I'll post more pictures later, but we have the entire kitchen gutted and are going to pick out my floor tile today. I thought I had it picked out. But I was at a Lowe's near our townhouses and fell in love with something different. Since it was over $6 a square foot, I'm going to try to find something similar, but a bit cheaper.

Crazy House

A couple of weeks ago Jon and I were talking about our lovely old home. We have slowly, but surely fixed most of the main things. We only have the kitchen renovation and the roof left. There are quite a few things that we would like to add eventually, but these are the two current needs.

A few days after this conversation we are rudely awakened at 4am to a shrieking alarm. It was the carbon monoxide detector. I learned something new that morning. There are two levels of alarm. One indicator means call 911 and get out immediately. The second indicator means that the levels are high, but not completely toxic. So open all of the windows until the alarm goes off and fix problem. Thankfully it was the 2nd indicator. So we opened all of the windows to let the 30 degree air inside. While Jon was opening windows, I was covering the kids with blankets. The entire time the alarm was screaming.

Jon turned the heat off and then left the next morning on a business trip. I was able to get the heating people out very quickly. It is amazing what mentioning that alarm will do for the back up in service calls.

The guy that came out tested the unit first and tested inside for lingering carbon monoxide. He made me leave immediately until he could get the levels down. It was apparently dangerously high. After some poking and muttering, he informed me that my unit was completely toast. It was so rusted that he couldn't believe we hadn't had problems w/ our alarm before. It was also so incredibly old that they hadn't made that type in years and years.

I agreed to pay a huge chunk of change and he left after making sure the levels were safe again.

He was gracious enough to leave me a box of space heaters to use until the unit could be delivered and put in the next morning.

We are now the proud reluctant owners of a very new metal box. We've already noticed a difference in how quickly our home heats. So can we NOW say that we are almost done? Surely there isn't anything else that needs to be replaced in this old house. Because I'm ready for a new kitchen.

Photo A Day Challenge Day 30

Handwriting

My husband's handwriting on the paper we were using to research new refrigerators.

Our refrigerator is dying. I mentioned this in a previous post. Apparently an entire day was not enough to melt the ice that had encased almost the entire inside of the refrigerator. Jon gets a discount on appliances through his work. But it will be almost 3 weeks before the fridge would be delivered. 

We could pay hundreds more and get one locally, but then we'd also have to pay taxes and go pick it up. So my dear sweet husband is trying to thaw it out so we can limp by until the new one gets here.

Because we are both just too stingy frugal to pay that much more for the same machine that will be delivered to our kitchen in a few weeks.

Bathroom renovation pictures

Jon and I have almost finished the bathroom. We are trying to find some trim to match the rest of the house. Which is proving to be a bit difficult. We are also waiting on some caulk that is special order. And I need to paint the trim that we put back. But otherwise we have finished our bathroom renovation. We moved in a couple of weeks ago, but then almost immediately went to camp meeting.

Remember this bathroom?

 Don't forget the lovely pink tub, toilet and sinks.

 

Ignore the bad lighting, please. The color is a pale blue with a slight hint of green.

 The counter tops are solid surface, because I don't like granite.

 Our previous tub was tiny. So when I saw this one I had to have it.

We bought the curtain rod specifically to match the shape of the tub.

 I love all of the brushed nickle finishes.

Although I'd probably like anything that wasn't pink or gold. =)

We liked the shape and size of the vanity, just not the color. So we Jon spray painted it white and we changed out the hardware. We also used the same mirror. I had plans to find another one, but this one is fine and I like how large it is. It makes the room seem larger.

Accidental reno

Several months ago I bumped the lovely pink soap holder in the bathtub and it shattered. So Jon caulked around a piece of metal as a very temporary measure until we could gut the bathroom.

Enter one small child who loves to pull things and Jon was in the bathroom this morning removing the metal to replace the caulk. Small problem. Several pieces of our beautiful plastic tile came off with it. And when they came off we noticed black mold behind them.

So after a conversation about the family's allergies we decided to gut the bathroom - today.

The small hole was where the soap holder was.

The larger hole is where the extra tiles came off when he pulled the metal.

  Metal piece that Dominic peeled the calk from and some of the tiles that came off with it.

We found even more mold when we tore off the tiles around the faucet.

Gross!!!

It certainly wasn't in the plans. I was going to clean the house for company coming (Yikes! In two days), go running, and work on my book reviews. Not one of those things happened. 

Instead, this happened -

I'll post more pictures later. Just wanted to let everyone know about my dusty day. =)

Photo Challenge Day 11

Door

It would appear that I'm running a day behind. Sigh! I am feeling a bit overwhelmed with everything that needs to be done. This door is one of them. We have a ton of pocket doors in our house and I pulled this one open yesterday and realized that I never finished painting it. Another sigh! I guess it's going to have to go on the list, because I just don't have time right now to worry about a half painted door.

Progress

The floor saga continued. After quite a bit of frustration on our part and complete disorganization and incompetence on Lowe's part we received the call that our flooring was in. I was ecstatic. We arrive to learn that only a portion of the flooring has arrived. They were going contact the warehouse to find out where the rest is. In other words, they either ordered wrong or lost our floor. So we headed home with some of the floor. It had to sit in the house for a week to acclimate to the indoor climate. So these last two weeks, after many interruptions, Jon finally finished putting the floor down in our bedroom, living room, kitchen and main bathroom. I was SO excited to finally be sleeping in my own bedroom again. Guests can now come in the front door like normal people. =)

I've also included some of the pictures from when we replaced the paneling in the living room since I didn't post any after pictures.

Jon removing the paneling.
(Someone actually came and picked this stuff up to use in their bedroom. Crazy people!)

We put extra electrical outlets in while we had the walls down.

 
Jon had put up the sheetrock and was mudding the walls.


He had quite a bit of help.
 
 Isn't it amazing how light the walls appear?!

 Then I painted and we moved the furniture back in so that we could live at least semi-normally until the floors arrived. When the first load came in Jon started working in the bedroom so we could get our bed out of the library. He had some help here as well.

The finished product in the bedroom.

The living room and kitchen. Notice the rags under all of the furniture? We don't want to scratch the floor. So this is a temporary fix until we can get pads for underneath.


The bathroom. Also notice that the toilet is no longer pink. I convinced Jon to replace it with one of those all one piece things. It's so much easier to clean. And it's not pink. =)

The hallway

Most of these rooms still need work done - paint touch ups, trim put back down, curtains and pictures re-hung, etc. But the major work has been done. And it's so nice to not have to deal with the carpet anymore. My allergies are already better.