Kitchen Update

Alright, at long last, here are details of what we've done to the kitchen in the last however long. This post will mainly include pictures...hooray if you hate reading, and boo if you like witty banter :)

We got new floors!

A note on the new floors: we chose to go with Dura-Ceramic. We initially thought we had hardwood under the many layers of carpet, but that turned out to be false. There were a few more slats of hardwood between the kitchen and living room, but not many. We then moved on to tile. We figured we'd tile the kitchen but first put in a radiant heating system so the floors wouldn't be cold in the winter. After some research, we (by "we" I of course mean Andrew) decided those systems are expensive and often heat only a direct area--meaning the heat doesn't spread out over the whole tile. Our neighbor installs floors for a living, and he pointed us to this Dura-Ceramic stuff that looks like tile but is lighter, easier to install and warmer to the touch. Sold!

Andrew installed the recessed lighting and hanging pendants. Still on the hunt for globes...

We started building and placing cabinets. 

Credit for building the cabinets goes to: Brett & Jenna, Aaron and Andrew. Yep, I never touched a one. I don't think. Brett & Jenna built the first one on July 4, after which we decided it would be really fun to bring engaged and married couples over to the house for a rousing game of "Marriage Challenge." The idea would be that each couple had to put together one of our kitchen cabinets, according to the instructions and in a condition acceptable for install. We envisioned a few arguments, some wives walking away from the project, some husbands breaking our cabinets...so we nixed the idea. Then in August, our friend Aaron lived with us for three weeks before his wedding. Most mornings he woke up, ate breakfast, put together a cabinet or two, then headed out. We rarely saw him, but man, those cabinets got done! Andrew put together some with Aaron and did a little on his own.

 Aaron and Andrew determining where the bottom of each upper cabinet would sit. They nailed a board in to keep them all level. The holes will eventually be covered with backsplash, though I forget they're even there.

 The boys building and gluing.

 Two cabinets are up!

Confession: Some of the cabinets may look a bit off to you in the final pics. Or you may have no idea what I'm talking about :) Our cabinets are where they are because our house was built with an interesting structure. Studs are where they shouldn't be and aren't where they should be. Not sure how it happened, but the cabinets had to hang where there were studs for them to be screwed into. Because of this, they are not centered around the window. I've dealt with the issue and moved on. Mostly. At the time I just left the house until the project was done, and I couldn't do anything about it!

 The first countertop delivery came!

 Andrew and Brett checking out the countertops. Unfortunately, they were bowed by a quarter-inch and had to be sent back. Three-ish weeks later we received another delivery.

 New countertops! Andrew installed them alone (I did help...by sitting on them to hold them in place!) He then drew on them with Sharpie (eek!) to mark the cut-out for the sink.

Sink note: So glad we chatted with Brett before ordering the countertops. We were going to order them with the sink hole already cut out. If we had done this, the hole might not have centered up under our window. By doing it ourselves, we were able to get it exactly right. Otherwise we would've been out of luck if the placement was slightly off. Most sinks come with a template to help homeowners do this, but you can also measure the sink and draw it out like Andrew did. The good news is, you can be off by almost half an inch and it's all good since top-mounted sinks have an overhang.

 Cutting the sink hole

 Now that's focus...

 Home stretch!

Empty hole for our new sink!

Now for some after pics. Remember, the kitchen is nowhere near "done." But it is in workable order--minus the fact that our pantry cabinets have yet to be secured to the wall. So our food is crammed in on one shelf per cabinet. And strewn on our counters. 

Also, I debated on whether to clean up the kitchen before taking pictures. I decided that since vulnerability is a good quality, I would just give it to you like it is. Plus, I wouldn't have gotten this post up for another few weeks days if I had taken the time to clean. Andrew brewed beer last night (which is now on the list of things not to do at night/pre-bedtime due to the smell and pregnant wife combo) and he hasn't quite finished cleaning up. I'm being a good wife and leaving it for him when he gets home from work :)

 The fridge/pantry combo. Another cabinet will go above the fridge. 

And yes, Sherpa's ears made it into the pic as well...

 Living room side: the trash can will eventually be in a special cabinet. For now it helps keep Sherpa blocked into the kitchen/mudroom when we leave the house.

 The other side. Those holes in the sink cabinet will have drawers "glued" in place.

The view from the living room. The bar will be in place and barstools will be where the camping chair, microwave/toaster and buckets are. That big box is also used to block Sherpa in the kitchen. We currently have two microwaves--neither of which work 100%. The buckets hold cider that Andrew and his BFF Caleb are making and the beer Andrew brewed last night.

So hopefully that brings everyone up to date! Maybe one day I'll show you the inside of the cabinets...I should probably do that sooner rather than later while they're still organized. My lovely friend Sarah (who is a math teacher and crazy-organized about nearly everything) came over one day to help me fill them up. I still have one empty drawer and two big cabinets with lots of room left! So excited to have double the space of the previous kitchen...maybe even more!

Baking in the remodel

The events of this post happened about two months ago...oh well :)

So two months ago we were in August, and the kitchen remodel was in a similar state as it is now. That seems sad--we are making progress, just had a little hitch that I'll get into in another post. My friend Kristin's birthday was July 31, and my friend Laura's birthday was August 5. (You can read their blog here.) To celebrate, Kristin's husband, Mike, decided to have a little party for the two of them.

One day he handed me the August edition of Rachael Ray's magazine and showed me several fun birthday cake ideas. Kristin liked one in particular, but there were a few others she thought were pretty cool, too. I told him I'd make three of them: one that looked like pancakes, one where the cake is baked inside ice cream cones and one that was a rainbow-colored cake. Each was pretty easy and used a box mix, and two of the three were smaller looking so I figured it would be fun to have options. Now remember, I have no sink in my kitchen and no counters. I did have a working oven, though, so I assured Mike everything would be fine.

Fast forward to August 9, the day before the party. I got a call from Laura's husband, Caleb, asking if I might be able to pick up a cake he ordered from a bakery in Easthampton. At this point, I was unaware that anyone else was bringing dessert. He said it was a cake that he and Laura had tried and loved and that it would feed 20 people. I'm really glad Caleb called me because I knew we wouldn't have 20 people at the party, meaning I didn't need to bake three different cakes in addition to the one he ordered.

On to August 10. I decided to go with the pancake cake since that was the one Kristin really liked. Here is a picture from the magazine of the finished product:

I gathered all of my ingredients together on an IKEA cabinet that we were using in the living room.

You need a yellow cake mix, whatever the cake mix calls for, powdered sugar, water and sprinkles. I then got my set-up ready on the stove. Remember...no counters. (I didn't end up using my big mixer--it was easier to do my hand.)

I melted butter in my pan, had my cake mix ready in the bowl and then got to work. You pour the cake batter in your pan a little at a time the same way you would to make pancakes. Now I like Rachael Ray, but I will say I feel like the recipe lied a little. The cooking time given was about 8-9 minutes on the first side, then a few more on the other. I'm pretty sure I only needed about 2 minutes on the first side, then about 15 seconds on the other. Just cook them like you would pancakes--wait for the bubbles before you flip. It is a little trickier to flip cake batter as opposed to pancake batter, but if you work at it, it is possible I promise! (Andrew benefited from my mistakes, though!) Here are some cooking pics:

Once you make a stack, you can then make the icing drizzle for the top. The recipe said to mix powdered sugar together with water, then drizzle on the stack. I read on another blog that you could also use milk or orange juice. So I headed to the bathroom--my source of water--and made the topping, drizzled it and added sprinkles. Here's the finished cake--the icing doesn't look as thick as the one in the magazine, but it worked!

At this point I got really worried. The cake didn't look so great to me, I thought it would get too soggy since the party was in another hour, on and on. Andrew said it tasted good, but I wasn't convinced. I finished it up anyway and hoped for the best. I broke a wooden skewer in half, cut out a triangle of card stock, wrote happy birthday on the card stock, then taped the flag to the skewer. Voila! Who needs candles?

Turns out, the cake was great and everyone loved it. It definitely took more work than I anticipated--mainly because I was running through my house looking for better spatulas to flip with or trying to find a ladle for the batter, etc. Cooking and baking is definitely harder when your supplies are spread throughout your home.

One last note: The batter lasted me forever. I read on another blog that someone got 9 pancakes out of their batter. I got about 16! I made 7 or 8 for Kristin and Laura's party, then made the rest for Andrew and our house guest, Aaron. I made several of the pancakes, then I think just made a bowl of the icing for them to dip it in.

And, we're back in the game!

The game of dishes that is. Most of you have no idea what I just [mis]quoted, unless your name is Mike Thomas, but it's from one of my favorite movies--Ten Things I Hate About You. Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character kisses Larisa Oleynik's character, she gets out of the car and he says, "And I'm back in the game!" and simultaneously hits the steering wheel for dramatic effect.

I apologize for that brief tangent, but since my last post lacked random humor, I felt it was needed :)

Anywho....our dishwasher works! Let that sink in...

OUR DISHWASHER WORKS!!!

Well, we hope. Our first full cycle has yet to complete. But we're 10 minutes in and no flood yet.

I realize these pictures will show a bit more work than what I've told you about to this point, but the news is so exciting I had to share this first. Expect some more backlogged-work-updates soon.

We woke up Saturday morning with nothing major to do until later in the evening, so Andrew decided to do some plumbing. And plumb he did. My beautiful husband hooked up our dishwasher in only a couple of hours and two trips to the store.

blurry....he caught me taking pictures

All I know is there was something about drilling holes in the floor, hooking up some PEX tubing, the use of teflon tape and voila, it worked! He ran a quick rinse cycle to make sure nothing leaked, then we loaded her up!

Because we don't have our countertops in yet, the dishwasher isn't "built-in" so to speak. When you open the door it becomes top heavy, so Andrew had to hold it while I loaded it. I've never seen dirty dishes look so beautiful.

Even better, free soap included!

And that green light and the minutes on the face mean it's working. Clean dishes minus the bathtub, here we come!!

Weekend Update (minus Tina Fey)

Several steps of our kitchen process were not documented on the blog, so in this post you'll see two steps we took that were not previously documented. Here we go:

Insulation Install


After we tore down the '50s motif wall paneling, we discovered that the current insulation was pretty nasty. We should have expected it I suppose, since our house is old and hasn't been updated in decades. When we pulled it out we found most of it was flat and starting to deteriorate. I'm also pretty sure the pellets I found belonged to a rodent at some point in time. I can't find the pictures I took of the process but here are a couple of the new, fluffy insulation:

This is an interior wall that was previously an exterior wall. We removed the insulation from this wall, and Andrew started work on the electrical. 

Turning a window into a door


When Andrew and I first talked about redoing the kitchen, we couldn't decide what to do with the large window. You can see it in this picture back behind Sherpa.

To the left of this window was the door out to the deck. It and the basement door opened into one another--a small problem but not one that we initially felt we should address.

As we made plans and had the fabulous Rachel Whitehurst draw up plans for us, we talked about maybe putting in a smaller window. That way we could possibly put counters underneath it or put a bookcase or something else. Rachel drew up a plan with the same size window and one with a smaller one. We finally decided to just leave it the way it was.

That was until we were at the Bargain Outlet (where we purchased our beautiful cabinets for $3,000-5,000 less than our other estimates) and saw some sliding glass doors for pretty reasonable prices. We decided to buy one and get rid of the window. The decision also solved the problem of the basement door opening into the deck door--we'd just board up the deck door.

We finally had a sunny afternoon so Andrew and our neighbor Vinnie put in the new door. Andrew started by removing the siding on the outside of the house.

He took out the window and then cut a larger hole in the house.

Then Vinnie got here, and he and Andrew put in our door. They built some supports above the door, too, but I don't remember what they're called :)

Here's a view of the door from the outside:

While we were at it, we replaced the other kitchen window with a newer, more energy efficient window:

We finished up the day by caulking around the new door and window. It's not the first time I've done this, but I'm not fabulous at it as you can see by the gobs of caulk on the floor:

LOVE the smell of paint

 I love the smell of paint. Maybe not all the time, but the paint smell means that something is happening. Something that you can visibly see. I'm talking about progress!

We painted the entire kitchen (minus the mural wall that needed extra attention) pretty quickly. I picked out the color on the 4th of July, and we started priming the walls that day, too. I mentioned earlier that I wanted to use textured paint because the mural wall might need some cover-up, as well as the fact that I just wanted to use something new. It's basically sand added to paint, but I'm not confident enough to try that on my own.

Jenna helped me pick out this great blue color that really looks amazing now that it's all done. I think we did about a coat and a half one afternoon because the stuff dries pretty quickly, which is nice. I followed up the next day with another coat. Here are a few before and afters:

 infamous mural wall

drywall-ed room

no more mural wall! (don't worry about that white spot...2/3 of the wall will be covered with cabinets and a refrigerator)

Yay for painted walls! (again, no worries on the white spots...we just decided to work smarter!)