Details, details

Whoops--got a little busy yesterday. Sorry if I left anybody hanging.

Even though the cabinets were "done" at this point, there are so many odds and ends that have to come together at the end. But this was certainly a happy day....the granite countertops came! And get this, somebody else did all the work!!!


That was pure excitement for sure. Keith said he now knows what it's like to be me...having all the work magically done while I'm busy playing with the kids or running errands to Lowe's. I have to admit, it is pretty nice to be me. :)

But come on!! Look at me! I still worked like a fool!! You wouldn't believe how many disposable brushes we went through. We still had lots of work with the trim around the cabinets, the crown molding, and the window trim. And I loved how the can of polyurethane said that the product was known to cause birth defects in the state of California. THANK GOODNESS I don't live in California, right??


Next up, backsplash tile (we used tumbled marble). This was a really fun day. One Saturday Keith said he wasn't going to bed until the tile was done.

I really hate that he said that.

We ended up going to bed at 4 am.

The range hood gets installed...


And the stove! Oh, the stove!!! I can't wait to take the little butane cooktop I've been using for three months, tie it to a big rock, and throw it out in the lake.

Sadly, as of today, I'm still using the stupid one burner cooktop. The stove was missing a couple of little parts to convert the stove to the right type of gas we use. But the parts just came in the mail so I know what Keith will be doing when he gets home!! (Love ya, Keith!)

Even after all this progress, we still can't seem to get out from the mess! The cabinet drawers are getting their cherry fronts, the doors need some minor adjustments and, of course, more sanding and freaking polyurethane.


Keith's about to lose it, black licorice and all. So am I. Get this project over with!!!


Tomorrow: THE BIG REVEAL!!!!

Eating sawdust and other thrills

I can't even describe the amount of dust that this project has created. (cough, cough) It's unhealthy, I'm sure.

Building the doors happened much like the drawers. Keith prepped, measured, cut, routed, and sanded a lot of wood for a while before he began gluing everything up. However, the doors didn't come together in a single afternoon assembly line like the drawers did. Doors have to get glued and set in clamps for a couple hours each, one at a time. Keith spent about a week getting up early and putting a door on the clamps before work, then putting on another when he got home from work, then another right before bed, until we ended up with a big stack of doors.

Then the sanding began. (cough, cough) This had been a past time of ours for quite a while....


Finally, after burning through insane amounts of sandpaper, we moved the operation back inside.

Putting the finish on the doors was also a long process. At night after putting the kids to bed, we would pull out the brushes and get to work. I have to admit, I kinda enjoyed the quiet house and our late night discussions over a gallon of polyurethane and foam brushes. We probably inhaled way too many fumes. The next day, the doors would be dry and we'd flip them over and do the same thing on the other side. The day after that, a light sanding on one side and another coat at night. And again, sanding and a second coat on the other side the next night. You get the picture. It took a full week to get finish on both sides of the doors. The drawers were the same process, just no pictures to prove it.

Finally, Keith starts putting it together.






A small victory!! (Keith is my hero, by the way.)

And if you know Keith at all, you know he hardly paused to rest before picking up the tools and moving right along. The crown molding...



Tomorrow: Finish work.

I'm getting close to the reveal, I promise!

Life in the Mess. And Drawers.

The worst, I mean WORST part about remodeling a kitchen is the fact that the rest of your house seems to vomit all over the place. Nothing stays clean. Nothing has a place anymore. Somehow, you still have to make dinner, clean dishes, and have a shelf to put your cold cereal. If you're not a fan of trying to figure out what to make for dinner, try doing it without a stove or a dishwasher.

Thank goodness for crockpots. We also pulled out our single burner butane stove from the old camping/emergency pile and had that come to our rescue quite often. My compulsive recycling habit came to a screeching halt as I practically filled a garbage bag daily with paper plates, cups, plasticware, and packaging from whatever dinner in a box. Yuck.

You really just CAN'T live without a kitchen, the same way you can't live without a toilet. Food has to go down your gullet a couple of times a day, if only to kill the pain. So, we cleared all the furniture out of the adjacent living room (so that it could vomit all over upstairs...see what I mean?) saved a couple of the old cabinets,
rolled the fridge into an open spot and made a temporary kitchen in the corner. It was ugly. It was constantly covered in dust and really, just gross. With no sink 2 steps away, and sippy cups suddenly off limits since I couldn't spend all day washing them in the bathroom sink, all the spills from my 2-year old just seemed constant.

This became our new kitchen/living space...



On one particularly noisy, dusty day, we even got kicked out of the living room corner and ended up having a waffle picnic on our bedroom floor. Notice the microwave sitting in the box on the bench. More kitchen vomit. You can't hide from it.


So, the drawers. Keith did a lot of prep work to get all the pieces measured and cut so they could all be done in an assembly line. Keith with a measuring tape=mad skillz.


One box down.



Making his list and checking it twice.




That's a stinkin lot of drawers. And those babies are deep! Keith knew they had to swallow up an awful lot of kitchen vomit. And I'll tell you right now, thank goodness they do!

Tomorrow: More of this disaster. (Is the suspense killing you?)

The mess. And a bit of progress.

Unless you have built your own kitchen cabinets, you can have no idea how messy it is. Somehow I don't remember it being this bad in our last two kitchen remodels. (Yes, we've done this twice before....we hate ourselves and like to suffer.) Although, last time was 6 years ago. Back then, we didn't have kids, and I worked and traveled a lot. Plus we had a better set up for a cabinet shop. Our garage and basement in our last house seemed to get everything out of the way better. Or maybe I'm just more annoyed with it all this time around.

Keith spent days and days trimming and planing a big pile of rough cherry boards. Talk about frustrating. All that work and only a big mess to deal with. It felt like there was no progress on the cabinets for a while because of all the prep work required on the wood.


What to do with this mountain of planer shavings? Bennett and Leah became work horses with those little buckets for a week.

They filled a bucket one at a time and took it out to the trees to spread it around. It took some coaxing. Actually, it took a full-on bribe.


Bennett got to pick out a new toy racetrack after all that child labor.

But there was some progress eventually. The island got the first makeover.




The island is ready for a granite counter top. But there's a lot more to do before that comes. At least the fridge and stove fit--but only for a quick measurement and to give ourselves a little vision of the future.

Next: Building the drawers.

Putting it back together

So after we ripped out everything, it was time to start over. Ground zero, baby.

The first pic was probably taken on Christmas Eve. Right about this time, the kids and I left the mess behind and took off to enjoy the holiday in Utah using the tickets we had bought waaaay back in August.

Keith, on the other hand, stayed home to suffer. Not on purpose, mind you. We had planned on doing this part of the project during the Thanksgiving break. Then 2 unexpected funerals took us out of town that week and basically blew all the free time Keith had for the next month. The only way we could ever get this project done is if Keith used his time off to stay behind for Christmas.

Worst. Christmas. Ever. Not even gonna talk about it.










And that, my friends, is the humble beginnings of kitchen cabinetry.

Keith's bad dream

The kitchen. It was bad. It was a three month long nightmare.

AND NOW IT"S OVER!!!!!!!

The kitchen is now finished and open for business. Keith is AMAZING and so incredibly talented. I pretty much sat back and watched it all happen (while I ate bon-bons with the kids and watched my belly grow) so all the props go to Keith. I can't say enough how awesome he is!!!

I've been asked by loads of people for pictures. But I can't just show you the finished product so easily. That would give an unfair view that it was somehow easy or happened quickly. So, in an effort to make you feel a little ounce of our pain, I'm going to take you through this process with us in pictures. Just a little every day. And, just so you know, it really sucked.

The kitchen: BEFORE

Isn't it ugly?

Please note the forest green bathroom wall tile countertops. And that sweet wallpaper border.


Getting that crap out....





The floors also had to come up because the awesome carpenters that laid it didn't put in an expansion gap. So, over time the floors had buckled a bit right in the middle of the kitchen. But, it's really nice flooring so we ripped it out and relaid it right.


Tomorrow....more pain.

Random ramblings

What? I didn't say I was going to take a month's vacation from blogging? Yeah, well, I forgot to. But vacation I did.

We really did take a two week trip to Utah over Christmas. At least, the kids and I did. And if my camera battery hadn't died an ugly death after I got home, I would have loaded all the adorable bleary-eyed, pajama wearing, toy crazed, wrapping paper disaster, super fun pictures as evidence. But, there's that no battery thing. So you'll just have to believe me. Christmas was fun.

Bennett had been begging for new legos for Christmas. Of course, he was super excited to get a box of legos under the Christmas tree! Once he realized that Santa really does come through, he promptly had me help him write a new letter for Santa for NEXT year:

Dear Santa:

Thanks for what I got for the first Christmas. I want a lift and dump truck for next Christmas. Next I want a brand new turbo train. It's electric. I want a brand new super duper spy mask to wear with my spy binoculars. And spy pants and a spy shirt. I'm trying to be good.

Love, Bennett

Maybe Santa needs to be a little less reliable....

Leah, on the other hand, was in doll heaven. She got a new doll for her birthday and got a doll stroller and doll stuff for Christmas. She's such a good mommy to her baby. They take naps together, she shoves food in its mouth, puts diapers on it, smothers it in blankets... Everything a good mother would do--with just a little extra force. That's two-year old love for you.

While in Utah we had tons of fun playing with cousins, aunts and uncles, and grandma and grandpa. Keith, in the meantime, was busy working on our kitchen disaster. I'll post about that soon. I'll just say that it's definitely coming along. And it's going to be AWESOME. But for now it's AWFUL. And I'll also say that Keith is AMAZING. And since I'm capitalizing words that start with an a, AICHMORHABDOPHOBIA.

Let me think....what else has been going on in our lives......

Oh yeah, there's this:



May 22. And we are having a surprise! Since we already have a boy and a girl, what difference would it make if we knew the gender in advance? So, we are going old school and are enjoying the mystery of it all. Bennett and Leah are beyond excited. They talk about the baby all the time and are always fascinated by my baby bump. This morning Bennett and Leah went downstairs with Keith and as they were leaving Bennett came back to tell me that my baby would keep me company so I wouldn't be alone. So cute. :)

Any guesses on the gender?