We haven't forgotten about you!

It's been several weeks since we've done a post, and we apologize for the delay, because, you know, we know you have nothing better to do than read our blog.  :)

Anyway, after our last post, we headed to Ashland, OR for a week for a little vacation.  We had a great time and saw some fantastic plays.  Then it was back at it when we got home.

Chris finished building in the last cabinet, which is the one above the refrigerator.  As he was securing it into the wall, I was the lucky one that got to hold the cabinet above my head.  Um, can we say sore shoulders?!

Here are pictures of the cabinet:

 
 

In the picture to the left, you will see a small slot.  This slot will contain a roll-out shelf to store our "fancy" olive oils and vinegars that we don't use often.

The slits you see running along the top of the cabinet with hold dividers to neatly store cookie sheets.









Now it's time to paint!  The pictures below show Chris and me preparing the cabinets to be painted.  We used a paint sprayer so we had to make sure everything was protected!  The masking took an entire day.

Why do I always manage to end up inside the cabinets?!?

This kind of work is extremely tedious.  You have to goof off a little bit!

A picture of Chanel looking very guilty. 












                                          BLUE TAPE AND PLASTIC EVERYWHERE!!!

                                                      And now the painting begins...

                                                                  Primer first:

And now the finished look!

 

Here's another milestone we know you've been waiting for.  The butcher block counter tops are done and ready to be installed.  They took about six coats of oil to get the perfect look.

Chris is extremely proud of the butcher blocks.  Can you blame him?  They look BEAUTIFUL!  I'm so proud of him!

 

Our next steps are to paint the cabinets doors and install them.  After that, it's more counter tops (installing the laminate portion), back-splash tile, and then floor tile.

Until then....

Charging forward

Thank god that the sheetrock and paint is done.  That is slow work, and can't be rushed, it just take a lot of time for each layer of mud to dry sufficiently to sand and re-coat.  In total it took 4 coats of joint compound, plus texture on the ceiling.  The walls I left smooth and flat with no texture.  I really like the look of smooth walls, and they look right in a 40's era house.  I sprayed a knockdown texture on the ceiling.  This was the first time I've done that.  I've sprayed lighter texture and orange peel several times but never tried knockdown.  The trick is spraying it heavy enough but not to heavy and then waiting until it is half dried, not all the way, then dragging a wide knife across it with very light pressure.  It went pretty good, I would do a few things a little different next time, but the results were acceptable.  We settled on a color for the walls and got it painted, luckily I had some ceiling paint left over from the rest of the house so didn't have to buy that.

Finally on to the fun stuff, wood working.  My friend Geoff (pronounced GOOF by the crew at the firehouse)  came over and we spent a day hanging the upper cabinets.  It took a while to create  a level reference line around the kitchen.  We used this to find the high and low spots in the ceiling and floor to determine the level of countertop and where the upper cabinets need to start.

I then built the bases for bottom cabinets and leveled them around the room.  The next day I was finally able to build the big lazy susan cabinet.  It is so big that it wouldn't fit through the door so I had to wait till now to build it in the kitchen.  It was the first cabinet that had to be set in place, and the ones on either side are set at the same time.  Once that is done the position of the other cabinets in the kitchen is determined, so it's really important to get the first one exactly right.

Today ended with some frustration.  I wired up the under cabinet lights and promptly blew the breaker. It took over an hour of work with the multi-meter to trace down the problem.  It was a miss-labeled wire than ended up on the wrong side of a power transformer which grounded the hot wire.  Of course all the work to find and fix the problem is in the bottom back of the lazy susan cabinet.

Here they are finally working.

Maureen and I are headed to Ashland tomorrow for a few days of R&R.  We've been looking forward to this trip for a long time, but it is coming at a pretty bad time.  Going on vacation with so much work left to do feels a little wrong, but oh well.  It will all get done eventually.