Michelle and I left her kitchen today and went shopping. It was quite a productive outing that culminated at Crate and Barrel. I cannot express the depth of my love for C&B. It’s one of those places that makes me want stuff. I resisted many of my urges to drop lots of cash, but I still made out pretty well. I got juice glasses to match my big glasses and some mini ramekins. Michelle bought these for me, allegedly as a trade for the sweater I got her with some leftover gift cards I was never going to use, but I think I got the better end of that deal. I also got a new bamboo cutting board to replace my seriously warped and breaking apart IKEA cutting boards that are several years old. The least necessary of the purchases was two mini Parker Bowls (haha) in the same color green as my kitchen. They will look nice in the cabinets and will make excellent ice cream bowls.
Some day, I’ll give myself a few hundred dollars to go there and spend on things I don’t really need, but that I would use and that would make good upgrades to my kitchen. In the meantime, I think I’ve done pretty well today.
The last 2 days have been very productive. Almost all the cabinets have been placed. Tom started leveling them today while Jen and I continued to work on drywall. So far, very few hiccups or surprises. The big test will come when we install the oven cabinet and fridge later this week. Its a tight fit and I hope everything goes smoothly.
Major kudos to my darling brother who has infinitely more patience than me as he leveled all those cabinets today. He was very methodical about it and they are coming together really well.
Here are pictures. That’s my niece Emmy peeking out from behind the fridge, and their two golden retrievers Wrigley and Crystal wandering through the kitchen.
As I said yesterday, I am helping my brother TOM and SIL Michelle with their kitchen renovation. They keep trying to bet me about whose kitchen will be finished first - theirs or mine - even though I started last May. I won’t take that bet. I have no doubt they will finish first because Cabinet Guy obviously cannot be trusted to deliver within the next couple months.
I yanked out cabinets with them yesterday, and taped, spackled, and sanded yesterday and today. Here are some photos.
This is what the kitchen looked like when they bought it 2 summers ago. Check out that border!
And here it is after the demo. In the second picture you can see the work on the drywall that my Mom and I did. Note that this drywall is where the closet was in the second picture above. They ripped out that closet and built a new one that bumped out into the garage. It really opened up the eating area. There’s also a new light fixture over the place the sink was. The third picture shows the soffit that Tom built out to accommodate the new configuration. We taped and spackled that today, too.
And finally, here it is with the cabinets that they hung today while I was sanding.
I have many holiday related posts upcoming, but there are two things worth mentioning before bed tonight. Both are about kitchens.
1) My darling brother TOM and sister-in-law Michelle got me this amazing present for Christmas:
I’m not sure if I mentioned it at the time, but when I laid out my kitchen, I added a base cabinet designed to have a Kitchenaid Mixer on it. I didn’t have the mixer, but I knew I’d get one eventually. Now, I have one and it’s fabulous. I’m already planning to make all kind of great things for it.
2) As thanks for the mixer AND for the trips Tom and Michelle both took to help me work on my house (and because I’m such a great sister), I am helping them with their kitchen renovation this week. We removed cabinets, taped and spackled drywall today. Tomorrow, we do more with the new walls and new cabinets come. Since Michelle doesn’t have a blog of her own, I will blog her kitchen renovation since it will be quite fabulous and because I’ll be working on it instead of my own house for now.
It turns out I’m not as close to done with Cabinet Guy as I thought.
So I have a cabinet with pull out shelves. This shipped incorrectly. They shipped it without the shelves and with a divider between the doors. The divider had to come out so the shelves could go in and that left an annoying gap. I thought the new doors would cover the gap. While it’s smaller, it’s still there. Cabinet Guy said that Contractor Sal should use some of the replacement panel to make a small panel to fill this gap. It would go behind one door and cover the space, and the other door would close over it.
While hacky, that solution was fine until I looked at it today and realized it wouldn’t work. The pull out shelves are flush to the front of the cabinet, so when the door closes, it basically touches the shelves. If I put a panel behind one door, it will hit the shelves. Since these panels are 1/4″ thick, it will look very bad because the doors won’t be able to close. The only solution I can see is to get a new set of doors where the panel is set in. They would have to cut out part of the doors and set the panel in that part.
This means I need another set of replacement doors. That means months more of Cabinet Guy.
Problem 2: I had three pieces of top molding left to be installed. After Cabinet Guy switched out the doors at the end of October, I only had 2. I suspect he may have accidentally taken one with him. He started to take all my old doors until I informed him that unless he wasn’t charging me for the replacements, he had no right to the old ones. They brought them back in, but I bet they took the molding with that or the trash. I asked him to look for it, but he probably needs to order another piece.
Oh, and the touch-up paint isn’t here yet.
I called him (no answer) and emailed him today. You all will know when I hear back. I expect that will be mid-January. I’m sure he’s on vacation or something.
Most of those annoying projects I mentioned a week or two ago are still hanging around. Work seems to get in the way of working on the house. However, I did get one finished. In the bedroom was an outlet that was loose in the wall. It had been screwed in to the plaster instead of into the box that’s attached to the stud. This meant I’d have to hold the outlet every time I unplugged something to make sure the outlet didn’t yank on the old fabric wires. So I took the 3 minutes and 5 trips up and down from the 2nd floor to the basement to get the right screwdrivers and screws, and now that’s fixed.
Only about 1,879 more of these little projects to go.
It’s coming up on a year since I bought this house. It came with a home warranty. I got a bill today to renew it for roughly $450. I feel like this isn’t worth the money. I haven’t used the warranty so far. $450 is a lot of money. Any opinions from you more experienced home owners?
This squirrel was outside on my neighbor’s stairs. He fished this empty bottle of Irish Creme International Delight out of their recycling and was very insistent on keeping it with him. He brought it up the stairs, around the railing and back down. I’m not sure what he planned to do with it, but he sure seemed to have a plan!
…What is that wonderful smell my house has? It is so fresh. Clean air, freshly cut grass… Oh, right. Because it was 67 degrees here today so I opened up all the windows, filled up the gas can, and took Chompy out for the final mow of the year. The grass wasn’t all that long, but since I don’t rake leaves and I believe leaf blowers are inventions of the devil that should be outlawed (just get a RAKE lazy people!), there were many leaves to mulch up.
Pi and K had a great time, too. They got a couple hours of fetch time.
I am embarrassed to admit that I have been storing my keys and little things on the stairs.
Those are running sunglasses, keys, mail, etc. It sits there because there was no place else to put them -until today!
My last purchase before the bad job news was this table from Home Decorators.
The stock photo makes it look kind of rustic, but it has a nice smooth finish. I am so relieved to finally have a place to stick my stuff. I have the little dish for my keys, and now a drawer for my running glasses, gloves, and such. It also fills that empty looking spot on the front wall. Horay!
