Thursday, January 24th, 2008
The installer finished up here at about 7PM. He worked his butt off today. I was second guessing that it would take two days to install a kitchen, but I was wrong. All the trim work took a long time. The majority of the time was taken up hanging the crown moulding, installing the knobs and handles and the cutting and nailing on the kick plates. I hate that kind of work and he was very good at it. He made all my improvements look kind of amateur…wait, I am an amateur. That makes me feel better.
There is still some work that I need to do myself, like hang a piece of wood right above the refrigerator, hang the crown moulding around the ceiling, hook up the plumbing for the sink and a bunch of other little things.
I am going to show you three photos of half of the kitchen. I moved all the junk to the other side, so when that’s all cleaned up, I will take some more pictures of the rest of the kitchen. We feel so much better actually having counter space and (almost) a sink back. When the dishwasher gets here, I am going to feel like I live in a palace.

I moved the refrigerator back into its spot. I found some stainless steel cleaner and it worked wonders on both the refrigerator and the oven. The space right above the refrigerator is where I need to put the piece of board. I want it to be snug.

I really like the way the corner cabinet goes to the ceiling and the way the moulding hugs all the cabinets. It makes that corner a focal point.

Me (again) amazed that someone can cut moulding so nicely.
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Thursday, December 6th, 2007
I just got back from the kitchen place. I have to go in to pick out the counter top color and the handles and knobs. I didn’t pick out the counter top colors…I did something better. I brought home four samples. We placed a bunch on the actual color of the cabinets and kept the ones that looked the best. I took a picture for the blog here. I traded one out after I took the picture, so the bottom right isn’t the right one.

Personally, I like the one I traded in and the top left one. The wall colors will be a very light gray, with a hint of blue in it and the floor will be a tumbled limestone.

This is a photo of the handles and knobs I narrowed down to. I like the plain ones in the middle.
I will have an update of what we are going with probably later tonight.
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Thursday, November 29th, 2007
I had to run down to the tile place today to pick up the extra tile that wasn’t used on the bathroom floor. It was a whole box. I got it and put it in the basement for safe keeping. While I was there, I struck up a conversation with the fine lady about remodeling kitchens (we have to do ours). She gave me a business card for a local kitchen place, right up the road. I noticed a website address on the card, so I gave it a visit. I looked at all the pictures on the website and at the information. I got all motivated and accidentally started ripping up the kitchen floor.

This is the before shot…well, I started a little of the floor.

This is a picture of most of the floor ripped up, before I moved anything around, like the refrigerator or stove.


This is what I got done today. Do you know what this means? Commitment. I really wasn’t planning on starting the kitchen so soon. But then again, I am not sure I planned any project I started here.
As I look at the guts of the whole thing, I am noticing that there really isn’t too much to it. We were planning on keeping things the same way and just updating everything, but now I am thinking that we make an “L” out of it instead of the hallway thing that was going on. The main reason we wanted to keep the same layout was because I didn’t really feel like moving the power source for the stove and we were going to keep the tile on the wall above the counter tops. When I moved the stove, I found the power source actually closer to where the stove would be if we changed the layout. Also, the tile is crap, so it’s coming down.
I can take my time with this project because, unlike the bathroom, we can function in the kitchen while it’s a construction zone. Remember, we are moving in an estimated two years, so we will try to make some less-expensive decisions.
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