It's Done!

Believe it or not, the project is finally complete! We are thrilled to have it behind us and to finally have a clean house and kitchen again. I waited a few days to post pictures because I wanted to make sure the house was clean first (well that and I procrastinated pretty badly)...

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So now that it is all done, we cannot wait to entertain anyone we can convince to come see us! Zack and Laura Jane joined us for dinner last night, and we had a great time. It was so fun to put the new kitchen to use. The big sink was great for clean up too. 

As for the future of the blog, we'll just have to wait and see....

Nearing the end...

Sorry for the lack of posting the last few days. The project is ALMOST done, so we've decided to wait until it is totally done to post pictures. The house is an absolute wreck, and we cannot wait to have our sanity back. Just a few more days....

TILE!

The tile man showed up bright and early this morning, and what a huge difference it was to come home to! We decided to go with the white subway tile with a matte finish, and I think it is safe to say we are very happy with our choice. We picked the grout this morning from the color chart the tile man brought, and we decided on a light gray color. He has to come back tomorrow to do the grout, so the pictures below show the tile without grout. I don't think the color will look drastically different though...

If you look closely under the hood, you can see how crooked our house is! The tile is lined up straight on the bottom but on a diagonal by the time you get to the top of the hood.

So now the big decision is what color to paint the little bit of visible wall remaining - leave it blue or paint it white. We are leaning towards blue to bring a little color into the room, and besides I LOVE that color blue. It doesn't hurt that it matches some of our china!

So, there is a chance that they may wrap up tomorrow but my guess is on early next week. We will have a list of final touch ups that will have to next week at the very least. I CANNOT WAIT to be able to cook in our kitchen again and for our house to be clean! The dust is about to do me in - but we have a deep clean schedule for next week! Don't worry Mom, Dad, and Xan it will be all clean by the time you come stay with us for Christmas.

First Day of the Last Week*

*Note, this is the forecast by the contractor...it may even be done AHEAD of schedule at the rate he's going!

Anyway, here's the latest photos. Carolyn is in London and has entrusted me with her blog. Hope I can do it justice by adding lots of pictures.

Today they made a lot of progress. The installed the new appliances, ran wire for the under cabinet lights, and finished the trim work around the bar cut-out. We still have to vent the hood out the roof and do the tile backsplash, but the rest is pretty small stuff.

 New view with the granite, sink, appliances

 New view of the bar with the extension and without the wall

 We've doubled the width of the bar so we can actually put a plate on it now.

 The trim work is all done around the new opening and it looks much better now that its trimmed and sheet rocked.

 New stove, gas top and electric oven plus warming drawer

 tiny new microwave, but we rarely use it anwyay

 check out the hood

 these bad boys will be installed on all the cabinet doors...yes all 31 of them

 under cabinet lights are coming in too

 new sink and faucet mounts

oh, and we now have gas burners!

I expect the drawers will be finished up maybe tomorrow and then they will start working on venting the hood and doing the tile backsplash. After that, its just little items and a final cleaning and then we have our kitchen back!

Evan is so excited to come have a meal at his favorite aunt & uncle's house, he doesnt even know what to say (he is in deep thought about pureed carrots right about now)

Granite is in!

I got in from New York late last night, and what a fun surprise to walk into the granite being down! I'm really excited about the way it turned out, and I can't wait to use the new bar. Pardon the picture quality below - Andy is on a fishing trip this weekend, so he has the nice camera with him. (I'm definitely not a great photographer to begin with but the good camera/lens seems to at least give me a little boost).

Sink is in  - I'm excited about having one large bowl for easily cleaning big pots and pans. To stay within our budget, this was the only single bowl option. It has the option to be an undermount or an overmount, which leaves it looking a little odd with the exposed lip. It will still work great though I'm sure!

Drawer faces are off as they working on shaving them down so that they can open without hitting the knobs/pulls of the other cabinets in the corner. 

And finally, our appliances are here! They delivered them in the boxes today so obviously we can't tell much yet, but I am definitely looking forward to having an stove again.

I'm headed to London for a few days tomorrow, so it will be up to Andy to post some updates. Somebody push him to update because I'm anxious to see pictures of the progress too! Fingers crossed the project may actually finish next week. It is still kind of hard to imagine in our minds, but the contractor still thinks he is on track. That would be great news for us because it would mean we have 2 weekends to move back into the kitchen and clean up before Christmas. I can't believe that Christmas is so close!

Details

Well, the project continues to roll along, and it is fun to come home every day and see what has changed since we walked out the door to go to work. Overall we are thrilled with how it is looking, and I really can't wait to cook a new meal in there. There have been a couple of things pop up along the way that aren't quite right though, and that is frustrating. So far the contractor has been really responsive and good about correcting them though, so hopefully that will continue. The devil is in the details though so we have to keep a close eye on things! 

Here is the view from the back entry now - much more open than it used to be!

Good news is the cabinets are straight now! And they re-caulked around the ceiling, making it look much more even.

Problem of the day: cutting the corners to close makes it difficult to open the drawers!

 Paint is in - hopefully going up soon! (color is Popcorn by Martha Stewart)

And here is the hardware we picked out last night...

I Lost Track...

of what day we are on. Technically we are entering the 3rd week of the kitchen project, but I'm not really sure how much work got done last week with the Thanksgiving holiday. Things seem to be picking back up now, and the contractor tells us that we are still on plan to wrap up by the end of next week!

The cabinet guy started putting up the new cabinets yesterday, and they look great!

 One slight problem though...they don't seem to be even. Supposedly they will before the project is done though....

Liking the hardware being on the inside!

And just in case you were wondering where we are keeping all the stuff that once occupied those cabinets...yeah, it's pretty much everywhere! We have tried to contain it to the office as best we can though. 

Day 7

Only one picture for today, but still making good progress. Billy installed the new cabinet frame today, and it looks great. The slots on the far left are for sheet pans, muffin tins, etc. I was really excited about this last minute addition - right now I keep these items in the drawer under the oven, but in our new oven the drawer is actually a second oven so we'll lose that storage space (but definitely worth it to be able to cook at two different temperatures!) The next slot is for the trash can then finally big drawers that will be able to fit pots, bowls, etc.

We are headed to the beach for Thanksgiving after work tomorrow so no new kitchen updates for the rest of the week. Maybe we'll find something else to post about if we get creative. I'm not sure how many days they intend to work this week, but hopefully we will see some more progress. Eating out is getting old...

Days 3-5, more demolition

So we slacked off on our blogging for a few days, but there haven't been too many noticeable changes in the kitchen. They have ripped out some more of the counter tops and started putting up the drywall over the sink. 

We had a slight scare as they were taking out the wall between the kitchen in the den....the workman starts hacking away at the wall then suddenly turns to Andy and says "You do have a termite bond, right?" Luckily the answer is yes, but we were still concerned. Turns out that it was all prior damage and no active termites in there. Still wasn't a real comforting thought! They had to take the wall out in pieces because it was so damaged. I took a picture of the wood on my phone, and once I can figure out how to transfer it I will post it on here. It isn't a pretty sight though...

Don't you just love the old wallpaper they uncovered??

Day 2

Ok, so I took the hint and uploaded some new photos (but let me go on record saying I didnt pick out the polk-a-dots and colorful utensils you see in the margins).

Yesterday they took out the sink and microwave, took down the old cabinet doors, and removed the old ceiling fan and fluorescent light. We now have 4 can lights in the ceiling.

 No more sink

Never knew how much head space the microwave took up until it was gone, it will be nice having the new one moved over (to the big box shape in the cabinets...on the right in this photo)

Blog?

Carolyn here - so far it has really been Andy posting all of the lovely kitchen pictures. This whole blogging thing is a totally new concept to me, but of course Andy is already a pro. Not sure how long we will really keep the blog going, but we thought it would be fun to document our kitchen redo. It is a project that we have been wanting to do for a long time, so we are really excited to finally begin! We are only two days in now (hopefully Andy will post some more pictures later...hint hint), but we have already seen a lot of progress. I came home today to no sink, no microwave, and new can lighting.

Tonight we headed to Lowe's to pick up a few final items.

• Sink - We decided to go with the single opening. I really think I am going to like this because it means all our big pots and pans will fit in it to soak. 
• Faucet - Not super exciting, but we did find one we liked. 
• Garbage Disposal - This was an add on that we weren't originally planning on replacing. When looking at how old the current one is though, we figured it made sense to go on and replace it while it is easier to access. 

There are always more choices than I could ever imagine. Seriously, how can there be so many shades of white paint? It can be a tad overwhelming, but all in all it is really fun! Most of all, I'm looking forward to cooking dinner in our new kitchen in a few weeks.

Day 1

Work started today, mainly some demolition and planning. Major difference is the wall between old bar and doorway are gone.

 

 From the dining room looking in

 From the den looking in

 From the bar looking in

 from the kitchen looking out

 From the den looking towards the kitchen