First Coat of Paint

The first coat of paint is up! I've also starting putting items back in the cupboards (thank goodness!). I'm so over living out of boxes and piles of stuff. This is the progress to date:

Spring Cleaning at the Laundromat

I found a spring cleaning list somewhere on the web. I'm not sure where, but it is a pretty extensive list of things that should get cleaned annually or biannually. My goal is to do one or two items on the list everyday, until everything is done.

This list led me to realize that our comforters really needed to be washed. So, after throwing the sheets and duvet cover into the wash, I took our comforter and the guest room comforter to the Laundromat (since our washing machine isn't big enough to fit either a queen or king size comforter). Two washing machines ($5/each) and one giant dryer ($2) later, we have two nice and clean comforters.

The real story comes from the characters that I encountered at the Laundromat. I brought my trusty Nook along, so give myself something to do. In spite of the fact that I was clearly reading, a few people tried to strike up a conversation with me. My favorite was a kid around 19 or 20.

He started up a conversation with me by saying, "You have the whitest teeth I've ever seen." Not knowing what to say, I said "Thanks."

"What do you do to get them so white?" He asked. I replied, "I use toothpaste." He goes, "I've never seen teeth that white, it can't just be toothpaste." At this point, I'm trying not to feel super insulted. I do have white teeth, but they're not unnaturally white. They're just not yellow, which is apparently this kid's normal.

Then, after asking me what I was doing (to which I replied "reading"), he asked where I got the books from. I told him that I downloaded them from the library. He says, "Really? How much does that cost?" I reply, "Oh, it's free. You just have to have a library card in good standing." He looks at me, like I'm dumb, and says, "It's free? Then how do they get money?" I patiently explained, "Libraries are supported by tax dollars."

He pauses. Looks at me in disbelief, and says smartly, "But then how do libraries get paid?" Apparently, he thought this would trip me up. The best part of this conversation is that the city library is right across the street.

So, the trip to the Laundromat cost me about $13, but gave me a lot of giggles and reinforced the fact that I would never go to the Laundromat after dark by myself.

Crown Molding Goes Up...

Last Sunday, we rented a finish nailer from HD to finish up the cabinet extenders. Best $30 we ever spent! We rented a cordless nailer and used 1.25" inch nails. It made the job so much faster. What took the most amount of time was figuring out the strange angles on our cabinets and using the handy miter saw (borrowed from our good friend Dan.... four months ago) to make the cuts. After about 4-5 hours, it was done! This is where we're at with the cabinet extenders and crown molding installed, as well as the lights installed.

Here is a view of the entire kitchen, with the crown molding installed (you can see the beginnings of the painted cabinets in the bottom right):

 Close up of the molding:

I'm in love! The entire room looks much bigger, and regaining those extra 6ish inches in the center of the ceiling really opens it up. We also removed the cabinet to the right of the window, and don't plan on putting it back up. We may put open shelves there, but that's not settled yet.  I think the added molding makes the cabinets look custom. I can't wait to paint them!

Kitchen Ceiling

After about two weeks of open ceiling, we finally got around to getting a drywall guy in to fix our ceiling. We did discuss installing the drywall ourselves, but realized that it would take a lot of time and probably a lot of fights!

Prior to the drywall guys, we roughed in the new lights. We replaced the outdated florescent light fixtures with new LED disk lights. They will last for 25,000 hours (according to the manufacturer, 20-something years) and are dimmable down to 30%. What I liked best about these lights is that they have the flat look of can/recessed lights, but fit into a standard j-box (it's a tight fit, but they fit).

This was about the time I wanted to cry for starting this project! I was so tired of working on the kitchen all the time, and Alex was out of town. Luckily, my mood was uplifted in a six hour span on a Friday (thanks to the drywall guys!) I only have photos of the drywall from my phone, so I apologize for the quality of them!

If you noticed that there is an 8 inch space between the tops of our cabinets and the ceiling (and pipes exposed), you are right! Our plan, to make up for the space between the ceiling and the top of the cabinets, is to build a type of soffit that would extend the cabinet up to the ceiling. These blogs were my inspiration:
My Tropical Cottage
piccadillypeddler
The Lettered Cottage
sweetsomethingdesign

More on that later...

Kitchen Update

Sometimes, I think my husband hates me. Example: last month, I decided it was finally time to paint our kitchen cabinets. Now, our kitchen cabinets are in surprisingly good condition, they were just ugly oak, faded and dated. So, they needed a face lift. As well as painting the cabinets, we planned to replace the florescent light fixtures. Here is the before (pardon the messiness):

And here comes the part where I'm pretty sure that Alex hates me. After we took down the plastic cover on the drop ceiling, I wanted to see what was behind the drywall. Because, like always, I had this ideal picture in my head about what we were going to do. This is what happened....

 After, Day 1:

 After tearing down the entire drop ceiling, we had a bit of a freakout (which is understandable). But, while having this freakout, we could already see how much nicer the kitchen was going to look. The cabinet doors are all down and in the garage to be painted. We used Rustoleum Cabinet Transformations in Autumn. It was a lot of work (degloss, two coats of bond paint, glazing and then the top coat). All in all, we thought it teared out well on our test door. It changes the color, but still retains the look of real wood. 

 You can still see the grain.....

More to follow....

Downstairs Half Bathroom

Downstairs, we have a small half bath - just a vanity and a toilet. When we moved in, it was very builder's grade, with a giant frameless mirror and (my favorite part), a hideous florescent light fixture. The best part of the bathroom was the super loud exhaust fan. Our 5 year old cousin was so afraid of it, that he would leave the light off when he went in there. 

Here is the before:

Notice the poop brown walls? Yes, our entire house was that color.

In process, with my ham of a husband (he's pretending to enjoy himself!):

Here is the after:

Notice the fantastic mustache mirror I bought Alex for Christmas a couple of years ago? :)  The replacement fan is actually still loud (but not jet plane loud), which we did on purpose to give privacy! 

Upstairs Bathroom Vanity

I dislike pretty much everything about our upstairs bathroom. It's the only shower in the house (the other if only a half bath), and everything in it is old, worn-out and ugly. The floor is also quite odd. It's tiled, but the edges of the tile are rounded, not square. However, since it would be a lot of work or a lot of money to replace the floor (and it's in good condition), we want to leave it as is.

Because of that, we needed to find a new vanity that was 46". Not 36" or 48" (the standard bathroom vanity sizes), but an odd size so that we wouldn't need to redo the floor. The only ones I could find were $1,500.

...not happening.

So instead, I painted the vanity AND the countertop (the countertop was a very ugly yellow).

BEFORE:

This is the countertop after the vanity was painted but still the hideous yellow color:

Finished! The vanity was painted Bittersweet Brown and the countertop was painted pure white, with three coats of the top coat -- I used a polyacrylic to avoid yellowing. We also added knobs and changed out the faucet. You may also be able to see the new light fixture, new mirror and new medicine cabinet (I think the mirror was the only thing in this project that really cost money!)

. It looks SO much better. We still have shower doors (the husband really likes them versus a shower curtain), and the countertop still has the arm over the toilet, but for spending $280, I think it looks amazing! (Light $80, new medicine cabinet $40, mirror $150, paint FREE [already had it in the garage], knobs/hinges $10).