Progress, a few problems and an early delivery

Even though our friends aren't coming tomorrow because their babies are sick (ugh ear infections are no fun) we pushed ahead and got a lot done.  The cabinets on the wall are painted !!!!

 It took 3 coats of paint after the primer and I'm really happy with the results. The bad news is our counters now look like this.

Good thing we are replacing them. (I'm not sure what we're replacing them with just yet!!!)

I've also finished priming the cabinet doors and drawers. The next step is to assemble the molding that will get attached to the front of the door. 

 We have hit a small snag.  The directions we are following were done on a cabinet door that had sharp square corners. Our doors have slightly rounded corners and edges.  We are going to make a mock up tomorrow and paint it to see if the rounded edge is noticable. If it is....hmmmm I'll get back to you on that.

Also we weren't expecting our flooring to be in for two more weeks but YAY!!!! Steve got a call and picked it up at lunch. Its 4 inch Hickory Natural pre-finished solid hardwood. Its the same wood we put in the rest of the house except the family room (which is on a slab.) Someday I'll do a post about the long long process of selecting this floor and everything I learned in the process.

 Maybe the best part of the day was watching Everett having fun climbing in and out of the cabinets.

ouch

Steve and I spent a lot of time on the phone yesterday discussing the timeline of this project. We have friends coming over this weekend, and next weekend we're going on a trip. So we decided the best plan would be to take everything out of the cabinets, remove the doors and prime and paint before the weekend.

So by the time dinner was over the kitchen looked like this...

The only injury of the day happened while removing the drawers.  I was pulling the drawer out and it got stuck. I gave it a good tug and it came unstuck right into my nose.  I have a nice little bump on my nose now but I think I'll survive.

After Everett went to bed we broke open the primer and got to work.  I had never considered how not fun it would be painting the inside of cabinets. We got it done and I'm hoping to get two coats of paint on and the dishes back in the cabinets by Sat. at noon when our visitors arrive.

Here is what the kitchen looks like now.

The Kitchen (Part 1)

So our Kitchen when we moved in looked like this...

We have gone back and forth about what to do about it. We wanted to gut it and start over but don't have the cash to do that right now. Also holding us back is the soffit above the cabinets. We were hoping we could take it out but after poking a few holes in it we discovered it is hiding the pipes running to and from the upstairs bathroom.

We had almost 60 square feet of wood flooring left over from the installation in the rest of the house. We didn't have the kitchen done at the time because we weren't ready to redo the whole kitchen and weren't sure if we would do wood or tile.  Currently the floor looks like this...

So the decision is to buy enough wood to do the kitchen floor  (this time we will do it ourselves.) Then paint and add some trim to dress up the cabinets and replace the counter.

The wood is ordered and I'm starting on a sample cabinet door  to make sure we have a plan.  I've been getting ideas from other blogs and images on Pinterest

Our cabinets are flat front dark wood.  We want to add a thin strip of wood all around the edge of the cabinet and down the middle. We saw it here on a blog entry from the lettered cottage.  The tricky part so far has been finding wood. Big box stores had nothing less than an inch thick. I found a lumber yard in town and the gentleman in the office was very helpful. We had to have them plane the wood down to 1/4 inch for us. Now we have wood and I'm working on prepping the door.


I've been following these directions from Better Homes & Gardens.
The liquid sandpaper didn't seem to do all that much.  I'm using and oil based primer and that seems to stick really well anyway so on the next cabinet I may skip the liquid sandpaper.  I sanded after priming and then put one coat of paint on. Its very difficult to get it even and smooth and the paint didn't stick well to spots I over or under sanded.   I hope to have at least 1 door done by the weekend so I'll put up a pic as soon as its done!

Hi

Steve and I bought a house a few months ago.  It is a great house but it looked like 1974.  Original 1974 gold and green carpets.  1974 Wallpaper in EVERY room. Even the closets were wallpapered. 1974 wood panels in the Family Room. 1974  everywhere you turn. Wait. I'll show you...

So we started to redecorate.

Now that we've lived here a few months, have a few projects under our belts (and a bunch of new ones planned), we thought we'd share our progress and ideas.

We are not designers, or artists at all. We sometimes agree and when we do we usually love the results. But often we don't agree. Our tastes can be totally opposite and this is when decisions get tricky.

We're both impulsive and sometimes start projects before we've really thought them through.  We're  both creative and love taking an idea we find online in our own new direction.

Oh yeah, and did I mention we're on a budget? So cheap is very important.

So sometime soon I'll go back and show you what we've done so far.  New wood floors, painting and some other basics will catch you up to where we are at now.

Then it gets fun. Right now our kitchen cabinets are missing doors (project started before I thought it through) and we have a barn door in the garage! Hopefully we'll get to these soon!

-Katie