My kitchen!

If you want pictures, talk to Pete

As you can see, Peter posted some fairly recent pictures of our cupboard progress last night. It's even changed since those pictures were taken, as we now have our dishwasher in place and the sink cupboard beside it (the dishwasher sits beside the part of the cupboard that is stained, and the sink cupboard sits on the other side of that).

I went and picked out the countertop today and ordered it, while Peter met with a carpenter who's going to install it for us. He'll do all the corners and cutting out which will be great. He also said he can put the seam (grrr for 12' lengths) in the stove section so that there's only a small length of seam on the backsplash and at the very front. So ... our countertop should be in the store around Feb. 14th - how romantic ;) with installation to follow sometime after that. Now we'll be scrambling to get everything else finished.

Lest you think we've been idle, last night Peter finished the cupboard with the sink, and I laid the rest of the tiles in the master bathroom. Not bad for an evening's work, and we still had time to watch 24 before heading to bed.

The rest of the evenings this week are busy, so Friday is the next time we'll be able to work on the house. So, the goals for the weekend are:

1. Grout the master bathroom
   
2. Hang remaining drywall in master bath
   
3. Crack-fill one coat on each bathroom
4. Lay tile in half-bath (??)

In order to do this, since obviously you can't hang drywall or crack-fill in a room that has recently had its floor worked on, we will try to: Friday night hang drywall and crack-fill one coat on ceilings of each room. Saturday morning we will crack-fill walls in half-bath. Saturday afternoon we will: crack-fill walls in master bath and lay tiles in half bath. As soon as crack-filling is done in master bath we can grout those tiles. We'll see how well that schedule sticks ;)

So we have all of our cupboards in place and are awaiting a quote for a counter top. As you can see, Ange is very happy. Our cats are also enjoying the cupboards. Shver is testing out her balance in the picture above.

We learned the hard way that it is far better to scrape the excess glue away then try to sand it off latter

A productive night

Last night was a housework night, and we almost completed our list - that's a miracle in itself! I finished cutting most of the rest of the tile for the master bathroom (the last few will have to wait until we have the door in place), Peter put together the last major piece of face frames, and we attached one more back onto the cabinets. Tonight we're busy, so our next chance to work is tomorrow night.

Let's see ... the goals for tomorrow night will be:

1. Attach the last back to the second corner cabinet section.
   
2. Attach that section to its base.
3. Build the base for under the sink cabinet.
4. Put together the last face frame section (for the first corner cabinet) and attach
   
5. Lightly sand the first corner cabinet
6. Sand the second corner cabinet

We'll see how we make out. I went to take some pictures and realized there really isn't much to show. Hopefully soon we'll have some new flooring and the cabinets will all be in place (and some of them stained) so I can get some more interesting pictures.

On a more upbeat note ...

I didn't like looking at the title of my last post when I logged on. It seemed like too much of a downer!

Another weekend has passed, and we did well with keeping on track. Friday night we had a minor setback, as one of the boxes had warped a bit, and wouldn't pull together with the screws we had been planning on using. So ... what do you do when all else fails? Use lots of glue of course! Peter spread glue over the whole side of the cupboard and then we clamped them together overnight (it seems to have worked ...). Peter also jointed and planed several more boards for the face frames on Friday night while I cut out the two tiles to go around the toilet pipe in the main bath. They look pretty good if I do say so myself!

Saturday we got another back on a corner cabinet, we finished planing the boards for the face frames, put together another set of face frames, and I sanded the glue off one of the corner cupboards.

I was looking back over our goals for January and we'd better pick up the pace! They're still possible, so it would be great if we could accomplish them. Tonight and Wednesday we're busy, but the rest of the evenings and weekend should be good to go.

My goals for the week:
- Finish assembling the base cabinets including face frames.
- Finish laying tile in master bath
- Finish sanding and staining corner cupboards
- Post some pictures ;)

Will it ever end?

I had a time of discouragement yesterday, where I started feeling like this construction process is never going to end. It doesn't happen often, but when it does, these feelings of hopelessness aren't much fun. I'm mostly over that today and anxious to get back to work :)

Last weekend Peter routed the backs of the cabinet boxes in order to easily install the backs (not cut out yet - that will be this weekend). I spent some time cutting some of the more ... interesting ... tile squares that need to go in our bathroom. These are the tiles around the pipes. Thanks to Dad for the use of his wet saw - I'm a pro now for when you want to lay some tile in your house. I still have a few more tiles to cut, and hopefully I'll get them laid shortly. It will be nice to finish the flooring in another room of the house.

Peter and I are both busy tonight. Tomorrow night will be devoted to cutting out the back panels for the cupboards. Friday night I'm busy for a couple of hours, but we should hopefully be able to get the backs done by the end of the evening. Then on Saturday we're back to the jointer / planer combo (otherwise known as major sawdust creators!) to get the wood ready for the last few face frames.

I know I've been saying this for a while, but it really does look like we'll be ready to order the countertop early next week ;) My time estimates haven't been that wrong, it's just that we needed to have the cabinets closer to "finished" than I thought we did in order to take measurements for the countertop. So ... by this time next week we should be talking countertop colours, and then the mad dash to finish (stain and varnish) the cupboards is on to beat the arrival of the countertop (takes 2 weeks from order to delivery).

Picture update

I gave Peter a new camera for Christmas, and this is a picture he took overlooking our backyard Christmas morning. Talk about picturesque!














The two pictures above are our kitchen cabinets as they stand right now. The picture on the left shows the part of the cupboards that will jut out into the room, facing the front of the house. It will house my kitchen sink and a bank of drawers. I can't wait!

The picture on the right shows an overview of the rest of the base cabinets. Peter is working on the face frames at the table. We should get most of them attached by the end of the weekend.



This is one picture of our entranceway floor after it's been grouted and cleaned :) Blogger seems to have eaten my next picture, so I'll have to put that in a separat post. You can also kind of see that the floor past the entryway is grouted and cleaned as well - that's 15 hours (at least) on my hands and knees!

I feel like I'm living in a barn!

Peter has been using his jointer and planer to create the face frames for the cupboards over the past few days - man do they create sawdust! We've probably cleaned up 5 big garbage bags full in the last 2 days, and that's not all of it!

Sorry about the lack of updating, but there really wasn't much progress in December - Christmas stuff got in the way. The last week has been great, though. Peter finished up the boxes for the base cabinets, and I cleaned and grouted most of the rest of the tile we have laid downstairs - very exciting! It still needs to be washed a few times before it's picture-ready, but I'll get one when it is. Oh, and I also finished insulating around the windows and doors.

Our first Christmas in the new house was really nice. We drove past our apartment the other day, and it seems like a lifetime ago that we were there! On New Year's Eve I was remembering that last year at this time we were getting ready to start clearing the lot - what a change! It's pretty cool when I think of it that way. It's so easy to get bogged down in the slow progress of each day. Our New Year's resolution ... to finish the house of course ;)

Our goals for this week are:

• Finish grouting tile downstairs (whatever is laid)
• Have base cabinets put together (i.e. face frame and bottom frame attached)

If we can get that done we'll be in good shape.

Our goals for the month are:

• Finish tiling master bathroom
• Tile half-bath downstairs
• Finish cupboards
• Order countertop

Guess I'd better get off the computer and back to housework! lol

Two Miracles!

Well ... I don't know if they really qualify, but over the weekend I managed to lay the last few tiles in the entryway pattern. I know that it was on my list of things to do a really long time ago, but it's actually done now (for the record, there were 5 tiles to lay - not 3 - that really explains the delay don't you think? lol). Also, on Saturday my parents and grandparents (and sister!) were up and cleaned all the excess mortar off the tiles - one step closer to grouting. Thanks guys!

While we were working on that (and some while I was napping ... shhh!) Peter put together our third cabinet box. Technically there are 7 boxes, but we're now all finished one run with an attached corner cabinet and we have one run (with a corner cabinet) left, so I'm saying we're half done those as well. The miracle in this is that we're actually progressing at a rate similar to what I thought we could - one box a day (when we actually work on this house). At this rate we should have the bottom cabinets boxed in by the end of the week and we'll be able to order our countertop - yippee! I'm assuming there will be a delay because of Christmas, but regardless we should have a countertop installed and, depending on how quickly we work on the other stuff, a working kitchen by the end of January :) I can hardly wait!

This week the goal is to finish the cabinets and get the entryway grouted. Lofty goals, but doable!

Merry Christmas :)

One down ... Six to go!

Peter was home sick yesterday, and I had a meeting last night, so no progress on the house. However, over the weekend we did manage to get one box together, and at present it is sitting on its frame in the correct location in our kitchen – it looks so pretty! I’ll have to take a picture and post it. Putting the first box together was a little frustrating – it took about 3 hours, but each one should go faster than that, and hopefully it will be less frustrating now that we have an idea of what we’re doing!

Tonight we work on the second box. Once we get that done (which should be tonight …) we’ll have the whole run of cupboards along the side wall done except the corners – not too shabby. We’ll still have the two corner cupboards to do, one small cupboard beside the dishwasher, the cupboard under the sink, and one more basic cupboard at the end of the island part of the U. Then it’s off to the countertop store and then a two-week “wait,” during which we’ll be busy sanding, staining, and finishing the cupboards, and laying tile in the remaining two bathrooms – sounds like we’ll be really bored! Lol

I called to get some quotes for putting in a subpanel in the garage today, and most of them were in the same ballpark except one, that was about half all the rest. It makes me quite suspicious, but it would be great if we could just pay that much! We’ll have to look into it some more.

Sorry I've been so quiet!

Just haven't been that interested in blogging in general lately.

However, I should keep up to date as much as possible. The past few days I've spent a while grabbing all my posts off the old site and saving them to my hard drive. Time will tell whether they ever get put back online. I wouldn't hold my breath at the moment!

Peter and I have made an itty bitty bit of progress on the cupboards, although we realized on Saturday that we had made a fairly major mistake in cutting the side pieces. After some advice from Derrick, we were ready to move on last night. So, last night we started and made the frame for one section of cupboards. However, we built it wrong, so it's back to the drawing board tonight. We should be able to rebuild it properly tonight without too much problem. Hopefully we'll also come close to getting the box together. Peter gets to try out all kinds of new toys now that we're cabinet-makers! lol

We got word from the siding guy that he will finish the garage for free, which is wonderful. We're so thankful for that! We did get the rest of the Christmas lights up on the weekend - can't wait until tomorrow night to turn them on!

The view from our bedroom this morning ...

Funny story from last night

Peter and I had just finished cutting the 11 side panels for the lower cupboards. We started to look at how tall they were (31") and started thinking that maybe they were way too short. We cut them so that the countertop will be 36" above the floor - standard kitchen counter height, or so we'd read. So, we pull out the tape measure and hold it to 36". Hmmmm ... that seems really low. So, we were getting a little anxious, and the only consolation we had was that the books we had said that 36" was a standard height for a countertop. We were still eager to come to work this morning and check that, yes, kitchen countertops are really that low.

Didn't want to forget our momentary anxiety!

Confession time ....

So, despite having a long weekend, I did not accomplish what I wanted to on Friday night. *gasp* I have a good excuse, though, at least for not doing it on Friday night. Friday after work, Peter dropped me off at home and headed back into work. I diligently measured and cut the tile for the entryway, then spent 45 minutes scraping off the excess mortar that didn't quite get removed when I cleaned up last time. Then I went outside to get the buckets that we use for mixing the mortar .... and I thought .... where is the drill? We need the drill to mix the mortar, and it was ... in the car .... with Peter at work. *sigh* So, I couldn't actually lay the tiles, although I did get a fair amount of prep done. I could have done them any of the other days this weekend, but I didn't - no excuse there.

I did get as many windows and doors as possible insulated on Friday night (I ran out of foam), so that was great.

Saturday we put some more siding on the garage, although we were missing some special trim pieces so didn't get finished. We're going to try and pay the guy we bought the siding from to finish it. It's just too cold. Peter also put some of our Christmas lights up! It is our first Christmas with outdoor lights - I'm so excited! We'll have to get the rest of them up this weekend in time for December 1st :)

Last night was the most exciting of all the stuff we got done on the weekend. We finally took the plunge and cut out all the side panels for the kitchen cabinets. We also got measurements for the bottoms, and Peter put together his new jointer (needed for making the frames). Thursday night we'll hopefully get the bottoms cut, and Friday night we'll start the frame that the bottom cabinets sit on. Things don't seem quite as scary now that we've started. Looks like by next week we'll be getting ready to assemble!

Keeping myself accountable ...

So ... motivation has been lacking this week toward getting work done on the house! Since Peter's not home tonight and it would be really easy to plunk myeslf on the couch and not get anything done, I thought I'd post my goals for tonight and then I'll have to check in next week to say whether they were accomplished or not.

One goal for this evening is to (finally) put the last 3 tiles in the middle of the entryway. Yes, I've been languishing for over a week on putting three tiles in! I'll hopefully have enough mortar mixed to put in a few more outside the border, but I'm only requiring myself to get those three tiles set.

The second and last goal is to clean out around the windows and doors and spray the foam insulation in them. I don't mind putting the insulation in at all - it's sucking out all the sawdust first that's less fun. I want to get as many done as I can with the 4 cans of foam I have.

That's it for tonight. The quicker I can get those two things done, the quicker I can plunk myself on the couch and veg.

Tomorrow the plan is to completely finish siding the garage (déjà vu!) and get the knobs and locks on a couple of doors. If we have time we'd like to get the Christmas lights up on the eaves as well, but we'll see ;)

Keep me accountable! I'll let you know how I made out on Monday.

Nothing to report

Work on the house has been non-existent for the past few evenings. We are getting really burned out again (hmmm ... these episodes seem to be getting closer and closer together! lol) and Peter's been working lots of overtime. So ... we've decided that we'll finish the garage (and hopefully get the Christmas lights up!) on the weekend and start the cupboards with a vengeance on Monday night. Wish us luck!

Garage :)

We got home last night to a garage with a nice big white door on the front :) We quickly noticed, however, that there was no handle / lock on the outside of the door. After trying to figure out how we were going to get in (we had nailed a board across the side door to keep it from blowing) we checked the side door and the installers had actually unboarded it. Turns out the lock is on the inside of the garage door, which is something I've never seen before. It's kind of neat, as it's harder for people to break in that way, but Peter doesn't like it right now, as it's really dark when he goes in the garage.

Other than that, no house-progress last night (although I did clean up some of the kitchen!). I had great plans, but none of them came to be as I got quite side-tracked with my cross-stitching.

Tonight is craft night, and I'm pretty sure Peter is coming in here to work, so no progress again tonight. Today the electrician is supposed to go out and hook up the thermostat for the radiant heating - hopefully soon we'll have a little more control over the temperature in the house! lol

*sigh*

My previous blog-hosting site has decided they're not going to be in the blog business anymore, so I will be transferring all my previous stuff from there (http://peteandange.myblogsite.com) over to here. I have until November 30th to do the switch, so please be patient :)

Sorry about the change.

Interior decorating

This is definitely too early to be thinking about this stuff, but I've been contemplating colours today for the rooms in the house.

I already have our bedroom / bath picked out. We always promised ourselves that when we moved into a house we would decorate our bedroom first, since it always seems so 'blah' in the apartments. So, our bedroom will be a raspberry colour with lots of white accents ... hmmm ... sounds like the outside of the house. Oh well!

Peter is in the process of making us a four-poster bed with one of the other men from our church (this was started before we realized we were going to build - Peter's not really that much of a glutton for punishment!). The whole master bath will be white (with little splashes of raspberry colour ...), and we bought a tile that is mostly white with little silver patterns running through it for the floor of the bathroom and around the tub. So, I think I can do that room pretty easily.

I'm having the hardest time deciding on a colour for the kitchen. I had originally thought a sage green colour, but now I'm thinking that it may not look great with the cupboards (which will be a cherry stain). I'm not really sure about that yet, and since this is our first attempt at painting / decorating an entire house, suggestions are welcome! The tiles are a very neutral colour, so they will match pretty much anything.

The living room I'm thinking of doing in that mustard yellow colour, but again, that's subject to change! It definitely wouldn't match our current furniture, but I'm ok with that, as the furniture is almost 20 years old. Some day we'll be able to get new stuff to match the decor of the house!

Anyway, I'll be enlisting the help of my interior design-savvy friends and family members to try and make wise choices on decorating schemes. Once everything's painted we're going to focus on one room at a time until they're all decorated the way we like - starting with the bedroom of course. So - if anyone comes for a visit within the first little while after we move in - you'll have to come see the bedroom - it may be the only room in the house that's coordinated!

Anyway, back to the real world of studding walls for tonight! Hopefully we can get completely finished upstairs tonight. Peter met with the electrician at the house today, so I'll find out how that went tonight as well.