Sorry for the hiatus! There’s been some major work done recently but I’m too lazy I haven’t had time to update. Here’s a look at the kitchen progress:
BEFORE
Fully stocked kitchen….
DURING
MOUSE POOP
GUTTED
LIGHTS
FLOORS
PAINT
BOTTOM CABINETS
UPPER CABINETS
DOORS AND DRAWERS
STOLEN MUG DISPLAY
MEASURING
SINKHOLE CUTTING
CORNER
BUTCHER BLOCK
REFRIGERATOR
COFFEE (AND WHISKEY) CORNER
Seriously, what is this?
There’s a tree in our backyard bearing this fruit/nut/mutant. The first person who can tell us what it is will receive a prize (made from this delicacy).
As you’ve seen we gutted the kitchen.
Blank Slate
It was incredibly liberating getting rid of all the old crap but a lot of time was spent agonizing over the new layout, type of cabinets, color, appliances, the list goes on!
We’ve been finding fruit trees all over the yard which has been a pleasant surprise.
When you’ve got lemons…
There will be lots of posts about paint. In my hair. On my arms. In my shoes. On the back of my pants when I got a little too close. Clearly I’m not a professional. But luckily practice makes perfect and we have plenty of walls and ceilings that need multiple coats!
We started in the kitchen and dining room so that we could install the kitchen as soon as we finished. We are looking at cooler colors because the kitchen cabinets we selected have a slight pinkish hue to them so we wanted something that doesn’t highlight that. After houzzing for hours, here are the paint colors we were debating between:
I know….pretty extreme choices.
If we chose Grey Owl or Moonshine, would you be able to tell the difference? I know I couldn’t! I’ll leave you on the edge of your seat for a little while longer because first there was prep.
While the plywood patchwork looks lovely in the kitchen/dining area, we decided to cover it up to protects it’s magnificence.
I’m blinded by the beauty
We decided to put down an engineered wood to compliment Enrique’s masterpieces in the other rooms.
More Lights!
Before:
Beautiful fluorescent light overhead….really brings the room together.
While it really suits the room in it’s current state. It was just too classy for us and time for a change. There’s also a lovely light coming down the wall between the windows which had to go.
and other forms of electricity. Kerem and his pops have been hard at work re-wiring all the electrical in the bathroom and kitchen. Here’s a reminder of what the bathroom looked like to begin with.
There are zero outlets in the bathroom so they screwed an adapter into the light fixture. Classy.
Also, that window does not open and there is no ceiling fan. Let’s just hope these guys used scented candles .
Picking up where we left off…..
Here’s a reminder of what the floors looked like before:
The floors were so bad that trash was growing out of them
Meet Enrique. He came, he saw, he conquered.
After ripping out the kitchen pops headed home and Hita left to hang out with some friends in the city. So I had the place to myself. I decided to attack the floor in the hallway. As much as I love the 50′s red faux-marble, it had to go.
Seriously. What is that?
I suspected that there was some sort of wood flooring below and in about 10 minutes the floor looked like this:
So they’re not perfect and were once painted mustard yellow but overall the hallway floor is in really good shape. Theeeeeen Dre showed up, and all hell broke loose. Dre convinced me that there’s probably more of that floor below the multiple layers of kitchen floor.
So clean
I really hate the step up into the kitchen and it would be nice to have all natural hardwood throughout the house. So we started tearing out the plywood in a corner of the room, just to see what might be below.
If you look closely, below one layer of vinyl, one layer of paper, one layer of plywood, one layer of linoleum, one more layer of paper, another layer of linoleum, and a final layer of paper, you can see the lines of the fir floors continuing into the kitchen. Mind. Blown.
Inviting Dre over was the best idea ever. Dre whipped out a skill-saw from his “survival” kit in his trunk (wtf?) and we began cutting up the plywood, starting in the middle and working our way outwards. This plywood was a major pain to rip out, it was nailed, glued, rotten, stinky, and everything else in between. At this point Gulliver (who was happily napping in his truck outside while watching this on youtube) was forced to help as well. We were about 70% finished when THIS HAPPENED.
Gulliver looking up from the garage.
That’s right folks, a hole. Not just any hole, a 4 foot by 6 foot hole in the corner of the dining area, large enough that Gulliver suggests a fire-pole to get to the garage. At that point we were all pretty defeated and decide to call it a night. Inviting Dre over was the worst idea ever.