The kitchen: before & after

The day we bought our house (November 17, 2006) the kitchen looked like this:






















Now, although we loved that linoleum, we ripped in up in an attempt to liberate the hardwood underneath. We soon found out that the project was going to have to wait (house goals change when you find out a baby's coming) so we tiled the mess of hardwood and tar.

















This touch helped. For a while. Lately, I've been a little restless and somewhat concerned about the fate of our fine house. I decided I needed to do something to get things rolling and since I can't hang dry wall. I decided I would begin my very own project: the kitchen. We'd already spent about $50 on the tiles. I didn't want to spend too much money on anything for the kitchen because we're hoping to get it totally renovated in two or three years, so why pay big bucks for something we may get rid of in a couple of years. So I started with paint and let the ideas follow. Oh, it's important point out here that I did not share any of my plans with Andrew. I just started. He's a very trusting husband! He asked no questions, just watched the daily changes. We're both very happy with the results!





























And I was able to keep the costs low:
1 bucket of white paint: $12.97
1 bucket of turquoise paint (the actual name isn't so simple so I can't remember it!): $15.00 [but free for us thanks to my super sweet co-worker Betty!!]
1 can of silver spray paint: $3.97
1 roll of contact paper: $5.99
3 lights for under the cabinets: $15.00

So including the previously spent money on the floor, Out new kitchen only cost $87.93!



The before and after:

Tryin' Real Hard

We're trying to jump back into working on the house. It helps that I've since woken up from my first trimester sleepiness, but hurts that it's the end of Andrew's semester and he has lots of grading and studying to do.
The living room is almost ready to get its new walls! Just a few "minor" wiring things to do and some plaster clean-up, then we'll be ready for insulation and drywall!!! So we're making plans to order the drywall because we hope all these "little" things will all go quickly. We're both getting a little nervous and ready to be done with the living room because we've got to get to work on the room that will become the baby's room.

So the bottom line here is that hopefully in the next few months there will lots of progress and thus a more regular amount of posting.


Oh, as requested, here are those way overdue pictures of the kitchen floor (and Cooper trying to be helpful)!

Slow Going

I've just realized that we haven't posted in quite some time. It's not that we haven't done anything at all, because we have done a few things. Things outside of the house have been pretty busy. With school back in, Andrew has his hands full working on his thesis, taking classes, and teaching classes. Also, Two Way Radio has returned to the studio and is currently recording their second album. And with my severe dislike of the cold, I've been hibernating. So we have not been working too hard on the house lately.
In fact I can only think of two things right now that we've done in the last few weeks:
1) I started scrapping layers of paint covered wallpaper off the walls in the second bedroom and
2) I finally got tired of scapping the tar off the kitchen floors (probably because I can really only focus on scrapping one thing at a time without losing the ability to use my arms later and/or going insane) so I headed to Home Depot last Saturday while Andrew was teaching a class and picked up some of those wonderfully cheap stick-on tiles. Now we have a very busy black and white fake tile kitchen floor instead of a part hardwood part tar floor. Yay!

It's been a While...

since we posted anything, I see. We have actually been pretty busy though. The living room is completely bare (that's right- all the plaster and lathe is GONE from the walls!) Now we're just waiting on getting this little problem fixed:



The "header boards" have water damage. We've got a guy coming on Friday to make sure the damage isn't in the joists or causing any other structural issues- Andrew just wants to be sure and I completely agree!

So after that Andrew and Paul will begin wiring the living room. That's exciting because that means that we get to pick out light fixtures soon!!!

We also replaced the old kitchen faucet:



which was beginning to make me crazy because it was getting hard to wash the French oven under that thing and since it's winter- Andrew's been making a lot of soups, chilis and stews! (They've all been very good) So my sweet husband spent almost his entire first Sunday of 2007 installing a new faucet.


Now we both agree it was worth it!

New dishwasher!

The dishwasher works just fine, but it takes about 3 hours and 80 gallons of hot water for a load so we decided it would be more economical to go ahead and buy the pretty new one we'd been eyeing at Appliance Liquidators. Plus it's our birthday week (Andrew and I celebrate a whole week because our birthdays are a few days apart) and Andrew thought a new dishwasher would be a fun birthday present from each other. I thought this was a great I idea.

So first Andrew took out the old one.

Which proved to be fairly simple. Then we were off to Mississippi to get the new one.
Installing a dishwasher wasn't too bad. The major frustration was tracking down this tiny little part that you have to purchase: an elbow joint. It costs less than $2.00 and is about an inch and a half in size. It connects the water line to the dishwasher, so it is very popular! It took 1 Lowe's and 2 Home Depots before we found one! They all really should keep more of these little suckers in stock! But after we got that little guy things went smooth.

And now we have...

It looks great with the floor, doesn't it!!! Still scrapping away at that one.

Thanksgiving, then Right Back to Work

We had a great time visiting Carrie and Mike in Virginia for Thanksgiving. Thursday we all cooked together. The food all turned out so wonderful that we all had to go to bed pretty early considering it was a mini vacation. Friday, Carrie showed us where she works. She's an equine vet so we got to see lots of cool things vets use on and for horses! And Andrew got to be pulled from one room to the next as if he were a horse being taken into surgery.


After a little turkey chili, Andrew and Mike decided to test Angus and Roy's invisible fence collars, to make sure they are safe...

They experieced minor shocks and we all experienced lots of laughter.

Saturday, we arrived back in Memphis and thanks to Jess and Drew got home from the airport.
After checking on the cats and relaxing for a minute we decided to go check out our new house and begin a "minor" project. The floors turned out great so we headed to the kitchen.
We had discovered last weekend that the fridge (as pretty as it is) combined with the additon of the washer and dryer would leave little room for exiting the house through the back door (we'd be lucky to get 8 inches!). So after a little thought I asked Andrew if the smaller pantry could be widened a few inches so that fridge could slide into it and then later we could finish the walls around it. So we tried it.

It began like this:

And then we began to pull off the panelling, door frame, etc. Once we got to the old plaster and lath, we ripped that off too.



With some electrical help from our brother-in-law, Paul, it now looks like this:



Aaron came by and helped Andrew get the washer and dryer into the house and we can still get out the back door!! We'll have to finish off the wall around the fridge with drywall and Andrew is going to add a cabinet above it. Oh yeah, and we'll have to run the waterline through the crawl space so the it reaches the fridge in its new home! But all this will have to be put off until we get a couple other major projects done.

Today was also a big day because we spent the morning and afternoon moving! With the help of Joe, Jeremy, Warren, Kate, Polly, Amanda, and Corey we almost got everything out of the old house!. Now we'll set up the bed and sleep!

Day 2 of Being Home Owners

Day 2 was long, but we got a lot done. We searched the house for hidden remnants of carpet and and found them in the hall closet and at the bottom of the attic stairs. Andrew ripped those suckers up.


With all the carpet removed, we were ready for the sander. While Jeremy and Andrew went to Home Depot to pick it up, Sarah and I hacked at the kitchen floor.



Then the sanding began. It lasted for many many hours, but we sanded all the floors of our 1489 square foot home!

















Sarah and I even got to man the sander. Which was very fun, so I highly suggest you try if ever given the opportunity.























But mostly, Jeremy and Andrew sanded while Sarah and I tried our best to get all the sawdust up by sweeping the floors thousands upon thousands of times. [The next time we re-do the floors (har har) we'll definately invest in a shop-vac.] We did get a pretty good upper body work-out. Honestly though, we spent most of our time standing in dusty rooms talking, which I'm sure was great for our lungs.
And even though the boys worked hard, don't worry, they did get some rap time in:



We also found a spot on the wall that
easily exposed the many layers of
wallpaper on our livingroom wall. Which I thought was pretty cool. It's generations exposed (at least until we rip it all down).


Even though we were all completely exhaused by the end of our 12+ hour day, it was a lot of fun and we got a lot done, yet again! So we went home and collapsed in bed. From what Andrew says, it took me about two and half minutes to fall deeply asleep!

Let the fun begin!

We signed an hour's worth of papers and paid a small fortune, but we got a set of keys!!
We immediately began work this afternoon.
FIrst we pulled out the carpets: living room, one bedroom, and breakfast room. I'm still not sure why you would carpet a breakfast room, but by the looks of that carpet- someone did it a long long time ago.
I've also discovered a very solid reason for never ever carpeting anything:
Absolutely disgusting. This is all the dirt and nastyness that gets stuck in the carpet of a bedroom over the years. Who wants to breath this!?! Not us. So we ripped up the carpet and the padding and promptly placed it on the curb. Oddly enough though, someone actually stopped and picked up all the padding. So beware future carpet buyers: you might be unknowingly getting used padding. Yuk!


So now our living room looks like this:

Yay. Happy hard wood floors!
We then moved on to the kitchen floor.


This, we were not expecting, but if you look closely you can see the hard wood begging to be released from the layers of linoleum. We're working on it.

So it was a very productive day. Maybe we're crazy, but we're looking forward to tomorrow!
But first we're off to Neil's so Andrew can play a little music and I can relax at the bar with the girls!

Thanks to Joe, Corey, and Jeremy for all your hard work today. We couldn't have gotten so much done without you guys!