Days 10-13

PANTRY and PAINT are the words! Our icky pantry is no more! It has has a total overhaul thanks to our carpenter, Jeff. On Friday morning we measured cereal boxes, the microwave and the new airtight dog food container
(http://www.petsmart.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2811537&lmdn=Category LOVE THIS THING) I bought and designed the shelves accordingly. The shelves are stationary so it would be a big deal to move them. Hopefully we will have no regrets!

Old Shelves, "Bye, Bye!!"

T has been enjoying naps in our upstairs master bath during this whole ordeal. She has been relatively unscathed:)

Standing at the baby gate pleading with her eyes to enter the construction zone...

Since we are at the beach the week, the painting is going full force. I am so glad we're gone because they are using oil based paint to touch up some of the existing trim and it is super smelly. Check out our new white cabinets! The walls will be painted Benjamin Moore's Revere Pewter today!

and T's new big girl room- Sherwin Williams Ancient Marble (Thanks, Mollie!) It is so refreshing to have the RED GONE!!

Tomorrow: refinish floors

Day 9

Great progress today! New trim went in the Living Room! It is much thicker than the old stuff (sorry I don't have a pic) and is in much better proportion with the scale of the room and the window and floorboard trim. We are very pleased! It matches the kitchen.

Also, Jeff added trim to the bathroom and hallway where there was none before. It looks so good that Cameron said when he walked in today, "I wonder if we shouldn't just have him do the bedrooms too."

The bedrooms have picture molding that I like because I can hang things from it! However, painters are coming next week so if we're ever going to do it, now is the perfect time.

We had to take apart our "bathroom kitchen" today so that trim and a vent could go in the bathroom. There was no place to put all of our temporary kitchen things besides in Turner's room so it was there they went. The dogs have been spending most of their days stuck in the front red room so that wasn't an option. It was at this point that I felt a total loss of control. Every room of our home is now officially in disarray but praise God I am able to laugh! Cameron just smiled at it all too:) I guess it is easier when you can see a light at the end of the tunnel (and when you have a week long beach trip planned to begin Monday!!).

I vacuumed the downstairs twice today and it needs it again. As soon as Jeff finishes up tonight I'm going to put this shop vac to work cleaning up the construction zone. These past couple of weeks have been my first experience with a shop vac and I have become quite a fan. It is miraculous how quickly and how much this thing can eat up.

After that, I am going to test these paint samples on some poster board and hopefully come to a decision tonight for our cabinet and wall colors. I wish there weren't so many shades of white! A HUGE thank you to my friend and neighbor, Mollie who let Turner take a nap at her house so I could run up to the Benjamin Moore store and pick out some colors. There are some things that are just not practical with a toddler and this is one of them for me.

Day's 7 & 8

Praise the Lord for air conditioning!!! We were without if for the last 26 hours and the house was 85 degrees. This might not sound too bad but when you're chasing a precious toddler around it is really hard to keep from sweating. It seems our electrical system was overloaded with all the power tools but thankfully it was all fixed today and are no longer taking it for granted. "Every good and perfect gift IS from above!"

Our carpenter, Jeff has been hard at work today and yesterday installing all the trim on our cabinets and around the ceiling and floor of the kitchen and dining room. Cameron and I are really starting to catch the vision! We look forward to him installing the same trim in our living room tomorrow:)

He also put up these brackets (there's probably a better term for them) that I snagged at the Cobb Antique Market. They will help support a 16" countertop that will rest on top. We're trying to decide if we'll keep the paint on them just the way it is or if we'll have them stripped and repainted to match the cabinets. I like how they're simple but still have a little personality. When I purchased them they came together with one being several inches longer, as you can see. I might not have originally sought out a larger one but I like the way it's coming together.

Close up

Also, I realized I hadn't shown you a picture of our floors! We were very pleased to discover there was Pine underneath the brick linoleum. It needs a little TLC but Tee seems to think they will clean up beautifully. The rest of our house has oak floors with slightly narrower planks so they will not match exactly but they will be the same color. If I weren't pregnant and it wasn't 90+ degrees outside then I might consider moving all of our things out and refinishing the entire downstairs floor but I just don't have it in me so I'm not going to sweat it. Cameron doesn't seem to think it will bother him either.

Here's a before picture of the floors thought it's not a close up:(

Oh, and when they countertop people came to make their template yesterday they said the schedule was running about three weeks. We'd surely like to have our kitchen back sooner than that so please pray it will be done a little faster. On a happy note, Sweet Turner didn't get any new bruises today. She has been very accident prone as she masters this whole walking thing. Also, our new little Baby Girl was moving around TONS and she was sticking her little bottom straight out so I really got to feel her little body. It was SO cool! She's the length of a Spaghetti Squash this week. I love her so much already!!

Love you all-
K

Day 2

Well, it was an 11 hour day today (9am to 8pm) but it was worth it. Poor T got a total of 30min sleep the entire day during the workers' lunch break but she's a trooper and tomorrow we'll be at a friend's house so hopefully she will get her full 4 hours (we just switched to 1 long nap a day. She's growing up on us!). There were no big surprises which was a relief since you never know what will be uncovered when you open up the walls of a 70 year old house. The worst we found yesterday were some rat droppings under the cabinets. I'm just thankful they didn't find a rat.

The day began with taking out the kitchen door and walling it off. One of the most dysfunctional things about our 11 x 12 kitchen was that there was a doorway on each of it's 4 short walls. That made it impossible to get any span of counter space. By walling off just one of those doors we will be able to incorporate many more cabinets which = more counter space. Now if I could just decide on some countertops....

No more doorway:)

T and I ran out for lunch and to pick up our new sink from Overstock Kitchen and Bath in Kennesaw. When we returned they has installed the new window. I was hoping it would let in tons more light which it doesn't really do but I think we will enjoy looking out the large center window while standing at the sink as opposed to the wide piece of trim that was in the center of the old window. Might not seem like a big deal but it drove me crazy.

Window Before

New Window

Later in the afternoon they blew out the opening that was the dining room window to the deck to make room for new 5 feet wide french doors. It makes quite a difference! The bigger doors let in much more light which makes me happy.

Oh, and did I mention they removed much of the vinyl siding on that back wall and we saw the original wood siding? It is so much prettier than the vinyl even in it's sad state. The siding is a different project for a different day but I sure wish previous owners hadn't dealt with it in that way. Oh well

Close up of old siding:(

Before

After

Around 7:30 they took apart our old pantry door so they could move it to the left a foot. This will allow us to add lots of new shelving to the right side of the opening and will make it easier to access the shelving underneath the stairs. Jeff who is building our cabinets will build new, more functional shelving in the pantry later on.

Also, they added a knee wall that there will be cabinets on

Phew, that was a lot! I will be gone all day tomorrow so hopefully I'll update Thursday night. Goodnight!

Day 1 was a BIG ONE

The guys were all supposed arrive before 8am but didn't end up starting until around 9:30 which was okay with me since I only slept about 4 hours last night. The other 4 hours were spent tossing and turning with my mind going about 100 mph as I got EVEN MORE excited about the project. That's just the way things go I guess.

When the guys arrived they immediately began to attack the wall between the dining room and kitchen much to my enjoyment:) I have dreamed of seeing it gone and I nearly teared up when I peeked in and saw they had removed about a foot from the bottom of the wall and I could see light pouring through from the other side. It was just as drastic as I had imagined. It took them about 30 minutes to get it down to the studs as they had to remove 2 layers of this thick cement board. I always thought we had plaster walls but it turns out otherwise. The studs took an additional 20 minutes minus a couple boards that are very strongly attached to the ceiling.

After that I ran out for lunch since my fridge was hardly accessible and scratched a couple things off my to-do list while my sweet mother-in-law had Turner for the day. When I arrived home a couple hours later the cabinets were all gone and the lack of insulation in our kitchen walls was exposed. Quite disappointing yet not surprising. I was relieved to see how spacious the space felt with the 2 rooms made into 1. We had debated about whether or not we needed to extend the back of our house to give us a bigger kitchen but we concluded it just wasn't necessary and we could make much better use of the existing space to give us what we need.

The guys took off at 4:00 which was just fine with the dogs who were excited to get their backyard back for the evening. By the end of the day I was pleasantly surprised and fascinated with the craftsmanship in which our house was built 70 years ago. The weights in the windows were visible when the trim was removed and left me in awe that people actually used to make windows like that.

Thus far, this is not as stressful as I thought it would be. We'll see how it goes tomorrow when I have my precious (and very curious) daughter toddling around this scene of destruction. I pray she'll be able to get some sort of nap in her pack n' play in our upstairs bathroom. I'll crank her noisemaker up as loud as it will go!

On the agenda for tomorrow:
1. Install french doors in the dining room
2. Replace the kitchen window with a larger, more efficient one that actually opens and closes
3. Wall off the current kitchen door