Renovations DAY 7

I thought that I would switch things up tonight and offer today's progress in video form instead of taking pics and typing out what we did. Part of the reason for this is because my arms hurt from painting the ceiling. In addition to what is in the video, we also primed the ceiling in the living room. Tomorrow we will paint it because we now have more paint to do so since the kitchen ceiling has BOTH coats now. YAY! You will notice that I slapped the paint on the ceiling without trying not to get it on the wall. I figured that if I was going to paint the walls anyway, I might as well make it easy on myself. So without further ado, here's today's progress.

Bonus remodeling project Days 4-5 + Day 6

We took yesterday off to hang out and recuperate. Today we are back at it, but we are switching gears and doing something different. We have a flower bed on one side of the house that is filled to the gills with lilies and cannas. They are so thick that the flowers don't really even bloom anymore, not to mention that there are ornamental strawberries and some other vine junk all in them. It's a mess. We have decided to expand our landscaping to the other side of the house to even things out. By installing the new flower bed, we will be able to dig up, divide, and transplant the flowers (and clean out the vines) to make 2 healthy beds. Yay free landscaping! We did have to buy the edging, and we will buy mulch, but all in all it's pretty cheap for a big impact. Yesterday, my father in law brought his tiller over and we tilled up along the side of the house. This is sort of a bonus project that we decided to throw into the mix for fun.  Since we had the major tilling done, we were raking out the grass and breaking up some larger clumps. We didn't get to till it too much since we were having the birthday party not to mention that it started to rain :( We both mentioned that it sure would be nice to have a small tiller to hit it again and really break it up into finer soil. Me:  I don't think those little tillers are all that expensive, maybe we should just go buy one and do a better job. Henry: That would be nice, but our budget says we just have to do it by hand. *sigh*

So here are pics of what we did.

This is the area that Henry's dad tilled up for us.
This side of the house had no landscaping at all.

This is the other side of the house.
It had waaaay too many lilies and cannas.

More cannas & lilies.

This "bump out" will eventually
have a nice weeping cherry or
something similar. 

This is the side of the house with the new bed. It still needs
mulch, but when the plants start to grow it will really fill in .

This is the side of the house that had all the lilies and cannas.
There were so many that I replanted this bed, filled the new bed,
and gave some to my neighbor. I'm hoping that they will have
enough room to grow and bloom now.

DAY 6

You might not notice, but we painted the ceiling white.
Tomorrow it will get a second coat. P.S. Don't mock my crappy
paint job on the wall, I'm going to paint the walls anyway so I
wasn't really careful when I painted the ceiling.

 Tomorrow I will second coat the ceiling I did today, first coat the ceiling in the living room where I will have to be much more careful with my paint because I don't have anymore of that paint to touch up :-/ , and we will begin priming the cabinets! YAY!! Today I feel productive and hopeful. I'm beginning to get excited because I can see things going up instead of coming down.

Downstairs Remodel- Day 3

11:00
So far today, we have sanded most of the edges of the cabinet doors, and added trim to the upper cabinets. It looks so much better already, as I tend to think that the cabinets were screaming for trim all this time. As for the door sanding, the right tool really does make a difference and it's going much faster than it would have by hand. We still have so much farther to go, but it's getting there. :) This project is definitely not for the lazy or faint of heart. It's tedious, seriously messy, and lengthy.

1:00
The cabinet sanding is done! I really hope that we don't have anymore of it to do. If I haven't said it before, I hate sanding! I think we are dangerously close to starting clean up.

2:00
Clean up has begun! YAY!

4:00
The cabinets are as clean as they are going to get for now and we have put stuff back into them so that we can function. I plan to paint them while they are still loaded. ;)

Here are a couple of not great pics of our progress. I took some before we started, but they were awful because the lighting was bad so you'll just have to use your imagination.

 This is the cabinet that you see when you walk into the front door. We added molding to the top so that there isn't a gap :)

We also added molding to the rest of the cabinets to move them a little farther away from "builder grade". As you can see, they have been sanded- YAY!
You will also notice that underneath the cabinet, there are 2 paint choices- we are going with the one on the left for the kitchen/dining room, and the one on the right for the hallway/stairway.

Downstairs Remodel- Day 2

I am writing this blog post throughout the day, so if it seems a little choppy, that's why.

Day 2 of our remodel started with a trip to the Depot to get some basic supplies like wood, sandpaper, paint rollers, etc. That trip cost less than I was afraid that it would. We left the Depot, dropped our supplies off, and went to Benjamin Moore to get primer and paint for the cabinets. Holy expletive Batman! I was glad that the Depot trip was less than expected because that trip to BM... it was NOT cheap! This primer and paint better jump up on the cabinets by themselves when I open the buckets. Anyway, after we sucked down our Mickey D's, it was time to get to work. Henry had already taken the doors off the cabinets while I was at an ortho appt (he says at least 2 more appts, so maybe I'll get them off Summerish- his terms, not mine) so when I got back, I took off the hinges and started sanding. He cut plywood to cover the contact paper that the lovely cabinet makers chose to put on the sides of our cabinets instead of wood. We have puttied holes and cracks in the cabinets and they are drying. Henry sanded the cabinet frames. :) What a nice guy!

We had this crazy quarter round at the top of our backsplash because the wall is so uneven that it left a gap. We learned about this gap when we removed the quarter round because I think it looks cheap and like a half hearted attempt to upgrade. The crack was so big in some spots that even caulk wouldn't fill it because it would fall down before it got the chance. What to do? Henry had this brilliant idea that we could get spray foam! Brilliant I say! I used said foam to fill the big gaps. When it's dry we will apply caulk over it and do a little paint magic to make it look like the counter top goes all the way back to the wall, at least that is our plan.

I should mention that we have used baby gates to block off the kitchen/dining room from the rest of the house, and we have hung sheets up in an attempt to keep the dust contained. We have also been reading that young house love blog thing and we are attempting to follow their directions on cabinet painting. We could not get their recommended brand of de-glosser or primer, so we got another brand instead. Here's hoping that it works as well. 

I think that we have decided to break up this huge downstairs remodel into sections so that it isn't so overwhelming. This week we really hope to get the ceilings painted, and the cabinets primed and painted. I think we are going to order the new hinges and handles tonight. Maybe next month, we will paint the walls and trim. It's all the little things that add up and become a time drain. That is why our deadline is Thanksgiving. I will just be pleasantly surprised if it is done before then.

So at 7:30 this evening, we were attempting to sand the edges of our cabinet doors, by hand, on this crazy curvy surface when it hit me, they make a tool for this! I mean just for this! Why in the world were we doing it by hand?!?! I dashed back to the Depot and purchased "The Mouse". We tested it out and it's so much easier than doing it by hand with a tiny scrap of paper. I will finish the edges tomorrow. Tonight we are ordering the hardware! Woot.

Tonight I'm feeling a little relieved that we have really started and we've made good progress. I will post pics soon, but honestly I'm just too tired to do it tonight. 

Downstairs remodel- DAY 1

Today is Wednesday, and Henry has taken Thursday and Friday off work, as well as all of next week. We have made a short list of projects that we'd like to complete during that time, and since the boys will be out of school for Spring Break, they will go to my mom's so that we can really tear through some of this. Kinsley goes to the neighbor's on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and she still takes a nap each day. We are hoping to keep her and the dog out of paint. We shall see. Anyway, since he will be off tomorrow, we plan to:

1. Sand the cabinets
2. Check out and purchase paint
3. Purchase cabinet trim
4. Do a little work to the cabinets before we paint them

That means that today's project is to clear out the space. I'm packing up the kitchen. I'm not doing a super job as I'm only moving things to the living room and they will only have to be there... a week+? No more than 2 weeks I hope. I would also like to remove the cabinet doors and drawers. I have started packing already, and I'm choosing to take this opportunity to purge and clean. I'll be honest, I don't clean on top of the cabinets very often, and I've already found some tupperware without lids. Straight to the trash for those items. I'm sure that I'll find things I forgot I had. I am not ashamed to admit that I am using plastic bags to "pack" plastic or non breakable things.
I should also add that Kinsley's birthday is Friday and her party is Saturday. Henry asked if I wanted to wait until after that  to start all this, but there's no time like the present and we need to utilize all of the time we have so that this remodel doesn't go on forever. Some of the details are already likely to get put off until a later date. (I have this crazy detail plan for the stairs but shhhhh). Besides, our families know that this is how we roll and I'd rather them see progress than more of the same ;) We actually started little bits of renovation last week, but I'll blog about them later. In case I didn't say it before, I am NOT looking forward to these renovations because I know it's going to take a looong time, but it's time to get them done. Today, I'm feeling hopeful that it will go faster and easier than I think it might.

Post post note
Things I found while cleaning out the cabinets

1. We have lots of beer and wine glasses, though I'm not sure why. We also have NO margaritta glasses, but I plan to remedy that after this is all over with and I purchase some to celebrate our success.
2. We have alot of medications in the cabinets. I'm not sure why they are in the kitchen, probably for convenience.
3. Caramel Marshmallows
4. 2 count them, 2 GIANT chocolate bars. Please don't revoke my girl card for having forgotten chocolate in the house. 
5. Attachments for my stand mixer. Now these weren't lost as I haven't been looking for them, but it is good to know where they are, er, were.
6. Random kitchen gadgets that I don't ever use but have "just in case". I might get rid of some of these in the yard sale we intend to have soon. 
7. Gumbo base, SCORE!
8. Random condiments, I'm checking expiration dates...

The Great Kitchen Remodel gets underway

It's been a long time since I have blogged, but honestly I've been too busy to do it and with facebook, you can basically blog all day every day so the need for an actual cohesive blog seems to fall to the wayside. Someday I'll write about what I've been doing for the last year, but until then here is what I'm doing NOW. It is now time for the kitchen remodel to resume. We took time off because we were sick of it and we wanted to do other things, and we had Kinsley, and I started a small embroidery business and life in general happened. I guess that is what we've been doing in a nutshell. Anyway, we have ambitions for this remodel to be finished in time to have Thanksgiving dinner Griswold style at our house this year. I told him that I would agree to that IF the first floor remodel was done. So that's how we got our goal. We made a super long list of things that we'd like to get done, and tried to include as many details as possible. We are upgrading everything that you will see downstairs. The ceilings, walls, and trim are getting repainted, as well as the cabinets (YAY!) and the half bath, stairway and hall. I would like to paint the laundry room maybe, but we'll see. We hope to upgrade/add some lighting, and finish the whole thing up with... wait for it... NEW FLOORING!!! That has been bumped lower on the list for long enough. I am so sick of shampooing the carpet, but so grateful to my mom for donating her carpet cleaner to my cause. I plan to blog about out progress every day, but sometimes things happen and I won't get to it. I hope that you all enjoy seeing the progress as much as we will enjoy the finished product. Are you ready? Here we go..........