to this
in only two and a half days!!! My wonderful husband and our awesome neighbors got this done so quickly and with minimal fuss and muss. We still have three or four kitchen projects to do. Such as painting, a bit of electrical, a project I will be doing to make the counters look more like granite (I will be posting a step by step how to after I do that), some retro curtains I need to make, and finishing boxing in the dishwasher. The biggest and
Our home was built in the 1970's and when we took the shelving that was in place down this is what we found:
Because I was born in the wrong decade (or so I've told my family my whole life) I found this to be wonderful! It appeals to the hippy-nature child side of me. I may not have mentioned this before, or I may have, but we are taking the whole house back in time. Most of our furniture is already from the 70's or later (the dining table the children do lessons at is from the 20's!) and we're gradually taking each room in the house back in time. The materials are sturdier, everything used better materials, I think it looks better, and you can find most of it for a whole lot less than the new stuff if you know where to look. We use Habitat for Humanities stores, thrift stores, estate sales, and salvage yards to get most of our supplies.
Day one, Monday, we didn't really begin on the kitchen demolition until after noon as I had to clear those super long shelves that I had just pretty much thrown things up on when we moved in. The cupboards weren't even going to be installed until Tuesday. However, our wonderful neighbors came down to the house and he began helping dear hubby with the wood strips to mount the cupboards to and just kept going from there...
The actual hanging of the wood pieces and placing of the cupboards did not begin until around 5pm! They finished the whole upper strip in just about four hours with no issue and working around me making supper for everyone. I know I had said I was going to keep it simple during construction but I did end up making pork chops in gravy, corn bread, and baked beans this night! Those poor wonderful men finished their work with a hot hot kitchen from that oven being on.
While the men were doing the destruction and construction, and I was whipping up dinner, neighbor lady had been attempting to look up several antique toys on the Internet while all three kiddos peeped over her shoulder and blathered in her ear. She was wonderful with all of them and when she got frustrated with the Internet search and Elder Cracker Jack volunteered to work on it for her she readily accepted. Boy, was she shocked when I thanked her for doing his computer lesson with him! (ECJ has been attempting to get more adept at search engines and so has been assigned this for computers.) Neighbor lady then got really excited about the fact that she was doing a lesson with him.
Day one down, everyone fed, children in bed, and parents exhausted. Morning dawned on day two and we were sore in places we'd forgotten that we had. Day two did not end up going as smoothly as day one. Two trips to the hardware store and another two trips to the plumbing store had us gritting our teeth and really pushing the limits of the no yelling rule. Plus, hubby's hand was still half numb from the electrical jolt that happened on day one when he was taking down the old under cupboard light.
This is what we found under the the cabinet next to the sink. For those of you who guessed correctly ten points! Yes, that is what a whole can of Great Stuff looks like when sprayed by a pipe when someone has cut a hole for the pipe too large. The people who had done this had never trimmed the excess stuff off once it had set. Just another item we've found on our list of "why in the world would they do this?". This made number ... oh about 368 that we've found since May!The new plumbing might not have had to be purchased and installed right away if we hadn't been moving the counter down about five inches. It was a good thing we did purchase it though ... while dear hubby was working on seeing if the old pipes could be shifted the large coupling that was there snapped and broke, which means that it most certainly would have done so the moment I turned on my dishwasher.
By the time we needed to leave for catechism for the older children this is what the kitchen looked like! Daddy finished the plumbing while the Cracker Jack's were at catechism and when he left to pick them up Peanut and I made a quick dinner of chicken nuggets, french fries, fresh green beans, and chipotle corn.
Do you see that tiny little gap between the wall and that stand-up cupboard? That was what was left of the entrance to the laundry room, my bedroom, and the second bathroom during the construction. Tight squeeze!! Poor hubby had very little chance of getting through there unless he moved that cupboard repeatedly with all of the dishes and canned goods inside of it!
When we were placing the drawers back in the cabinets we noticed this at the bottom of one of them ... there's the template they used for the cupboard doors and the shadows left by the adhesive added to the paper template. I thought it was extremely neat.
This is what our "new" cabinetry and counters look like at the moment. The cabinet next to the dishwasher is a newer model than the rest of them, and it is one that we already had. Keeping it gave us two and a half more feet of storage and counter space. My dearest husband will be refinishing it sometime in the near future to more closely match the wood on the other cabinets and cupboards.
Next to the stove that piece of wood is place holding (and blocking things from falling into the drawer bellow) for the built in cutting board for veggies that we will be installing soon. I always wanted one of these and am so happy we were able to fit one in at a place that made sense to me.
This light (and it's twin) were installed in the kitchen and dining areas. They supply more light and ascetically match the look we're going for. The kitchen and dining room were the darkest areas of the house and now, when the lights are on, they're the brightest! We're on the lookout for another pair of these for the hallway and living room to make the look consistent throughout the main part of the house.
By the time we were almost ready for bed last night, the children had been in bed for almost four hours by that time, my poor poor, lovable, brilliant, and wonderful husband looked like this:
I think he was about ready to loose his mind! But we all survived including this poor man and the kitchen is 100% functional in less than three days! This was also accomplished with no yelling and three kiddos bouncing off the walls every time we turned around.
So, my next "quick" project for this week is to get Younger Cracker Jack's dresser re-organized and her summer clothing switched for fall. This really needs to be done for everyone in the house but I'm not sure just how many of the dressers I will get to. We also were able to get about half of our lessons done for this week as well as not miss catechism and manage to get to swim class tonight as well! Two days left before the weekend and Friday we're not doing too many lessons as we'll be going to a pumpkin patch that has other attractions with Noni. Whatever that's in my lesson plans that doesn't get done tomorrow we'll just carry into the weekend.
** Quick note: Even with all of this going on we've managed to log about 13 hours outside this week for the 1000 Hours Outside Challenge
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