The kitchen

So the kitchen is pretty much finished. At least all the really hard and big stuff. So, finally, here are before and after pictures of whats completed.


Here is the before and after of the kitchen/living room wall. We opened up the doorway and made the fridge cave.

Before...

Before... but room cleared out.

The before picture of the outside of the fridge area...
The before doorway...



Finished product...

Before picture of where the fridge and microwave had to go. Took up a lot of room.

The fridge/microwave stand moved out...
After...

Looks and feels much more open.

The before fridge cave... no cave there
After picture... Look at that sexy fridge cave. Oh... and notice the cabinet paint change. We also put wood molding in instead of that hideous rubber stuff.
The floor before... It was lenoleum. It wasn't the worst thing in the kitchen but looks so much nicer with the tile

After... the new floor. We slaved over this dumb floor and it was the hardest and longest part of the kitchen. This picture isn't the best. But o-well... deal.
Our old oven... it was apartment size and very tiny and the oven temp was wrong so I always burned EVERYTHING.

Our new oven! We got it off craigslist for a great deal. Ignore the silver patch behind the oven. That is a work in progress. We eventually will put stainless steal sheets behind the oven and the backsplash. I spray painted a spot to see what it would look like.

For whatever reason I can't find a before picture of this shot. But I painted the cabinets and Rillz and Ren cut out that dishwasher space. The green cabinets are much calmer than the red. The red was just to in your face.

Old dishwasher... again, apartment size. I sold this little one for more than I paid for our new one.


The dishwasher... we got it off craigslist too.

The dishwasher was white with black trim and paneling. All our other appliances were completely black. So I spray painted the white parts with black appliance paint. Turned out great!

We bought this tool bench from Costco before we even started any renovation. We new it would be a perfect fit against this wall. The tool bench has a big butcher block on top too... perfect for prepping dinners on. It gives us more counter space and storage. All our utensils, pots, pans, bowls, knives, measuring spoons/cups, spices, foil and plastic wraps are stored in this tool bench.
People always ask if its a tool bench or if it really was made to go in a kitchen! Either way, we LOVE it in our kitchen. It's perfect.

This is the "backsplash" behind the countertops. We have not bought and put up the stainless steal yet. That is pretty much all we have left to do though. Oh, we bought kitchen things from Ikea that I can't wait to put up too!

Finally my kitchen is pretty much complete and my house isn't one big dust ball. Since our kitchen has been put back together we have NOT wanted to eat out. We were so sick of fast food and take out and restaurants. Rillz and I just get so excited to cook now. It doesn't feel as stressful as it used to in the old cramped kitchen. I know my kitchen is small but now it feels more efficiant and easier to move around in.

5 weeks in

So it has now been 5 weeks. We are VERY close to being done. I am not going to show pictures until the Kitchen is complete. But, it is coming along. Lets just say our fridge is officially in the cave. The baseboards are in and painted. Thanks to craigslist we upgraded our apartment sized appliances with a normal sized stove and dishwasher. Oh I LOVE craigslist! I buy so many things off there now and sell plenty too. There are still things to do in the kitchen but the thing to do now is go to bed.
Peace and love everyone

Wipe on, wipe off

Today is Monday and Rillz, me, Jeff, and Ren happen to have work off all together. Well, Ren is currently not working but Jeff and I never had Mondays off previous to today. So they all offered their time and labor to grout the kitchen. It was quite a learning experience. I had a good time and with all the help it took about 3 hours. Kristi came along too with the boys. Everyone was just laughing and smiling! The grout is complete and looks AMAZING! I am just so happy with it. Rillz and I still have to put tile around the kitchen for the baseboard area. Then we will seal the floor and put our appliances in. Woohoo.

The master grouter...

The "I am so bad at this" grouter

The "cool, this smoothes itself out" grouter

The "God didn't build me strong enough to do hard labor" grouter. Haha.

All four of us working in our areas

oooohhhh. I love the tile!

I can't wait until the kitchen is complete
Everyone worked so hard today and of course Rillz and I are very appreciative.

Wowza

So I didn't write a new post all week. Last week I had to go to Oregon for work. While I was gone Rillz worked and worked and worked really hard on laying the tile on the floor. Ren had helped too. I got back from Oregon and it looked great. The only thing left to lay were the triangle pieces around the perimeter. So Sunday morning I woke up and had planned to measure and cut all those triangle pieces. I had cut 4 pieces and than... oh crap... the blade on the saw wasn't spinning and the motor smelled of smoke. So I didn't touch it. Rillz got home and tried to see what was wrong with it. No luck. So we call the owner of the saw (Jeff of course) and he said to take it back to his house so he can look at it. Come to find out... I broke it. Jeff said the motor was bound to go and could have broken on anyone. Ok but dang it... why did it brake on me and make me look like the bad guy. I told Jeff he probably put me on his "do not let borrow" list. Haha. He let us borrow "big bertha". It's an old tile saw that weighs a million pounds and built much better than the one I broke. Rillz stayed up until 5 a.m. to finish laying ALL the floor tiles! He is so great! I am NOT built that way. I was so tired by 1 a.m. and retired shortly after.

Rillz and Ren working on the floor

This is the tile saw that quit on me... aka the saw I broke

This is "Big Bertha". I would NOT even touch this one. I made Rillz do the rest of the cutting

"Big Bertha" is noisy too.

3 weeks and counting

The remodel has officially been in progress for 3 weeks. Work is still going on but just a little slower. We basically only have the floor left and some touch up on paint.

Here is the cabinets all painted and the top ones hung back up. Goodbye forever red... I won't miss you.

The living room/kitchen wall and modeling painted by Rillz. He did an awesome job and looks so great!

The cave painted except for the cubby holes.

Yes, those are the only cabinets I have in my kithen. But, it's never been a problem because I have a HUGE pantry space down the hall. I haven't put the bottom cabinets on yet because they are in the way when dealing with the floor.

Jeff came over yesterday morning to teach me how to lay and cut tile. Rillz and I are planning to work hard on the floor tonight and tomorrow. The kitchen is really coming along and I am excited!

Our first laid tiles!


Holy cow tile is a lot of work. I won't be quitted my day job for tiling any time soon.

Jeff cutting tile.

The tile saw. I have to admit that I was FREAKED out to have to learn how to cut tile... but after cutting the first couple pieces I started to enjoy it.

I moved the fridge the other day (which is in our living room) and left scratch marks in our hard wood floors... oops.

Day 14 of remodel

It has been 2 weeks now since we started our remodel. Today I got to paint! I started by priming everything. The trim, the fridge "cave", and the cabinet drawers. When that was complete I painted the cabinets the color I picked out for them. It is called Lyndhurst Castle sand. Kind of a greenish gray. It will be interesting to see what the color looks like when the tile gets installed.




Good bye cabinets. The red never looked as good as I had wanted it. So I am glad to see it go.
All primed and waiting to be painted.
This is the new paint color. The pictures don't show the true color.

Ignore what is inside all the cabinets. Totally messy cupboards.

Definitely hard to tell what the real color is.

Next, paint the trim and the cave and all other touch up areas!

Day 12 and 13 of remodel

A lot got done on Friday and today. Ren came over and finished the sanding and put up the molding. It looks AWESOME! It is ready for me to prime and paint!

Looks great. Lucky us, Ren used to do molding, painting professionally. So he really knew what he was doing!

Working hard...

Look at the finishing detail on this end piece. So nice!

Later that night Jeff and the whole family came over. Gunnar was a great little helper and Brecken was a great cryer and Kristi was a great paint picker helper. I always love seeing either of my sisters though so that was fun. Anyways, Jeff came over to help with the floor. We realized our floor was REALLY uneven. Jeff decided to go down in the crawl space to make sure our kitchen floor was sound enough and the beams were going to support the weight over time. I was nervous that we were going to hear bad news and that we would have to replace something under the house. But, nope. Safe and sound! We didn't get the floor evened out Friday night and the Miller family left at almost midnight. Thanks for staying so late and helping!

Gunnar loved weiring those eye goggles. What a good little helper!

Our own man hole at our house. This is our crawl space. Kinda weird and different than a newer houses.


At least the crawl sapce is lined with plastic and somewhat clean. This is under my kitchen/house.

Ahhh... cute.

Brecken... always eating

Saturday morning remodel started early. I had to go to Home Depot to get levelquik to fix the floor. Jeff and Gunnar came to help at 8. We ended up having to cut a hole in the floor because there was a bump too big to sand or level out. At the end of a long remodel day, we almost got the floor leveled, we have a plan for laying the tile and had a successful day of nobody getting hurt! Tomorrow I am going to get painting done on the "cave" and the paint color Kristi and I picked out for the cabinets!

The leveling stuff. This is what our floor looks like now