The demolition phase of any home remodeling project can take a while. But when you have a husband and wife team with little to no experience, it can take a loooong time! My husband took off work for a week to complete this project, and we knew that we'd probably still be putting the finishing touches on once the initial week had come to a close, but we didn't figure it would take the whole five days just to get everything torn apart! We found ourselves asking each other if this was really necessary about every ten minutes! We shared a lot of frustrations, but also a lot of laughs during those few days! I'm considering a future blog posts of all of the really ridiculous comments I made during the process and I think I'll title it "Kitchen Renovation Blonde Moments" because there sure were a lot of them! Like the time I told my husband that I knew what a circular saw was for - cutting circles in wood, of course! He looked at me expecting me to be joking, but I was totally serious! My dad apologized to him for not teaching me enough during my childhood!!
Anyway, I spent a lot of time during the week in my grandparents' garage painting the cabinets. It started out with me just borrowing their garage for the space because it was raining a lot outside, but then it became my grandpa critiquing my every move! This quickly turned into him grabbing the brush from my hand and helping himself to a roller and just taking over the job. Ivan offered to help me paint in exchange for a few bucks because he is saving up for a Lego set, but he quickly disappeared into the kitchen to play games and eat snacks with my grandma! My grandpa is coming up on his 88th birthday and really shouldn't be working hard in his garage, but he is one of the most stubborn men I've ever met, so I just let him do his thing! I love my grandparents so very much, and the fact that I can watch my child work with my grandpa and play with my grandma just the way I did growing up makes my heart so happy! I smiled ear to ear watching him enjoy spending a few days with them. I have such fond memories of working in the garage with my grandpa on random projects and making signs for my bedroom and then going into the house to enjoy snacks and card games with both of them. I think that's what life is really about - making memories with those who mean the most to you.
Once the cabinet doors and shelves were painted, I added some shelf paper to help preserve the cabinets a little bit, and then Michelle came over to help me paint the cabinets themselves! We may have enjoyed a glass (or two) of wine during the process, but I'm sure it made us work even harder! ;) Chris and Ivan jumped in to help, as well, and we all had a great time working together! Once the cabinets were completely painted, we were ready to move onto cutting and installing the counter top. Chris used his circular saw (to cut a straight line if that even makes any sense!) to cut the counter top down to the right size, and a jigsaw (I've learned a lot about power tools in case ya couldn't tell!) to cut out the hole for the sink, and he installed that and a brand new faucet. I can finally see that everything is starting to come together, and I love it!
We were all set to put the hardware on the cabinets when we realized that we bought the wrong type of hinges, so back to Lowe's we went. But guess what?! They didn't work either, so we had to go back!! I'm pretty sure we were there every single day for a week straight! Then we realized once were putting the new handles on the drawers that we didn't actually measure to make sure the holes were correctly spaced, so now we have to add that to our list of things to fix! Michelle always says "Measure twice, or even three times, cut once." Thankfully we listened when measuring and cutting the counter top, but we clearly didn't listen with these new handles! Oh well, I guess it adds to our remodel story, right?!
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| Aw Nuts! |
Working on a kitchen is just that...a lot of work! So Ivan and I decided to play hookie and head off for a day of fun! We went to Young's Dairy Farm and enjoyed lunch, putt-putt golf, and ICE CREAM!! Life is about balance, right?! And all work and no play would just make for a rough life!
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| This is how I feel at this stage of the process! |
Stay tuned for part three!
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