March, back in time...

OMG!  How long has it been!  I kept on putting off posting because I didn't see the point of blogging just about the ceiling, or just about painting, or just about cabinets, or countertops. But now almost everything is done and the new baby is down for a nap so what the heck! Let's catch up!

Do you remember this...

 Now it looks like...THIS

And this...

 

Is...THIS

And THIS

After we put in the floors it was hard to decide what to do next.  I needed to re-texture the ceiling, paint it and put in the new lighting fixtures. Install the cabinets, tile the countertops, put up the backsplash and paint the upper cabinets. Install the kitchen sink, the garbage disposer, and the dishwasher.

 But what to do first?

The ceiling, duh, that would make the most sense.  But why would I do the ceiling when our cabinets are ready for pick up and cabinets are exciting!  So I go to the warehouse to pick up the cabinets, back-in our subaru outback and then watch as the freightworkers fight back their laughter.  Then I see the massive pile of boxes labeled "Peterson".   Ha, yeah, I don't think that will fit.  The manager came out and looked from my car to the pile of boxes and said "Let me offer you a deal. Delivery at cost."  SWEET! Instead of lugging these gigantic things back on my lonesome, I can get them delivered by some muscular men and rolled right into my living room!

So one day Adam and I unboxed these beautiful Masco Cabinets, just for a "dry fit" and then the next day we started screwing them in. And for amateurs I think we did a pretty good job.  It helped that the floor we laid was remarkably flat and a good foundation.  

 There was even room in the budget for Millie to get her own special cabinet.

And since we had the cabinets in we decided that the countertops were the next logical step.  Our material choice was something a little different, we ordered American Olean St. Germain- Chocolat in 12"x24" tiles direct from Dal-Tile.  Theorizing that we didn't want a bunch of grout lines that would make for an uneven cutting surface, but at the same time we didn't want to have to spend buku bucks on granite or some other slab style product, we agreed to do as much of the renovation ourselves as we could and that led us to the idea of these large tiles. 

Step One: Over the top of the cabinets we screwed down a layer of 0.53" plywood, as a base for the tile.

And then we took a mini-break weekend to San Jose and watched the Edmonton Oilers score on the Sharks faster than they have ever been scored on at home.

Back in town, we had to wait an extra week because our tile shipment was slightly delayed, but since we already had the plywood down we at least had something like countertop to work off of.  The remodel laziness had started to set in, and China East ( a great little place a mile away from our house with a $6 lunch special) was getting a lot of my business.

Finally, I received a phone call. The tile was ready for pick-up.

Step Two: Cut and lay the tile.

Step Three: Nail in the bumper.

Step Four: Grout. Voi La!

I have this bad habit of not reading directions very well, or at all.  And this has led me on two different occasions to make up ridiculous amounts of grout.  This was one of those occasions, to make the most of it I moved onto installing the backsplash as quickly as possible so we could avoid waste.  Me and my pregnant belly spent and evening cutting and putting up our beautiful glass tile backsplash.  Nothing like manual labor to make you wish that your waist was ten or fifteen inches slimmer!

We got the glass tile at the infamous Lowe's moving sale and even though we purchased all that was left on the shelf it wasn't enough to go from countertop to cabinet.  But, hey! I have all this extra grout!  Why not put it to use?

After smooshing up the extra grout to cover the dead space between the tile and the cabinets we debated painting it the same pale yellow we had planned form the rest of the kitchen.  We decided to leave it for a while and see how we felt a little later, and whether it was pure laziness or not it has remained unpainted.  Rustic, I like to say and really I do like it. Some things we planned and they turned out awesome other things just kind of happened and they turned out even better.  We are just lucky like that.

On to the next adventure, our cherry butcherblock is ready for pick-up at Lumber Liquidators.  Babysitters in place, I struck out with our good ole subaru legacy.  The butcherblock fit, no problem and I headed home.  When Adam got home from work we were able to move the countertop inside and cut it to fit.  Cutting the sink hole was a real hardship.  We broke two bits and got a third one stuck then when we went to pry it out with pliers it twisted into uselessness. We did, however, triumph in the end.

Next we screwed down a layer of plywood to the cabinets, squirted some glue, and screwed up through the plywood to anchor the butcherblock. I got some generic block oil from a restaurant supply company and oiled it down for a finish.

Unsatisfied with the blonde look of the wood, I did some research and happened upon dark raw tung oil at www.realmilkpaint.com.  Click, shopping cart, check out and... in three weeks my dark raw tung oil will arrive. Yippee!

One day it happened, the procrastinating ended and the ceiling got textured, my triceps screamed at me for two days afterwards but it was accomplished.  My dad had mentioned a skip-trowel technique and I tried to follow his basic guidelines, as best as I could understand them from our over-the-phone conversation.  And my understanding was to glob spackle in random places and then smooth them out, but not entirely smooth.  What I ended up with looked something like mexi-style plaster.  Well, the hard part was done, so the painting could commence! The color "Butterfly Bush" (a lot of jokes were traded back and forth between me and Adam at the expense of this poor paint), a cheerful yellow, in no other finish than semi-gloss.

 And then the month was over!

It's a little hard to keep things straight, but our extensive photo archive is helping me quite a bit. I figure it will be easiest to catch you all up if I go month by month. March down! April and May to go!

 On a side note: Pregnancy is a funny thing, when I was pregnant (spoiler alert! I am no longer pregnant) I dodged every picture possible but now looking back I wish I could see how big I really was, in the belly.  That's it only the belly, not the arms or legs or neck (ugh) or face (double ugh), maybe the boobs would be ok, so just the torso.  I wish I had taken photos of my pregnant torso.  Because I feel like what we accomplished was pretty impressive but I don't have any physical proof of exactly how amazing it was for me to lean over let alone do anything while in a leaning position.

Plumb Tired

Monday morning Adam shut off the main water to the house and took a hack saw to the galvanized steel supply lines that ran to the kitchen sink.  He worked hard all day under the house trying to loosen the threads of the pipes so we could tie in our extensions.  We went to Ace and Adam picked up a propane torch to heat up the the pipes and hopefully loosen up the pipe dope that had been aging for 65+ years. It took almost all of Tuesday to loosen the pipes, with much banging.  Then we drilled holes for the new supply pipes and attached the new soft copper tubing to the old galvanized pipe with some dialectric unions.  In hindsight some hilarity ensued that Tuesday night as we tried to flare our copper pipe so that it would fit into the compression joints I got at Lowes. 

It wasn't until Wednesday morning when I went to Home Depot that someone explained to me that there are three ways to join copper tubing, sweating, compression, and flaring.  We were working with some oddly sized pipe copper nom. 3/8" o.d. 1/2" and most of the fittings we got were 5/8"!  So of course it wasn't working, we didn't even have the right size fittings!  While Adam was at work on Wednesday I got the correct size fittings and trekked under the house to replace the odd size ones.  It had snowed early that morning, so instead of the regular discomforts of being six months pregnant I got to add being six months pregnant, covered in snow and scooting in the pitch dark crawl space under our house.  It really wasn't that bad and in time for my job interview I had the odd couplings switched out.  I switched out the push-fit valves for some threaded brass valves.  When Adam got home we flipped on the main water and sure enough there were leaks in almost every place possible. That night Adam was swept with a stomach flu and called into work sick Thursday.  And although he was sick, he is a wonderful man and worked on the plumbing with me anyway.  We tweaked some things and slathered some pipe thread compound.  The compound instructions said it took 48 hours to set, in a water-free environment. 

We waited until Sunday to test the pipes and when we did there were still a couple of leaking couplings.  After another trip to the hardware store to get some fresh compression sleeves we reassembled the compression joints one more time and were met with success!  Only a week of no water and we successfully did our own plumbing.

On Thursday while Adam worked on the plumbing I went to Lumber Liquidators (301 sq. ft. for $1.49/sq. ft.) and picked up the Nirvana laminate we had on order for our dining room and kitchen. On Saturday my sister-in-law Bethany took Millie off my hands so I could focus on laying the flooring. 

I was able to lay the dining room and then Adam and his dad finished the kitchen.  We finished with only one board to spare. 

 

With the floor laid the boys were able to bring in the new fridge and range.  And then the cabinets were delivered.  This week the kitchen is really coming alive.  Before we had to imagine what it would look like but now its really coming together. 

Making It to the Refinish

After reading up on how easy it is to refinish hardwood floors it was time to put it into practice.  So Tuesday morning we went to our local Home Depot Tool Rental Center and picked up a drum sander.  After a few unwieldy practice passes Adam got a feel for it and managed to rough sand, patch and  fine sand the floor in a couple of hours.  It was my job to sand down the edges, that Adam couldn't reach with the drum.  It was during this that we discovered our hand sander was not up for the job and it was time for an upgrade.  So, yay, another trip to Home Depot. 

With all the sanding done in pretty much one day.  I had plenty of time to lay down a base coat on Wednesday morning.  Adam picked up a buffer on his way home from work.

Despite what we had read about the difficulty of drum sanding and the relative ease of using a buffer, Adam found the buffer onerous in comparison with the drum sander.  But it wasn't the buffer that kept us from sleeping in our house Wednesday night, nope that was the acetone based lacquer that I laid as our base coat.  Millie and I shacked up at the Baymont Inn while Adam strapped on the respirator and buffed and buffed.  He joined us later for dinner and a night's sleep in a fume-free space.

The following day I dropped Millie at daycare after taking FULL advantage of the complimentary breakfast and headed back to the house to lay another layer of lacquer. 

Thanks to a full day of  open windows and a good breeze we were able to spend the night in our own home Thursday night.  Friday I bought a gallon of water-based polyurethane and laid down two more coats.  I also got a five gallon tub of blue-gray from the mistint pile at Kelly-Moore for $20.  With the floors done, Adam and I started on building the pony wall for the kitchen island and painting the living/dining room.  No more bland beigey-white, time to class it up with two-tone blue-gray and a painted "chair rail".

The final product is just SO pretty!


Tomorrow we take on the wiring and plumbing, eek!

Reno Kitchen Renovation: Part One

Let Fly the Hammer

We are back from traveling for the holidays, we have had a chance to settle back into our Reno lives so now its time to mix things up again.  What started as a desire for a dishwasher has become a full blown kitchen remodel.  New floors, new cabinets, a new layout, new light fixtures, new ceiling fan, and best yet new stainless steel appliances.  With a target budget of $5,000 let's see how far we can make it.  A couple things are working in our favor in that direction, the manufacturer's are offering awesome rebates on appliances and the Lowe's by our house is closing and for the last week everything has been 50% off. 

First here are some pictures of what we had to work with initially.

And here are some sketches of what we are working towards.

Saturdays Adam works but I wanted to hit this thing head on, so today Will and Chris came over to lend a brotherly hand.  A craigslister came to take the base cabinets and was able to remove them pretty lickety split. In less than an hour he was in and out.  Then we got to get down to the dirty work!  Ripping up the indoor/outdoor carpet and tearing up the particle board floor that covers the mysteries underneath.

The brothers did the hard work and I got to sweep up after.  Next up, refinishing the hardwood floors and then moving the plumbing for the sink (dunh dunh dunh).