Wowwy Wowsers Weekend

 

There are weekends that are so productive that it blows your mind.   This past one was just that.  It all started when my mom and dad showed up to stay with our littles while my husband and I ran off to the big city.  Yep, it was a productive weekend and I didn't even have to be here!!  Clancey anxiously awaited the arrival of Mema and Papa...... 

...helped Papa bring in all the tools. 

And my dad got right to work. 

Remember this lonely corner in the kitchen?   

Remember how it looked a few months ago?   

Then I found a couple sad cabinets at the ReStore. 

This one was so sad they sold it for $5.  That's pretty sad. 

With the magic of paint, trim and new hardware.....we have this! 

And then Dad produced THIS!!!!!    Shelves all the way to the ceiling.   

How awesome is that?  Yep, shall I mention again how much my dad ROCKS?! 

Look at that beautiful detail!!!  Love the curvy shelf feet.  The wood wasn't quite "cured" yet....so I will have a nice little painting project waiting for me when the kiddos go back to school in the fall. :-)  I will paint it with the same enamel paint that is on the cabinets down below.

THEN, Dad whipped this curtain rod up....that's been sitting around for a jillion years.  Leveling....Dad is GREAT at leveling.  I, on the otherhand have a deficiency in this area....so I leave the leveling to him.  Ignore the unplanted tomato plants on the lovely folding table, the Cozy Coupe, the roller coaster and my $1 chair that needs a slipcover....admire the lovely curtain rod and curtain panels....and my sweet baby boy. ;-)  Focus.  Focus on the window. hehehe

THEN, as if all that wasn't enough.....Dad installed our bedroom ceiling fan!  We've had bare wires hanging in that spot for oh.....about.....two years.  Ever since our other fan started making an annoying noise and went away.  My husband is very thankful, as his body temperature reaches approximately that of the space shuttle launch, while he sleeps. 

THANK YOU DAD!!!!!!!  And MOM for taking care of EVERYTHING else while Dad worked!!!

Up Top

Finishing the ceiling has been the catalyst to SO many wonderful finishing touches in the kitchen-project-that-has lasted-into-infinity.  Would it be strange to invite everyone I know over just to stare at my kitchen ceiling.  Perhaps I should do that in private, so as not to reveal my obsession with it. ;-)  Did you know that drywall can be finished with NO SANDING AT ALL?  Um....apparently it can....by Rich.  Do you remember I talked about Rich and the ceiling a bit ago.  

However....I never showed a photo of the finished product.

I've never seen a more beautiful, smooth, perfect ceiling in all my life.  For reals.  Rich was here twice a day for a week to produce this glorious masterpiece.  WITH NO SANDING.  Guess what Rich is doing next?  Remodeling my bathroom....I mean seriously...if you can produce a finish like that you're more than qualified to tackle my gross bathroom. 

Then today, superhero #2 arrived.  My super awesome electrically talented friend Adam stopped by to put up my light fixtures.  (Do you remember Adam?)  The light fixtures that have sat in boxes in my foyer for oh....about 3000 years.  He had them up in a jiffy....and I fell over from swooning.  I was only a moderate amount of help due to the fact I spent most of the time staring in delight at the beautiful fixtures against the beautiful ceiling.   

This was the first beautiful girl to go up.  And look....it even lights up! 

Oh....soooooo.....pretttyyyyyy.  The fixture above the stove is a smaller size than the next two...... 

Hello big beautiful ladies.  You provide the prettiest light....can't wait for dark to really try you out. 

What a happy light family.  And a happy Jen.

Bulkheads Just Wanna Have Fun

On Day 3 of our journey through the kitchen details I'll show you the north wall.  This wall isn't ENTIRELY finished...a couple teeny things to finish....but I wanted to show you one of my favorites.  So as we can see....this is the before.  (Gosh, I hope you didn't think that was the after. ;-)   

For matter of budget, effort, basically not wanting to mess with them, I kept our cabinets intact. I painted them bright white with some super duper paint my paint store guy recommended.  Truly, it will change your life if you use it. (but I'm too lazy to go to the basement to get the name of it....if you'd like the name jingle me.)  I changed all the hardware...all brushed nickel bin pulls and handles now.  Loves them.  But before we get to all that....take a look up there at the bulkhead.  From the day we moved in it looked gross, dirty, spackley...yuck.   

SOOO....I decided to make it fun.  Bulkheads just wanna have fun.  And what is more fun than a chalkboard I ask you?  Not too much I say.  Now I realize this will not float everyone's boat.  You may look at it with a lemon face and say oooh, why would she do something weird like that?  I love it, that's why.  I can change what it says every five minutes if I so desire....and I have a thing for words....and only so much space in my house for more signs.   Or I can draw Christmas trees on it....or attempt to chalk any number of the amazing things that Michael draws on his chalkboards like this or this or this.

Love the black against the white.

Today it says "All good things are wild, and free."  It's Henry David Thoreau being a genius. 

Just think if we were all a tad more wild and free.  Glorious.

I wish you could all smell those roses on the counter right now.  Heavenly. 

Nothing like an old fashioned rose plucked from the yard. 

Yep, I'm loving it. You might want to go wild and give it a try.  It's only paint.

The littles discussed the quote.  Big brother whispered to little brother "I think she's talking about us."  :-)

East Wall...How I Love Thee

These before and after posts are kinda fun.  Not just KINDA fun....they are a whole

whoppin' lug of fun.  ;-)   The amount of work this kitchen remodel took is sort of overwhelming me when I look back through the photos.  Thank goodness it was the kitchen and not some unused bedroom that I could shut the door on and walk away for the next 47 years.  I would have...in a heartbeat...done that about 2, 298 times during this process.  It was hard.  I will say, however, that I am proud of myself.  I'm proud of what I did with my own two hands and sheer willpower.  I think too often too many women see their only worth in what the scale says, what brand of makeup they can afford to purchase or where their purses come from.  Certainly not all women (and BOY do I ever know some amazing women!!  Future post I think)....but too many women.  DO something....do something amazing that you didn't think you could do...make a difference in the world.  Okay, end of soapbox.   ON TO THE FUN STUFF!!!!

The process was messy.  The first night my husband offered to help (because he loves me).  And I was an emotional wreck after discovering just HOW MUCH work this was going to take.  You might notice this is the last time the hubster appears in the photos....he's a smart man...that stayed FAR AWAY from my insane project. LOL

The day I took this photo I could not believe the progress I was making.  Now it makes me get a little sick in my mouth.  OMG, what was I thinking?  Crazy girl syndrome. 

 Clinical...like, should be in an institute kind of crazy. 

But oh was it worth it.  I'm actually getting teary.  Look at my beautiful baby.  Every nail, every drop of paint, every bit of measuring and remeasuring....it was me.  The ceiling, that was Rich....and worth every stinkin' penny....the ceiling will get an entire post of its own. It's that awesome.  The bamboo blind...that was my dad.  He rocks.   Have I mentioned?  If a project involves leveling, I leave it to him.  Clearly I'm not on the level. ;-)

And look how pretty Becky's fruit bowl looks with the blinds. 

And from this angle....pretty fruit bowl, half naked little, cool vintage fan...gotta move some air around here. 

Hello beautiful.  Welcome to my kitchen.  You shall keep us cool for years to come.  I shall go collapse now.

Bulkhead detail tomorrow.....you're gonna love this one.

Linking to:

Strut Your Stuff Thursday

The Details Shall Commence

Way back in the beginning.....the end was nowhere in sight. 

Then I went crazy and jumped in with both feet. 

And made all kinds of messes....with perfectly good intentions.   I WOULD HAVE THE KITCHEN I'D ALWAYS WANTED.  Come hell or high water.

But now.....now the light is shining bright at the end of the tunnel.  Details.  We're down to the details here people!!  Although after a year of some of the hardest work I've ever done, I'm zapped.  My brain cells are gone.  I feel like that guy up there in the instructions.  (Pot rack instructions to be exact!! :-)   Except I didn't call IKEA.   I called..... 

....my dad.  Thank goodness for him.  He has an eye for perfection....if you want a project done the right way, call this guy.  He never fails to impress. 

And he knows all the cool tricks.   Did you know if you twirl your screws around on a candle before screwing them in they'll go in SO much easier?  Neither did I.   He does.  Thank God. 

Thar she is.   Isn't she a bute?  Picked her up on Kim and Jen's Excellent Adventure (to IKEA). 

I hesitated for oh.....about long enough for my dad to step out of the way to load her up. 

So purty.  And functional.  No, that was not my idea about hanging the lids right on the pans...genius, huh?  Leave it to those IKEA folks.  Genius, pure genius.

The Ceiling...Can it really be?

This little hole started it all.   IT. ALL.   A year-ish ago I got a wild hair, as I tend to do frequently. (Sorry babe.)  I wondered what might be hiding above the dropped ceiling in our kitchen. It started innocently enough...I took down the drop in the entryway....to expose a BEADBOARD ceiling.  It was a joyous occassion.    That project went SO great that I decided......

....to just take a TEENSY WEENSY peak at what was above the ceiling of the kitchen proper.  Soooo....I poked a little hole....that got a little bit bigger....until it was big enough to squeeze my camera up inside the drop ceiling..... 

....to take a picture of this.  Between the drop ceiling and the original ceiling there was approximately 40 tons of blown-in insulation.  Dirty, filthy, dusty, yucky insulation. 

But, being of the insane variety that i am now sure I am, I proceeded on.  Shoveling the insulation onto the floor as I went.

Thing were promising.  My vision was to take down the ENTIRE drop ceiling....the drywall layer, the fiber board layer, then all the framework that comprised the drop.

I worked and worked, devising a strategy as I went.....FYI, if you take ONE layer down at a time it's much easier.

I made an enormous mess (and cleaned it all up).....everynight.....for about two weeks.  I think I may have died and been reincarnated...because I have no idea how I survived. 

THEN....after all those days of work I came to THIS.  GIANT, GAPING, TEAR INDUCING, HOLES in the original ceiling.  Our kitchen has its own roof...a roof I never wanted to see from the UNDER side.  From as far as I can discern, a genius home improver before myself had crawled into the little crawl space above the kitchen, broke huge holes in the original plaster and lathe to allow for the blown in insulation to migrate in between the two layers of ceiling.   Broken.  Huge broken holes.  This discovery took years off my life, for reals. 

What do I do now? I asked myself.  The only real solution is to replace the ceiling, as is, on the framework of the drop.  I was okay with that...sorta.  I REALLY wanted it to be back to its original height...but alas, it was not meant to be.  So I put up some plastic to contain the bits that kept falling from the ceiling as I was cooking.... 

Fixed the gaping holes with small pieces of drywall.  Wow, that was not fun to do alone.  I still really can't even talk about it....that's how traumatizing it was. ;-)  Insulated and insulated and insulated. 

This VERY morning, this is how my kitchen looked.  Cabinets lookin' primo with new paint and hardware....new dishwasher installed....walls beadboarded and painted, trim replaced and painted, new sink, faucet and countertops installed,  floor coming along.....but no ceiling.  It's been a year.

Oh yeah, and then there was the little ReStore cabinet redo....that was a proud moment. 

THEN, two super heros arrived and saved the day.  Zach and Rich did, in about three hours, what I had waited for...for what seemed like an eternity.  I had tried to hire another contractor to do the job....but he blew me off after saying he'd show up on Thursday (about 50 Thursdays ago)...and was never heard from again.  Just so happened the gals at Mill Creek were talking about Rich doing drywall...and I was all over that like white on rice.  Local, honest, hardworking, trustworthy Rich was going to come to my rescue.

Look at that baby.  A ceiling.   A real ceiling. 

Prefill done today....tape and mud tomorrow.  Oh joyous tape and mud.  And look at those shoe thingies....that takes skills.  Balance and looking up at the ceiling and carrying around the little muddy tray....skills.

Paint by the weekend.  Then comes the fun part......accessories! 

Lights, bamboo blinds, shelves....oh I can't wait.