Kitchen Progress: The Rest Can Wait Until After Christmas!

We are FINALLY at a good stopping point in the kitchen redo. And between the appliance deliveries (and redeliveries, and pickups and re-redeliveries - oh yes, it has been ridiculous), the electrician, the cabinet guy, and the drywall guy, I am ready to have my house back.

So the only things left after Christmas will be painting all the cabinets and bases, painting the walls, figuring out something to hang under that edge of soffit to the left of the window, and making a decision about the backsplash. Not too bad.

So here's where we are at so far:

I am not sure if this whole process has been a test of my ability (or should I say inability) to not be such a perfectionist. I usually like to do things myself because of that - if it gets messed up, it's my fault and I can accept that (or I can go back and fix it). But I do recognize that I have limits - I am no electrician, for example - so we hired an electrician. Did the electrician measure and make everything correct by the ruler? Yes. Does it look good to my critical eye? Not exactly. I'm trying to get over the fact that, in my opinion, two of the can lights were placed WAY to close to the air vent, and the holes were already cut and lights installed before I saw this and I was not about to have them make yet ANOTHER hole in my ceiling that would take the drywall guy yet another 23,984 days to fix and would leave behind a noticeable patch (if only to me, but noticeable nonetheless). I also feel that the pendant lights over the bar are too close together, but again, it just doesn't look horrible enough for me to pick a fight about it - it's just not exactly right. So I will try to learn to let go of it. . .

The ceiling pattern is also not exactly right - it is noticeable. Maybe if it really bothers me, I can go back and touch it up - because now I know how. Before this whole process, I had no idea how to do drywall or make ceiling texture and so mine would have probably looked like crap. But now I know how to do it from watching the guy do it and talking to him about it (for the, like, week that he was here). So that's definitely a benefit.

We've come along way, and the finish line is in sight!!

Kitchen Progress: Bye Bye Soffit!

I guess I have been watching too much Mad Men on Netflix, and I got bored waiting on the phone dealing with stupid Lowes (see below), therefore you are treated to the beautiful masterpiece above. But seriously, the soffit is gone!  Here's the update on the kitchen reno:

We originally got a quote from a contractor to do a lot of the stuff in the list below, and when I got back the quote, I think I choked or cried or a combination of the two - it was more than the entire budget for the whole kitchen including appliances! Needless to say we nixed that idea, and decided to be our own general contractor for the things we couldn't do ourselves. Big money saver!!

These were the things left to do:

1) New cabinet doors installed (These will be installed tomorrow! I am super excited, and yet I am not super excited because I will still have to take them down again and paint them. Yea for saving money. . .)

2) New stainless steel appliances (These were installed last week and of course the oven was broken and started filling the house with smoke - a new one has been on order for a week and I will finally get it Thursday (I hope). Don't get me started, Lowes. . .)

3) Electrical (pendant lights above bar, recessed lighting to replace fluorescent light in kitchen, second switch for kitchen lighting, and random putting up chandelier in dining room to replace ceiling fan) - scheduled for Friday morning!

4) Soffit removal and repair of ceiling - stage 1 DONE! (Pics are below if you just can not contain your excitement.) I am really glad we found someone to do this - we had no problem destroying the soffit, but doing our first major drywall patch on a ceiling with a crazy texture was a little over our heads (ha ha, no pun intended). So we kind of chickened out a bit on this one, but I can live with that.

5) Painting of cabinets and walls

6) Backsplash - unsure what we are going to do about this at this point

7) Some sort of shelving on other side of window below lonely piece of soffit. I am considering a wine glass rack or shelving for cookbooks or something.

This past Sunday we decided we needed to get the soffit down because we weren't going to have the opportunity this week before the electrician was to come on Friday. So first step, we poked some holes and took a look around to make sure there wasn't anything in there that would thwart our grand plans:

We were good to go! So husband goes to store to buy drywall stuff. As it turns out, there is more to drywall repair than attach it to studs, tape and paste around edges, done! It is an art.

So I am frantically reading tutorials online and calling him with updates on what tools we need, the different kinds of joint compound, etc, and realizing this may not be the best idea. Well, as luck would have it, as husband was questioning an employee about drywall tape, a dude came up and said "hey, I'm a drywall guy. Call me if you are interested." My husband appreciated the hustle in Home Depot and decided to give him a shot - he was reasonably priced and very nice, so that's what we did! He will be back to finish the other mud coats and texture/ paint tomorrow but here's a couple pics of what went down (again, no pun intended. . .)

Here's right after the soffit came down and we had a nice hole in the ceiling.












And before I show the after, here's a picture of what it looked like at the very beginning:

And after. . .

Another before:

And another after:

It is amazing how much bigger and more open the kitchen is with that one simple thing!

It's starting to look more and more like my Microsoft Paint rendition, right? (if you squint your eyes. . .)

More to come very soon!!