Kitchen? I've forgotten what the word even means.

Well, (knock on wood) the kitchen should be completed tonight. What a hassle this has been. It started on Thursday 9/14 when we ordered the dishwasher we wanted. We did our research on the intertr0n at home, went to the Sears in the Concord Mall in DE (home of tax-free shopping) and went up to the appliance guy and said “we want this one”. He rung us up and told us it wasn’t in stock and we could pick it up on Monday. Ok, great! That gives us all weekend to get the kitchen ready. The plumber comes and unhooks the sink on Friday and on Saturday Jenn and I go to Home Depot and pick up 2 new countertops, one new cabinet, one garbage disposal and one new kitchen faucet. My oldest friend John McGarvey shows up, helps us get the stuff home and he & I get started. Lemme see if I can find a “before” picture of the sink-side of the kitchen…

Well, you can see half of it here in this picture where Jenn looks like she watched the tape from The Ring. Just imagine that the other side of the cabinets under the sink are the mirror image of the side you can see next to Maureen there.

The goal is to fit the dishwasher in the space already allotted by the existing countertop. That way, we’re not getting any closer to the basement door so that someday when we finish the basement I can still squeeze a couch past the counter. We need 24 inches of open space in which to fit the dishwasher, so the idea was to cut out enough of the existing cabinets to fit it in. When the plumber first came to look at it, we discussed it and came up with this plan:

The small door/drawer section on the right is a foot wide. The large center section under the sink (with the 2 doors) is three feet wide. If we cut everything out but the small section on the right and replace the center part with a two foot section, we should be left with a two foot space! So that’s just what we did:

John put his contracting skills to work on cutting away the 3/4ths of the cabinet while I tried to get the old caulk off of the underside of the sink. With a little finagling we were able to save the right-most wall to cover up the dishwasher.

By the time he was done with that, I had realized that the underside of the existing sink was so rusted that it would be much better to just get a new sink.

It’s the cheapest sink Home Depot sells, but it’s nice and shiny, it’s deeper than the old sink and, y’know, it functions as a sink, which is really the only important part.

We called it a night and planned on starting again the next day. Sunday went a little less well. We hit a few snags and my Dad’s immortal song of universal truth “Nothin’s Ever Easy” was heard on more than one occasion. Still, we would finish the sink/countertop combo Monday night to get it ready enough for the plumber to do his thing on Tuesday.

So Monday comes and Jenn and I get in the car to go to my brother’s house to borrow my sister-in-law’s van. We call Sears to make sure the dishwasher is ready to be picked up and they say, “Oh, no. No, it won’t be ready until next Monday.” We look at the receipt and sure enough, it says 9/25. So, I call around to other Sears and no one else has the model we want and there’s no other model in that price range and color that have the features we want. So we return home, defeated and resigned to waiting a full week with a dismantled kitchen. During that time John and I worked on the counter top:

The new sink was going to require more space, but that ended up being a good thing. We nailed down some 1x4’s to secure all of the cabinetry together and that raised it up enough so that we could center the sink over the new cabinet with a minimum of invasive cutting. Also, it meant that the new countertop would be closer to the paint line on the wall (less painting for me = better).

Eventually, we combined the sink and the countertop...with sexy results:

On Thursday, the plumber came and hooked up the sink and the garbage disposal to save himself some work once we got the dishwasher.

As you can see, the dishes are already starting to pile up and we’ve only had running water in the kitchen for a day or two! The garbage disposal still isn’t hooked up, electric-wise, but the sink definitely functions.

So, yesterday we call up Sears again to make sure that our dishwasher is ready for pickup. We get Lisa’s van and pick it up from Delaware and bring it home. As we’re brining it in the house (it’s not really that heavy), we notice that the box is kinda damp. Actually, it’s really damp. We set it down in the kitchen and Jenn goes to open the box and the front panel basically falls off, as soggy cardboard tends to do. There’s all this water in there, seeming to come from the inside of the dishwasher:

Now Jenn’s worried that it was used and it’s a return or something, but the original book and tags and Styrofoam are in there, etc. Still, I call Sears again and ask the appliance guy if this is normal or weird or what. He tells me that it’s not supposed to happen and I should call this 800 number and get the delivery department to come take it away and get me a new one. I say, “ok,” and leave the plumber a message appraising him of the situation. I call the 800 number and they tell me that since I picked it up at the store, I should call the store and bring it back for a return. Guh. So, I call the store again and get a different guy. I explain the situation to him and he says, “Oh yeah. There will probably be some water in there. They hook them up and test them before they box them up. I’m not feeding you a line or anything, that’s truly what they do.” So as long as that’s true, I’m fine with that. My parents and my uncle Paul seem to think it’s BS and I should take it right back, but I waited almost 2 weeks for this dishwasher, and I’m not prepared to wait that much longer. I call the plumber’s emergency number to get his opinion before it’s too late to take it back and he says that any appliance that involves water is likely to have some left in it from the testing phase. Dishwashers usually don’t have that much water left inside, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility. He was more concerned that it was leaking out from inside the dishwasher, but I think the front unlatched itself a little when it was laid face down. So there was a whole lotta hassle over something trivial, but whadda ya gonna do?

As the end of lunch is rapidly approaching, I’ll wrap this up. Our fantastic plumber should be finishing up his end in a little while and John & I will finish securing the countertop, etc. tonight. So tomorrow we’ll have a fully functioning kitchen! Not a moment too soon either, since the full week of fast food caused me so much gastric pain that I literally passed out driving home from work on Thursday. I was able to pull over in time, but still…scary stuff! But those details are better suited for another type of blog and aren’t strictly house-related, so I’ll leave it at that. I’ll make sure to post pictures of the final product later this week.

Oo! Before I forget, I have pictures of how the rest of the house is coming along:

As we’ve gone over, the kitchen is still a mess.

That same mess affects the dining room as well, as there’s a lot of kitchen-y things stacked on the table there.

The living room, on the other hand, is now pretty much in its final form. Most of the clutter has been removed, the bookshelves are full and the TV is finally set up, etc. It’s kinda funny how I have all these game systems, surround sound and an HDTV but notice the nice rabbit-ear antenna on the TV there. We’re going without cable for as long as we can in order to save money. I still have cable internet, so technically we won’t miss any important shows like Lost since I can just download them the next day, but we still only have the choice between nice DVD’s or fuzzy channel 10 on the TV.

Also, we need a proper lampshade for that lamp to the right of the TV. That one doesn’t seem to work too well.

Until next time!

Moving....bleh

So, yeah. I haven’t posted in a while because we’ve been so busy moving. We’re not even done moving our stuff. You never realize the sheer volume of stuff you have until you have to physically move all of it to another location. Also, a queen size fold-out couch will always weigh roughly a metric ton. But before I get into that, let’s take a look at the final paint job in the smallest bedroom:

Pretty nice, right? Yeah, it’s really green, but I like it. We wanted a gender-neutral color for this room since it’ll end up being the nursery someday down the road. For now, though, it has a long single bed and will house a variety of stuff…musical instruments, etc.

The “Chocolate & Vanilla” room is now officially the “Neapolitan” room with the addition of nice-but-cheap bedding from Target. It serves as the primary guest bedroom as well as the office.

My computer/video editing stuff is now all set up in there, but this second picture shows how it looked in the middle of moving. At that point, my PC was set up on the floor…we had the cable guy come and set up the internet before we got a chance to bring over the desk.

I took these last pictures to illustrate the chaos of moving, but looking at them now I think, “Wow, that’s practically clean!” You should see it now. It’s a complete disaster area and it’s giving Jenn a daily dose of the cranky cringe until we get it straightened up. I give it a few weeks before we’re in any shape to have people over, live a normal life, etc.

That’s pretty much all I got right now. We’ve been actually living in the house all week and things are progressing slowly but surely. The next big project this weekend is to replace the kitchen countertops and re-work the cabinets under the sink in preparation for the dishwasher and garbage disposal that’re gonna be installed early next week. I’ll try to make sure to get some pictures of that action.

The Move Draws Nigh

The painting is done!!!!!! Let's take a look at how some of the bedrooms turned out:





So here's the master bedroom. The wall the bed will be against is extremely purple and was originally dubbed "The Grimace" until my brother pointed out the negative aspects of naming anything in your bedroom "The Grimace". "Purplesaurus Rex" was deemed more appropriate. The other three walls are more of a lavender...closer to white. The overall effect is pretty nice, I'd say.



You might be able to see in this second picture that there's some drippy areas. Evidently the last owners weren't too careful with the paint, so any drips they left kinda become double-drips. Once we get furniture in there, it probably won't be too noticeable, though.









This third picture gives you a better idea of how that light purple color turned out. I enjoy purple, so I like the final result.














Here's the guest bedroom:

Now, we picked these colors based solely on looks. As it turns out, the names compliment each other...the dark brown wall is "Chocolate Sparkle" and the other three cream walls are "Vanilla Delight". We swear we didn't do that on purpose, but we're not above running with the idea. Jenn wants to make sure to put something pink in there so we can call it the Neapolitan Room.







I just realized that I never took any pictures of the small bedroom. It still has to be cleaned up, though, so I'll take some pics tomorrow. The wallpaper was surprisingly easy to remove!

We also attempted the faux finish we had planned for the kitchen. The idea was to "rag on" a caramel colored glaze over the yellow walls. Jenn, being the intelligent person she is, decided to test it behind the stove first. Judge for yourself:


Yeah. Meh. We scrapped that idea and shoved the oven back in place. The yellow is nice and bright on its own, especially when the sun comes in the kitchen window.












Still, we wanted to spruce up the kitchen a little more. Jenn thought the hardware on the cabinets were too generic, so we went to Home Depot and picked up 20 new handles. Here's what the old ones looked like:

Kinda blah. Just plain white tubes that blend in with the cabinets. Nice, but not...y'know...great.
















Here's what the new handles looks like:

Ah, now these are nice. Classy like Ron Burgundy's San Diego. Of course, such a simple thing as replacing drawer/cabinet handles is not capable of being easy. As my Dad will inevitably sing during any given project "Nothin's ever easy, ever easy...". We started replacing the handles on the sink side of the kitchen. The existing holes were about a millimeter too far apart for the new handles to fit properly. Ok, no problem. I just grab my drill and widen one of the holes so it fits. I only have to do this for a few of them, so it wasn't too bad. 10 handles are now in place.

Then we go to try and replace the ones on the other side. The white handles there were identical at first glance before we went to the Depot to buy the new ones. However, all 10 handles on this side of the kitchen are smaller. By a quarter of an inch. Home Depot only carries our new handles in the one size. They probably have plenty of handles for sale that would fit these other cabinets, but none that will match the 10 we've already installed. Yeah. So, after consulting with my Dad (and being reassured that, indeed, nothing is ever easy) I caulked up on hole on each door/drawer and will spackle them in the hopes that they'll blend into the cabinet face after I drill new holes to make the new handles fit. The other most encountered reaction to this story is "welcome to the joys of home ownership!" ....thanks.

One thing that went well was the table we obtained from my Aunt Betsy and Uncle John:

This is it with the center leaf engaged...the process for putting it in is pretty awesome. I'll have to get a video of it and post it here. All the green stuff you see on the table and chairs is wrought iron, so it's all pretty heavy and sturdy. We're gonna repaint the iron black at some point soon and have already covered the fake pink marble with a tablecloth. With the addition of our current kitchen table, we may actually be able to accommodate enough people for a family dinner!




So, that's it for now. I finally figured out a way to stop that video below from automatically starting every time you load this page. I know it annoyed me, anyway. We're gonna start moving things in slowly throughout the week and should be moved in by the end of this weekend. Wish us luck!