Cabinets galore, and more!

Hello, Blogland!  Just a quick update.  The kitchen is still coming along.  Slowly for now.  I've mentioned my hubby's crazy work hours of 80-90 hour weeks, but in addition to that, one weekend a month is taken by the Army National Guard, and lately, the other weekend he gets off a month has been taken by traveling for fellowship interviews.  We've still been working in the little spare time we have (and at this rate, I'm starting to feel like I'll never have a completed kitchen, but we ARE still making progress!).

In March, we made a trip back over to Arthur to Cabinet Factories Outlet.  After spending all the time pulling off the veneer, I sat back and realized that anything I did to the cabinets would essentially be like putting lipstick on a pig.  It would never fix the poor structural quality of the cabinets, and for the money and time I was going to put into repairing, we may as well buy new cabinets.  And so we did.

We were able to replace all the existing cabinets for $550.  Now, the finishes are not all the same, but that doesn't concern me, as I'm still painting them (and yes, I've changed my mind on that too...they're going to be Decorator's White by Ben Moore).  I'm so thrilled, and anxious to have everything in.  We've been trying to do it one side at a time.  The pantry side is first, as it's not going to take as much configuring and plumbing.

This is where we started.  We pulled out the cabinets and found a few surprises.  We stuck some drywall in to cover the holes, but luckily the cabinets covered everything.  

Again- remember that I'm painting the cabinets, so mismatched colors were no big deal.  The space between the two glass door cabinets was a non-conventional size, and to keep the balance, I didn't want to add a filler strip to the side of the cabinet, so I built a new one to go there.

This was the first project I used my Kregg my brother gave me for Christmas, and I seriously have no idea why I didn't break that thing out sooner.  It is AWESOME, and I've used it a ton since I figured it out for this project.  Anyhow, this cabinet is going to remain open with shelves, and a TV mounted inside.  I've built the shelves, but haven't snapped a picture yet.  Don't worry.  You'll see it sometime.  :)

You might also notice a couple other changes since I last posted.  The floors and ceiling.  We spent a couple days pulling out the FIVE layers of floor, and found wood.  We were planning on tile, but I felt so guilty about laying tile over the old wood, that we decided to make the wood work.  When we first pulled the floors out, the wood was covered in a felt-like paper.  It was dirty, and ugly, and the actual removal of the paper took me about four days in my spare time.

We're planning to refinish the floors at the very, very end.  Until then, they're working okay.  The only issue is that it ends a few inches shy of the base of the cabinets on the left.

I'm still trying to figure out what to do there.  Anyone have any thoughts?  I was thinking of using baseboard molding at the bottom of the cabinets instead of a standard toe kick.  That would cover it completely and make the cabinets look more like custom built ins, but I'm not sure how to do that with the dishwasher...

Anyhow, then there's the ceiling.  We rented a drywall lift and installed a plywood beadboard ceiling.  My initial plan was to have it all sanded, primed, and painted before going up, but I didn't have time to paint before Hubs had some free time to do it, so I stopped at the priming stage in an effort to utilize the time we had and get it done!  We rented a drywall lift at Menards for $12/four hours, and I cannot tell you how much EASIER this made the job.  Seriously, it would've been impossible without it.

Last night we spent some time working on other things separately.  Hubs installed the new water and electrical for the refrigerator, and I spent hours with a pry bar and hammer and removed the brick backsplash.

I'm really not looking forward to repairing the walls.  Removing brick and mortar is NOT fun, and it is not easy.  With tile, you can get your chisel under it and in a few taps it mostly tends to fall off.  Not the brick.  It came off in tiny, tiny bits, and probably took a good 20 whacks of the hammer for each one, and after the brick was off, I still had to pry under the mortar to peel the whole thing off.  Needless to say, I'm glad that project is finished, and that side is ready for us to start on.

Other than that, I've just been working on some furniture.  I'm really into bold colors right now.

The blue/gold combo is my favorite right now.  It's such a great contrast!

Sorry for the long update.  It'd been a while, but it definitely wasn't for a lack of progress!  I'll be back soon.  I have about a million things left to show you before this room is done.  ;)

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