The Never Ending Story of our Kitchen

We have some friends in the ward who are doing a similar project to ours - taking out the dropped ceiling, granite countertops, etc. We talked with them at church today and they were saying they are nearly done. We couldn't believe it, then we found out they were hiring most of it done. We really feel good about doing all of it ourselves (except the bull nosing of the tile).

A lot has happened since my last post on this, on Dec. 13 - of last year. That's less than a month ago. The last thing on that previous post was that the granite tiles were down and waiting for bull nosing and grouting. Well that's been done for about three weeks now and looks like this.

We learned a lesson in the process of getting the bull nosing done. The contractor told us he would create a lot of dust, and he meant a LOT of dust. So, we built a heavy plastic tent to keep as much as possible enclosed. We put fans in the windows and french door to get as much as possible out. It worked great. Very little dust went outside the plastic, but about two days later as Jeanne was looking at the room she said, "look at the ceiling, you can clearly see where the tent was." She was exactly right. As you looked at the ceiling you could see where the plastic was and even where the tape was. We tried to wash it off and that worked on the textured parts, but it made the difference between the textured and the flat ceiling even more obvious, so we ended up putting another coat of fresh paint. But it was worth it. Over and over Jeanne and I have discussed how much better it looks than if we had taken the tiles to him to bull nose and then tried to place it and finish the rest ourselves.

Once that was all done we got the lights in and then when Dustin got here he helped us put the cupboards back where they belonged. Part of this whole process was to have the cabinets staggered across the tops, and also bring the one over the stove out further and hang an over-the-range microwave under it.

I wonder if we snookered poor Jeff. We invited him over to watch an old movie that I had never seen in it's entirety, The 3 Amigos, on the Thursday after Christmas, since Melissa was in Kentucky. We had a nice supper and then watched the movie. Since we were done by about 8 p.m. I took advantage of his youth, strength, and apparantly, naivety and got him to help Dustin get the rest of the cabinets up on the wall. It was wonderful to have such good help as Dustin and Jeff when we needed them.

Jeanne and I have been pretty excited about seeing what the backsplash tile looked like up on the wall, so Friday evening (Jan 4) and Saturday we finally got the tile up. Jeanne put in the last tile behind the sink.











Jeanne's pretty pleased. Look close and you can see we have not grouted it yet, that will happen this week. To wrap this one up, here are a couple photos of the tile and how the kitchen looks as I write this post.



So, what do you think? The new lights are up, including the new hanging lights over the bar. We have the wood for the crown moulding, we just need to get it painted and up, and we still need to do some bead board on the cabinet above the microwave. Of course we've still got switches and plugs and plates. Stay on the look out for the next, which will probably be the last post on this subject.