More new lights!

Yup. We changed our kitchen again. It was james' idea, not mine. I like it though.

The Kitchen is DONE!

Our kitchen was finished a few months ago - and I never showed off James' great work!

And here....a quick 22 picture glimpse of how we got from "then" to "now"...Great work Jimmy!

Kitchen, of course!

Today is Day 12 or 13 of our spur of the moment kitchen re-do.  The end seems near, but we said that on like Day 3 as well.  Along the way, we've just hit lots of glitches and bumps - as we do with most projects we attempt.  Let's highlight two of the "good ones". 

-  We rented a tile saw from Home Depot.  We had everything cut.  James went and returned the saw.  He returned home and all the tiles were layed out where they were suppose to go.  He picked most of them up to start sanding the backerboard - but left the ones down that weren't near his sanding area at the time - and crash.  A tile fell to the floor.  Luckily, we had some extras and there is a small tile shop up the street that cut a replacement tile.  That took up about 3 hours though of swearing, measuring a new tile, calling the tile shop, actually going to the tile shop and coming back. 

-  When we measured the hole for the stove originally, we left 30 1/4" for the stove ("ideal" for most stoves).  30" is the normal stove width.  After taking off the laminate, we laid plywood, then cement board, and then tile.  We didn't have the tile when started - so James figured the tile width to be 1/4" - but it was 3/8".  Before starting to attach the tile, we realized that our stove would not be fitting in the hole if we chose to continue.  So we modified it a bit and sanded down the cement board on both sides.  Here's hoping it was enough.  This took a good portion of one day. 

So where are we at this morning?  All of the backsplash is attached to the wall.  All except for about 8 pieces of the sides of the countertop are attached.  James will throw on the last 8 this morning and we will be able to grout tomorrow.  Here's some pictures. 

For the most part, it looks pretty good for "do-it-youselfers" - but I guess with it taking 2 weeks, it better look good! 

The 30" came out pretty good.  I'll let you in with a couple of our secrets to make this backsplash work.  On newer houses - it would be easy to throw up this stuff because things are more "accurate" and "not settled" - when your house is 90 years old - things just aren't the way they used to be. 

Happily - this 30" area was pretty level and pretty straight - but upon putting up the tiles, we needed about 1/8" - 1/4" more space on top (we started at the bottom to install them).  Now if we were "professionals", we would have put the whole height up first and just moved the tiles some to make them work - but then we wouldn't be sure of an even grout line (and if you know James, you know this wouldn't fly).  So we put up all but the top row.  Now we never worked with glass tile before.  We had two options - cut the tiles or sand the cabinets.  We have a handheld tile nipper - but it really doesn't give us great results.  We tried a Rotozip tip - which provided worse results than the nippers.  So James took out his Dremel and started sanding the bottom of the top cabinet.  It worked great and provided just enough room to fit that last row of tiles in.  Thank goodness.  By the way, you can barely see the top row - unless you are bending over and actually looking for it - a whole lot of time spent on something that will barely get seen.  That's a lot of what we do.

My job in this whole backsplash thing was to cut the tile sheets (they came 12 X 12) and have them line up as good as possible. I started from all the noticable ends and figured we'd work the corner the best we could.  When doing it though, when it came to the end of the window, I had about 1/2" above the ledge there (the individual tiles are just under an inch).  And that little inlet of the window was just over 2 1/2 inches.  So we hand cut the tiles for the corner there (which came out pretty good - but it was only 10 tiles that needed to be cut).  For the edge, we weren't sure what we were going to do since we knew if we cut the tiles, one edge would be jagged.  Easy to hide in corners - but not for exposed areas.  A quick trip to Lowe's solved this dilemma.  We found 1/2" wide, 6" long pieces that matched our tile.  We picked up a few of them and ended the tile here with that.  That was a blessing.

This long stretch of backsplash also provided some challenges for us.  When we installed the cabinets, we made sure they were level.  So when we put up all but the top row of tiles on this side, we had about 3/4" left on the portion near the door.  But it gradually increased to about 1 1/4" by the time we got to the corner.  So full tiles would fit a little past the stove, but we weren't sure how to do the smaller section.  The part under the microwave was easy because we didn't have cabinets in our way.  James made a trip to the basement and found leftover wood from our cabinet install that was exactly 3/4" wide.  So we cut pieces that would fit under two cabinets that filled the gap great.  Once those two cabinet areas were filled with wood - the tiles would fit the rest of the way as whole tiles.  Great solution! 

Here's another picture of our "quick" fix.  It's barely noticable and ties in really great.  As far as the corner, I was lucky enough to have a whole tile go to the corner on window side wall.  Unfortually, for the stove side, we needed about half a tile.  Again, we just nipped the 18 tiles needed and put the jagged edge in the corner.  The grout should cover up any weird looking cuts - but we cut a bunch of them and picked the best ones.  Unless you're actually leaning into our countertops and studing the backsplash, I don't think it will be too noticable. 

We spent pretty much a whole day trying to solve these little dilemmas.  Maybe that's why this is taking so long.  It's fun though.  Kind of. 

My Ego's Got The Best Of Me

This backsplash project is fun!

Becky Does Some Work

James is still fartsing around with the countertop so I got the task of starting to lay out and cut the backsplash tile.  I never knew I was so able bodied in the art of glass mosaic tile. 

The Tiles Are All Cut!

Day 9 of "kitchen re-do #2" and I'm pretty sure James will be ready to affix the tiles to the countertops today.  Once again, we have been sort of "surprised" at how long it takes to do things - but we don't really care.  He's having fun doing this. 

So this is what our kitchen looks like this morning:

The corner area.

The 9" cabinet.

The 30" cabinet!

We're coming along nicely now.  I'm not sure what exactly is in store for us today.  I think just attaching the tiles and maybe attaching the backsplash.  Then we'll have to grout and seal it - then we should be good to go and it will be on to the next project...  

Kitchen Update

All of the cement board has been put on the countertops - so now it's almost tile time!  We got our marble tiles yesterday and have started to place them where they'll go.  We're only leaving an 1/16" gap between the tiles to give "the illusion" of a solid surface.  It's like a ghettotastic way to try to look classy. 

Hopefully we'll have more to report in the coming days!

Hallway is Done!

So I took on the task of re-painting the downstairs hallways/staircase/upstairs hallway.  I finished a few days ago and I'm pretty happy with the results.  I painted the ceiling too - I hate painting textured paint.  But what can you do?

View from the kids' room.  Next project - work on the floors.

The pictures are up!

I still have to paint some mouldings and the doors - but that shall come later.

James' backsplash project turned into a "new countertops & backsplash" project.  We bought really pretty glass mosaic tiles for the backsplash and will be picking out beige marble tiles for the countertops.  This better "complete" the kitchen...only took us 3 years, 1 month to do.  We're on day 5 now with no kitchen sink and I've been in really good spirits about it.  We went 6 days with no kitchen sink on our first "kitchen re-do" 2 1/2 years ago and I went nuts.  I must have better hormones flowing through my body now than I did back then.  I don't want James to rush - if this is "it" - then I want him to take his time to make sure everything is good.  Hopefully we'll have some completed pictures of this soon! 

Front Hallway - Tiling Has Begun!

James tiled the floor yesterday.  We now just have to wait 24 hours and then he can put the grout down.  We just continued the kitchen tiles into the hallway.  We bought a bunch of them what, like 2 years ago when we tiled the kitchen.  We finally put them to use.

I also painted the kitchen green a few days ago.  Here I am in my homemaker apparel to show it off.  I need to organize the kitchen some before I "show it off" more.  Plus, it doesn't help that there is the front hallway radiator just sitting in the middle of the kitchen.  I really like it though.  We used the same green as we did in the dining room and it is definitely more of what we had in mind as far as a "finished" kitchen than that awful blue.  The blue wasn't a bad color by itself - it was just bad in our kitchen.  I even painted our backdoor green!  I think it looks great.  Since it's raining today and Ben's camp got cancelled, maybe I can actually organize this place.  I am probably jinxing myself.

Woodwork is Done!

Our woodworking brothers came over and did a bunch of stuff.  They finished off our cabinet tops, sides and some mouldings on the floor.  They finished the mouldings in the bathroom.  They finished the dining room built-in with the original wood from the original built-in.  They finished in 4 hours and did a great job - but now we just have to get back in the home improvement spirit to caulk and paint!

Built-In Before

Built-In After

Bathroom Window Before

Bathroom Window After

Cabinets Before

Cabinets After

Cabinets Before

Cabinets After

I was so very happy with their work - fast and good!  If anyone around here needs woodwork done - give me a call and I'll give you these brothers number to you.  They were outstanding!