It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

We are not inherently religious people - in fact, quite the opposite - but I love Christmas. I don't identify as a Christian, and it's been a dog's age since I set foot in a church, but I am deeply enamored of the cultural and historical significance of the holiday. (Plus I get to redecorate and give presents, and who doesn't love that?)

I'd love to go all out, but we are still largely a construction zone, so there's less mistletoe and more sawdust. But at least we have our tree!

Jesse and I have a longstanding tradition of getting the absolute largest tree that will fit in the space. In the apartment, one had to squeeze around the tree to get to the couch. That suited us just fine. This year is no exception. We have nine-foot ceilings, and I had to saw a good 8 inches off the bottom of the tree to get it upright. And then, we had to run out and buy a bigger tree stand, because it wouldn't fit in our old one. Three stores later, we found a suitably large one at Home Depot, proving once again that even if you don't think Home Depot is the answer, Home Depot is always the answer. 

And then I put 1200 lights on it, and it still has dark spots. (Good thing I had help putting up the lights.)

I also put up a couple of garlands, but that's the extent of our decorating. 

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There are 8 shopping days before Christmas, and while I'm usually way ahead of the game in my holiday preparations, this year I am falling behind. I usually start compiling a gift list in August or so, but I'd gotten completely absorbed in the kitchen remodel, and forgotten about the list until...last week. Thank god for Amazon Prime. So now I have all of my gifts purchased, but not assembled. I really should have done that yesterday on my day off, but the cabinet uppers were a much more exciting pressing project.

It took two days of materials gathering (mostly because I didn't realize I'd bought the wrong sawblade, and thus ended up back at Home Depot, and then I needed lunch, and then we went to the grocery store, etc etc) but after a full day of construction, the cabinet boxes are UP, and MOSTLY STURDY and I LOVE THEM.

Coincidentally, my table saw is perhaps the best $300 I've ever spent. (Thank you, Black Friday.) I could NEVER have gotten these done - not as fast, and certainly not as square - without it. Also, it's incredibly satisfying to suck up seventeen pounds of sawdust with the Shop Vac.

So the boxes are done. I thought maybe I'd get around to priming and painting last night, but that was nixed in favor of eating pizza and playing video games. I did pick up a gallon of Benjamin Moore Advance in Super White, which I'm very excited to use. It's a new formulation of paint known as alkyd - it has a lot of the durable, slow-drying properties of oil-based paints, but it's a water-based latex so it's much easier to clean up - and it's supposed to be excellent for cabinets. Normally I'd use whatever mis-mixed paint I'd gleaned from the clearance section, but since cabinets and kitchen cabinets especially are high-traffic and high-impact, I wasn't about to skimp on coating. We'll see how it turns out.

One roadblock I've been working through is the cabinet door design. In a perfect world, I'd have a single, flush-mount full-length vertical door for each section, with an old-fashioned latch.

via Pinterest

While I could have modified my cabinets this way, I feel like I've pushed the structural envelope of the original cabinets enough just by putting in the uppers. Would they be fine if I cut away some of the horizontal fronts? Probably. Do I feel like risking it? Nope, not really.

So that means I either give up latches or give up full-length doors (since the latches need the doors to be flush), or come up with a third solution. And since I hate compromising, I've been brainstorming like crazy, and I think I've finally found the answer:

Source: Pinterest

It's a little hard to see with this picture, but it looks like the doors are latched to each other (removing the need to be flush). This is totally doable in our kitchen; doors without "latch buddies" will get simple knob handles. 

The other thing I need to decide is which doors get glass fronts. Apparently you can just buy glass panes for $1-$5 a piece at (where else) Home Depot, which blew my mind. There's also a glass-cutting shop just up the road, which could also facilitate window-doors. Making the cabinet doors themselves is no problem - or at least, it won't be if I want them, because there's no way I'm buying custom-made windowed cabinet doors at $100 a pop. I just need to do some hard thinking about whether or not my spices stay organized enough to display. There's also the option of some DIY faux leaded or stained glass, which I'm also considering.

Something like this will suit me just fine:

The kitchen is THIS CLOSE to being done, which is both awesome and daunting. I am salivating at the prospect of well-organized cabinets, but will it be done in time for a massive batch of Christmas gingerbread? We'll see.

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And if Santa is reading this, I really want a living footstool Great Pyrenees for Christmas. (Even though I need another giant furry animal in my life like a moose needs a hat rack...)

Source: Pinterest