In which I see the light at the end of the tunnel

One of my New Year's resolutions was to set a blogging schedule for myself, and so far...oops. Christmas was exceedingly busy with non-home-improvement-related activities, and Jesse thoughtfully gifted me with the new XBox and a game I've been breathlessly waiting to play, so there's been quite a bit more digital adventuring than building. 

HOWEVER. Our kitchen has been a complete disaster since just after Thanksgiving, when I started in on the cabinets. 

Ah yes, the early stages of chaos. I remember it fondly.

Once I got the upper cabinets and the cabinet by the refrigerator built, it was time to paint. Naturally, this meant everything IN the cabinets had to come out, and so far...nothing has been put back. Needless to say, we've been eating a lot of takeout. (But we did find a fantastic new-to-us Thai place and a new Mexican place within walking distance. Good thing none of my resolutions involve dieting.)

Painting has been a rather slow process. I've been using Benjamin Moore's Advance in Super White (which is apparently the color one gets when one asks the guys behind the counter for "white, just white, the whitest white you've got") and it's my first experience using an alkyd paint. It's ridiculously expensive, but worth every penny. It's so low in VOCs that I barely needed to open any windows (awesome, since it was around 15 degrees here for a week or so) and dries to a hard, glossy finish that is much more resistant to scratches than the Metro Mountain Snow I've used everywhere else.

Speaking of cold temperatures, it was well below freezing around New Year's, and the gray cat next door decided he'd rather live with us, and kept trying to sneak into the house whenever anyone opened the door. Since he's not our cat but still a step above being a stray, I made him a fancy warm cat igloo that he has shunned in favor of a pile of paint rags I had in a box on the porch. Cats.

  Sad, empty cat igloo.

 Ungrateful gray cat. I did tape some cardboard over his box of rags to mitigate the wind somewhat.

Last week was the first week I really felt like I'd made any progress. I FINALLY got around to painting the awful beige ceiling and walls. Everything is a clean, crisp white (Metro Mountain Snow) except for the south and west walls, which are a fantastic leathery black I found in at the Powell Paint Center mis-mixed section. 

Once the ceiling was done, I could replace the light fixtures. It warms my heart to see the horrible track lighting and faux-Victorian flushmount sitting out on the back deck, just waiting to be taken to the dump. SO LONG, EIGHTIES MONTSTROSITIES! In their place are two schoolhouse semi-flushmounts I got on sale from Home Depot and spray-painted oil-rubbed bronze. (There were actual oil-rubbed bronze ones there, but they were $50 instead of $22, and the spray paint I like is like $4 a can...yeah, even I can do the math on that one.) I finally got around to spray-painting the pendant light over the sink a glossy black, and it looks so much better. When it was white, it sank into the background of the tile. Not anymore!

I also painted and installed the two salvage cabinet doors I got at the Rebuilding Store ages ago. They look perfect, and make a classy display case for all my milk glass.

Today, I put up trim. It still needs to be painted, but it already feels so much more functional. I love my kitchen! It's starting to look exactly like I'd pictured. 

Still on the docket:

- Patch and paint trim

- Make doors for upper cabinets

- Re-stain and seal lower cabinets

- Strip, stain, seal and laundry room and basement doors

- Paint window bench

- Install hardware

- Install pot rack (but where, that's the question we're still trying to answer)

- Clean like whoa because seriously, there is so much sawdust (also I accidentally knocked a liter of ginger ale off the top of the fridge today, which exploded and turned the floor into a slick of gingery sawdust sludge)

One of these days, we may even cook in the kitchen. In the meantime, I have leftover pineapple fried rice and Dragon Age Inquisition to keep me happy.

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