kitchen renovation

Today is the end of day six on our kitchen renovation!  It has been a crazy project but we are really excited about it.  The goal is to be mostly done by Monday...that is when we get the new appliances.  Here is what it looked like before:

We spent the Friday night planning the cabinet layout, changing it, making drawings of it, and then sleeping on the ideas. 

Day One, Saturday, we woke up excited to get started!  After getting ready we went down to the kitchen to finalize the layout...which was pretty simple, both Matt and I really liked the same one.  After FOUR hours in Menards we finally headed home with our cabinets.  Thanks to Nate and Nicole we only had to make one trip!  We got them all unloaded and began unpacking them.  Our living room quickly turned into a work room.

Chris and Jackie came over to help and my schedule was quickly thrown out the window!  After the first coat of stain was almost done, I quickly took all the food and dishes out of the existing cabinets.  The dining room transformed from a place to eat to a storage room and the boys had very little trouble getting to the demo...they were VERY excited about it! 

While they took out all the old cabinets, Jackie and I put the first coat of polyurethane on the cabinets, hammered down nails on pieces that were heading to the trash, and took care of trash removal.

At the end of day one we discovered seven wall colors and were a few days ahead of the schedule!

 

Sunday, day two, we asked Stephan to come look at the walls.  We planned to patch them, however, after looking at them and watching how quickly they crumbled we decided to replace the drywall.  Stephan planned to stay for the day to help us out.  He and Matt quickly got to work by taking out the window that will be over the sink!    

While they ran to Menards, I tore down all the old plasterboard. 

Jackie and Chris came back over in the afternoon and, again, my schedule was thrown out (I haven't tried to make another one after this)!  The first window was installed.

Chris took out the other window.

The drywall was put up, the second window installed, the existing outlets were moved up on the wall, and two more outlets were installed for the dishwasher and disposal.

Jackie and I finished the polyurethane on the cabinets.

The last thing of the evening was to move the stove out from the wall and the fridge and dishwasher into the dining room.  At the end of the day there were five people working, nine Starbucks drinks consumed, and a TON of work completed! 

 

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, days three, four, and five, were much less exciting.  They were all slower days spent mudding and sanding. 

Stephan also hooked up all the outlets on Wednesday.  

It was good fun us to have some slower days...we needed to rest and Matt was gone for one of them!

Today, day six, I finally primed and painted!  

We also spent a while cleaning up all of the tools and trash so we can just get to work tomorrow.

Tomorrow we will head to Menards to finalize the counter top and start installing the cabinets.  It has been a fun project...I will be very happy to have my kitchen back though! 
.katherine.