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Kitchen Chaos

It’s been a long time in the making, but I think the kitchen remodeling project is going to be totally finished soon. Never mind it’s been almost two years since we started! We got the estimate for the cabinets in August 2005. At the time, our kitchen looked like this:
(In case you didn't know, you can click on these pictures for a larger view.)

It was dark, the cupboards were dingy, and the linoleum had big holes in it here and there.

It was definitely in the market for a makeover.

The cabinet maker was recommended to us. He makes lovely cabinets. What we didn’t know is that he was soooooooooo sloooooooow. He was way overbooked, and any time one of the developers wanted him to put cupboards in a house, our work waited while he finished theirs.

To be fair, he wasn’t the only hold-up in getting the kitchen finished. I had to tear off several layers of wallpaper, and in the end, some of it had to be scraped off piece by teeny-tiny piece. Then the wallboard had to be repaired, and everything repainted.

It doesn’t take long to write about it, but it took me a very long time to actually DO it. First off, there was just a lot of work. Secondly, chronic pain + fibromyalgia = a couple hours a day of being able to do any physically demanding work, more or less, depending on the day’s pain levels. So projects don't progress very quickly.

At any rate, the cabinetmaker finally finished his work, and got the cabinets made and installed close to my specifications. I got the ceiling painted, the wallpaper off and the walls painted, and our neighbor put down the new flooring for us. Jess got the new blind put up on the new picture window we had installed. The kitchen was looking pretty good but needed a couple of finishing touches.

And so it stayed until yesterday. First, Jess repaired a small hole in the flooring, where a certain bird went walkabout once, and since there were no baseboards holding the flooring down, picked at the edge and made a hole before her activity was discovered. He did a GREAT job fixing it. You have to know where to look and get close to see the repair.

Then Jess cut pieces of baseboard to fit, got them painted, and nailed into place. It looks FANTASTIC!

He also put the corkboard up on the wood panel we put on the wall between the living room and dining area to cover the hole where we took out an unused electric heater. Unfortunately, he ran out of glue before he finished, so he has a few more squares to glue on, but that shouldn’t take too much longer.

So we’re getting close to being finally finished with the makeover. It’s a major improvement, and the cabinets and flooring are beautiful, but I’m not sure if I’d have the heart to do it again if I’d have known what we were getting into.

I’m past ready to be totally done with remodeling and the resulting kitchen chaos!

3 comments:

Looks great! Now it's time to start on the bathroom! :)

 

Too true! And my office so I can get it organized. And then... whew, I don't want to think about the rest of the house. It'll take long enough just for those two!

 

I'm glad you included the before picture. I've seen it in various stages, but to be reminded of the "before"...WOW!! It did turn out great!

RR