Kitchen Renovation!

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So, one of our favorite questions lately is, "Do you have the nursery all done?" Um...that would imply that we had STARTED. :)

Not that we haven't been doing anything to prepare in our home for Baby O's arrival in a couple of months. I like to compare it to dominoes. Since we're converting our office room upstairs into the nursery...

• First, we had to get rid of the office furniture... (Craig's List - done!)
• Next, we had to fix some drywall holes in the office that we had just stuck a lamp in front of for the last 4+ years... (our friend Josh - done!)
• After that, we had to make some space in our kitchen for a new office nook to hold some computer equipment, supplies, files, etc... (our friend Steve -- and the rest of the content of this blog post -- done!)
• THEN Chad can paint the nursery and we can start setting up furniture!!!
  

So, this past weekend and the first half of this week, we managed to pull off what feels like an entirely new kitchen!!! When I say "we", I primarily mean STEVE who was at our house for a total of 23 hours over the last few days, and JOSH who got pulled into helping too!

We started with designing new cabinetry and a countertop for the random wall in our kitchen that has never had any good use since we've lived here (too small for a table, and experiments with random furniture never made it very functional). Great timing -- Home Depot had a 20%-off sale on in-stock cabinetry, and we managed to find some that were almost an EXACT match in color and style to what was already in our kitchen!

(new office/breakfast nook design)

Once we looked around at the in-stock countertops in town, we realized that we wouldn't be able to easily match our existing (and ugly) ones...so Steve volunteered to also head up the tearing out and reinstalling of the rest of the countertops in our kitchen! Which meant that it also made sense to pull the matching laminate off of the walls above the old countertops...which meant more drywall repair (sound like more dominoes??? Yup...).

('Milano Amber' laminate countertops from Lowes -- SO pretty!)

Chad (bless his heart, as they say in Texas) did what he could to help when needed...

(holding things and grimacing at the loud power tools)

(spotting Steve during the wall cabinet installation)

...but mostly just stayed out of the way working on seminary!!!



Steve moved and added outlets, ripped out an unhelpful appliance garage in the one corner, installed cabinetry and countertops, repaired drywall, fixed our dishwasher...and basically gave us an incredibly functional AND beautiful room!!!

(Steve, hard at work...)

His talents and dedication must extend to his 1-year old daughter, Maddy, who came to help one day...

We can't thank him enough!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We have a few more small jobs to finish up (final sanding of drywall, touch-up painting, purchasing of bar stools, installing of knobs, etc...). But it's functionally done, and extremely close to being entirely wrapped up.

So...enjoy these Before-and-After pictures of our kitchen -- we sure will!!! (you can click on them to see a bigger version, and take it all in! :)

( New Office/Breakfast Nook!)

(New countertops!)

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