Kitchen Reno: The Grass is Greener

…and so are the walls.

It’s been two weeks since I last updated you, and well, things are a lot different. But they’re also largely the same in that they are STILL A FREAKING MESS.

I gotta say: We’re six weeks in and I am so.over.this. Which is unfortunate, since we’re most definitely not going to meet my initial deadline of March 31 to have everything done. In fact, I don’t think it’s going to be even close. Ugh.

But, instead of focusing on the neverending nature of this project, let’s just take a look at everything that has been accomplished over the last two weeks. First, I have to admit that I have not taken a whole lot of photos. I don’t know, I guess in my state of being tired of it all, I got too lazy to even document our work. And then I meant to take photos in natural light this weekend and never got around to it, so… I just finally took some tonight.

Obviously, one of the biggest things–which I already mentioned in the title and beginning of this post–is the GREEN! The walls have COLOR, people. And we LOVE it. Needless to say, after the great paint debate of 2012, we bit the bullet, got the paint tinted, and we hit the nail on the head. It is exactly the green that we wanted. THANK GOODNESS. (It is Sherwin Williams “Clary Sage,” by the way.)

Basically, there’s just been a whole lot of painting going on around here the last few weeks. After the walls, it was more cabinets. We deglossed, sanded, and cleaned all of the upper cabinets, and then I primed them. Then, we finally chose a cabinet paint color (a soft/creamy white called “Paper Mache” from Benjamin Moore), and I’ve got at least one coat of paint on all of the base cabinet frames.

Except these over here. These have two coats (so they’re done). And hey, look at them! They’re back in place on either side of the stove. That was an accomplishment in and of itself–to return the kitchen back to its rightful layout. Hooray for having more counterspace back!

I’ve also painted two coats of the cabinet paint on the soffits. We plan to add crown moulding around the top of the soffits, and since they’re painted to match the cabinets, they should trick the eye a bit and make things look a bit bigger and more open than if we had painted the soffits green like the walls.

Last night, we did something really big–we started hanging those upper cabinets back on the walls. And let me tell you, that’s a real bitch. Especially because it was just the two of us. Michael basically had to support the weight of the cabinets himself (and some of them are giant and HEAVY!) while I checked for levelness, spacing, pulled the wires for the cabinet lights through the holes we drilled, etc. It was not an easy process, and my screaming muscles were proof when I woke up this morning. We have a few more to hang up, but we have to wait for the electrician to come to wire through the back of the one that goes above the microwave before we continue on down the wall.

I cannot WAIT to get that microwave back up on the wall, too. Holy moly, that thing is a monster when it sits on our countertops like that.

Oh! On Friday, we also used our brand new compressor and nail gun to put the window trim back on above the sink. And then we caulked and painted that; good times.

See? So there’s been progress. I suppose there’s actually been lots of it.

At this point, our short-term goal is to get the rest of the cabinets up on the walls and get them painted (the upper ones are only primed right now) so we can put stuff back into the cabinets. We still won’t have doors for a while–we’ve barely even started prepping them for primer at this point–but at least the kitchen will be fully functional, with STORAGE. I swear we have countertops underneath all of the mess you see in the photos. We just have nowhere to PUT anything.

My dad is coming into town to stay with us for nearly a week, starting on March 27. That means we have just a little more than a week to get things into shape, and we’re determined to get ‘er done. I’ll keep you posted!