we'll be grilling out for a couple days | the kitchen reno stage 1

The holiday weekend came and went. Mark and I now find ourselves lost among the chaos of our kitchen in progress. Starting Friday night, we spent a good chunk of time at Home Depot and followed it up with another early morning trip on Saturday to purchase a clearanced floor model stainless steel oven range that we had spotted the night before (Score!). The rest of Saturday unfolded with massive kitchen prep as we emptied the cabinets, heaved the old stove to the garage, removed all the cabinet doors and hinges, scrubbed everything down, taped around everything, and then used our good friend, Liquid Sandpaper to prepare the surfaces.

(Please note the holes in the wall where the stove should be. Those are thanks to whomever built our kitchen and decided to take shortcuts on doing things well and right. Lovely.)

We then rewarded ourselves with a break at our friends' house eating yummy food and playing with their adorable 6 month old.

Sunday morning we attended our church, chatted with some folk and then high-tailed it back home to scarf down some sandwiches before we primed it up. The afternoon raced by as we somehow juggled 5 loads of laundry and primed all the cabinets and both sides of the doors.

We again rewarded our focused efforts by lazying around the rest of the evening to celebrate the fourth with some other dear friends and their 10 month old kiddo. The evening was lovely and long as we stuffed ourselves, joined the masses in World's Fair Park to listen to the Symphony and then ooh and aah over the firework display (which one of the highlights for me was watching the 10 month old in awe of the lights flashing before him). We ended the festive evening with a not-too-rousing game of Scrabble and munchies.

Monday morning rolled around to us hitting snooze for over an hour and then finally hearing reality remind us that we still had cabinets to get a couple coats of paint on. The day was long but we sanded the primed coat (for added smoothness) and put 2 coats of dark brown on. Late last night we decided we'll need at least one more coat so that's on the agenda tonight. Picture of this stage to come.

Coming up… the countertops are scheduled to arrive Friday. We are forecasting a weekend of painting the front side of the cabinet doors (have to let the backs cure for 3-5 days) and putting the new countertops and sink in. Soon after we'll be attempting our first tile job as we do the backsplash and then we'll be putting the new hinges and handles on all the cabinet doors. July is going to be gone before we know it.