Finished Kitchen

The kitchen is done now! We have new shades ordered from blinds.com, which should look really nice once they're up.

The laundry room and little bathroom are painted too. We got a new door between the kitchen and laudry room and new hardware and door knobs on all of them.

I tried out the new oven, making cookies yesterday. It works well!

I'm going to refinish the chairs, because they have a history, but I'm going to look for a new table. For now I'm keeping a tablecloth on the old one!

The eating area looks better now that the paneling is removed and all the walls textured.

JACKSON et al.

The Bean Museum

We went on a little outing today to the Bean Museum. When Jake and Katy were little, we often walked up there on Saturdays to look at the displays. They have even better ones now!

This one of the lion attacking the gazelle was pretty good!

I remember when this liger was in the Hogle Zoo. I think it's Napolean Dynamite's favorite animal!

Jackson wasn't as impressed by all this as he will be when he's a bit older, but he liked it.

Really Almost Done!

The kitchen is looking beautiful. It's finished, except for putting a couple of cabinet doors back on, some baseboard, and finishing some edges with trim. We also still need to have the granite guys make it back out to finish around the window. I get to start cleaning and moving back in today. Everything is going to look really good, except for the kitchen table and chairs, which will be a stark contrast, I'm afraid! My plan is to refinish the chairs, which we want to keep, and possibly the table. However, we may replace the table. I'm not that attached to it, but it is made of solid wood, which is hard to find.

As you can see, we're going to have some extra counter space, as well as more cabinets.

We replaced the old ceiling fan.

The doorway into the kitchen from the living room is made of the same wood as the cabinets.

Almost Done!

We're getting a lot closer to done!Although it's taking longer than expected, it's going to be really nice. We were concerned about the crown molding he first put on, because it was darker than the cabinets. However, he changed it out and the new color matches perfectly. It looks really good. The cabinet doors are mostly on now, but it was too rainy for the finish guy to do them, so he's coming back next week. What's left to do: hook up the sink and dishwasher, paint the kitchen, laundry room and little bathroom, finish the doorways, put up a new ceiling fan. Now it's supposed to be all done by Tuesday, which I'm really hoping for. I think I can start moving things in Monday or Tuesday, but I'll have to see. I'm planning to leave to visit Joey and Katie by Thursday, but it's possible it will be Friday.

By the way, we changed the kitchen color from green to tan. They started painting the laundry room green, and it was a lot brighter than we expected, so we're changing it. They're also going to come back and put granite all the way around the kitchen window over the sink because that will look a lot better.

There will be cabinet doors over the refrigerator. No more junk piled up there!

Granite Countertops

This is going a lot slower than we hoped it would, but the granite counter tops are on now. They look good. Part of the cabinet doors are on too. They also started painting the laundry room. We chose a light green for the kitchen, laundry room, and little bathroom. I'm a little concerned about the color, but Charles wanted something different in there. There won't really be much color showing up in the kitchen except in the eating area, so it won't clash with the granite or cabinets.

We're Getting There!

The cabinets are now "finished", just not put together. This doesn't exactly look like the color, probably because of the flash. It's a little darker and browner. The guy who did the finish is really good. It looks like furniture! It should be put together Monday. They still have to put some tile under where the stove and dishwasher will be and get the granite counter tops on before the appliances are delivered Thursday.

This one looks closer to the color it really is.