Before shots

Bet you didnt think it could be as bad as all that, but here is the proof. Our kitchen sorely needed a makeover.

I talked to the contractor tonight and the cabinets are in and apparently undamaged and ready to go!

He will be here bright and early tomorrow to start. However his child has a ball game on Saturday at noon and he may go out of town after that.


So he will rip out all of the bottom cabinets including the sink and countertops, and then may not return for days.


Oh boy the fun continues.

Another Kitchen Delay

OK this was to be the big weekend! The culmination of all the planning and ordering and stressing about how much debt we were incurring. The cabinets that were due in yesterday....

wait for it...

Well they came in as scheduled, but more than a third of them were damaged. And of course the damaged ones were scattered, in other words there wasn't any row that he could go ahead with this weekend...

Crap. I really need to post some photos to show how we have been living...

It ain't pretty.

We went back to trying to cook meals about a week ago. But with all the top cabinets gone and the contents packed up it's very complicated. Gotta go thru the boxes for the spices, olive oil, bread crumbs tomato sauce etc.

Or you realize how many little implements we take for granted while cooking, you know, the solid measuring cups, the cutting boards etc.

Anyway, the replacement cabinets aren't due in til next Thursday. I can't remember why there was such a rush to rip down the cabinets in the first place, I think it was cuz my contractor thought that the cabinets were 'stock cabinets' or in the warehouse, and turns out the 36" aren't stock only the 30".

So sorry, nobody can come over to my house to hang right now...I don't even want to hang here right now!

Another sad day in the newspaper industry

My workplace laid off 26 people today. Most of them were seasoned employees and I knew alot of them personally. Good people, from Experienced HR staff to newer but indispensible ones like the IT guy I called on 3-5 times per week to help me out of a computer quandary, to the videographer who videos my top client regularly.

It's going to be different place to work. When will this bloody economy turn around!?

Today. Really. Sucked.

Let's talk about me!

One of my favorite bloggers - Lisa, from Just Lisa No Filler suggested this post for today, a way to put the focus where most bloggers want it, themselves!

The questions...

1. Are you married? If so, how long?
2. In your current (or last) relationship, who used the L word first?
3. What is your ultimate romantic date?
4. Weddings: traditional or elope to Vegas?
5. For the married/engaged ladies: did you have a say in your engagement or wedding ring?
6. What first attracts you to the opposite sex?
7. Do you believe in living with someone before marrying them? What about pre-martial sex?
8. What do you get for the husband who has everything???

1. Mike and I have been married 11 years next Saturday! Wow!
2. Mike said the L word first, but I immediately followed. We were on our first out of town dates to Orlando for the weekend to see the band Depeche Mode who we both liked. We were at a hotel pool at night, alone when Mike kissed me and said it.
3. Ummm, I'm not much of a romantic, does Dairy Queen Blizzards count?! :-)
4. We had a traditional wedding, but kept it pretty low key. It was a 10 am church service with a brunch following (made by my mom and her friends) for about 100 folks.
5. Mike picked out my engagement ring with the help of one of my girlfriends and I picked out my wedding ring.
6. Sense of humour, and the way he looks at me
7. Yes, we lived together, but Mike proposed one month after moving in with me, we married 6 months later.
8. Mike always needs clothes but never buys them for himself, so easy peasy! Gator shirts are always a winner.

We want what we want when we want it or The Home Depot Kitchen Visualizer - Final colors

We decided to complicate the issue further as our cabinets will not be in until next Friday or so! So we had our detested Pink swirled white Ceramic tiles pulled out yesterday and replaced it with Pergo brand wood simulated Laminate in a darker 'Hickory Potomac' color.

This of course caused the budget to skyrocket even higher, I think we are up to 13-14k. Scary I am telling you but it should look so incredibly better. It's just going to shoot any kind of savings we had and put us in debt quite a bit.

I know we should have saved up to do it right, so we didn't have to go into huge debt again. We just couldn't wait.

And that my friends is the story of our marriage. This time I vow when we get out of debt we will be saving upfront for the next big ticket item!

(Which will probably be the 6k remarciting of the pool...or the 3k refrigerator...or the 1k repainting of the interior of our living room/dining rooms etc)

Who am I fooling, we aren't not even done with the current project and I have all kinds of wants and needs swirling around to be next. And that doesn't even count the unforeseen circumstances that you know life tends to throw at you.

I need to have faith.

Ok so the paint we picked for the cupboards we were going to use on the woodwork. It was a light green called parchment. When put on the door it wasn't so light. And it is way more avocadoey if you know what I mean. It harkens back to 1975.

So back to the drawing board. Home depot has a online room color designer, it's pretty cool - you can change the color of the countertops, cupboards, paint and trim. The countertop isn't the right shade but it allowed me to pick some paint colors that would look nice together.

'Hickory' is on the wall (and it really is already!) and so I picked this 'Winter wheat' for the trim. The tile shown in the photo is our actual tile and the cabinets are pretty close.

What do you think?

Kitchen lighting is pretty costly

Ok so I gave the guy the go ahead. (And no that isn't my finished kitchen)

First we were going to do the costly but lovely silestone (Like granite but manufactured) countertops and just paint the cabinets. Kind of like putting a silk purse on a sows ear if you think about it. Our cabinets were the original issue (from 1959! Older even then me!)and to spend almost $3000 on a slab of stone over the old cabinets just didn't make sense.

I got to the Silestone because the original estimate of $8400 was for new cabinets and a formica counter tops. Home Depots formica was running $26/sq ft and the Silestone color I liked was only $42/sq ft. So it didn't seem that extravagant to go from $26 to $42. But actually Home Depot carries formica in prebuilt strips with a bullnose edge and built in backsplash for much less -only $110 for 8 ft long section. And we only need 2 8 ft sections! So comparing $220 with ten times as much...

And so it goes. Now we are in the midst of getting new builders grade cabinets instead of painting the old ones at the same size we had - 36" in the same configuration. We really didn't have much choice with our galley style kitchen. But we are also adding a new Venting Microwave, and new Cooktop as well as the new countertop in formica. For about the same price as painting the old cabinets with the new stone.

But of course that's not all. We had florescent lighting on top of our cabinets (kind of stupid if you think of it, who needs light at the top of the cabinets?) and an electrician needed to be called in to cap them off or redistribute them to other lighting options.

We were told to go look for lighting, but also to clear out the top cabinets one night this week. Well I am ashamed to say it took us 3 HOURS to clear out just the top cabinets and the broom closet and the pantry. There was literally tons of stuff. We must have thrown out 20 bottles of salad dressing and marinades, dating back to 2004 or so. And we ran out of boxes so as well before we even started packing up the panty. So besides the five or six garbage bags of old food we tossed, we also filled up about 10-12 Publix bags of pantry items which now reside behind my couch. And my entire living room is 1/8th inch deep in dust and filled with boxes.

But I digress...We didn't make it to pick out the lighting. So when the man showed up Thursday morning wanting to know what lighting we picked out, I went on the internet and found this photo.

Two hours later a quote was emailed to me at work, seconds before I was going into a meeting with my biggest client and the company bigwigs.

Guess how much?

$2500 more! for the electrical and the lighting! Boy I was pretty shocked. Hope we can swing this and we keep our jobs for a while.

It's scary to do something like this right now in this economy!

Kitchen Redo Contemplated

Ok so we found ourselves 'a guy'. You know 'a guy' who can do for us. For money of course. First we had him do some siding that had come loose and the resulting water damage to the wood underneath. Also a shower and tub recaulk. Then he did some water damaged wood in the carport at our rental house.

Now we are thinking about a kitchen redo. Our 70's style kitchen is screaming for a redo. The cupboards are off while with chips showing the olive green paint beneath. Some of the guides are worn out or not working and they are old but still ok.

The counters are horrible, the old woodgrain formica and it is chipped and nicked and scratched, not to mention we have a huge dip to the side of the sink so water is always pudddling there. When we got the new frig it wouldn't fit in the space so our handy man cut away at the counter and it ain't pretty there or where the dishwasher went in.

The backspash is beyond ugly, it's a red brick veneer and there is no way to clean it.

Can you imagine? Guess I need to post some photos so you can really see and feel the ugliness.

Anyway it started with a low quote for just painting the cupboards ($1350). But I wouldn't be satisifid living with that countertop or with that yucky backspash, so we morphed up. (For a brief moment we flirted with complete redo including new cabinets, but that will take it up over $10k.) And I just don't want to spend that kind of money right now. For one thing we don't have that much so we would have to go deep in debt and we don't want too much debt. (again)

Now we are contemplating an almost total redo, with new Countertops maybe made of some sort of solid surface or Silestone; mosaic tile backsplash, (see above) new paint, new cooktop, new vented microwave over the cooktop, and new hardware for the cabinets etc.

We have recently purchased the oven, microwave and refrigerator so those will stay the same for now, and not quite ready to tear up the floor even if I do hate it.*

*Does anyone put down vinyl flooring anymore? This tile is killing my back and hips!

Ok on that note, I must go rest my aching Home depot trodding body, more to come on this!