Did I say we were over the hump for mudding? If we were, then it was a long way down. We ended up focusing on just the east wall so that we could get the cabinets that attach to that wall completed. All this week we’d aimed to finish that mudding to get to the painting, to end up at the cabinets.

At last, the paint is on the wall and we’re elated because last night we did a reno social with our neighbours who are also doing their kitchen. They helped us hang our ceiling cabinets and in exchange we’ll help them with theirs. I highly recommend doing this! You not only share labour and tips, but you don’t feel so overwhelmed and get some social time too. Might I add, the ceiling cabinets we hung look incredible. There’s also so much more space in the dining room now that we can begin to clean and reassemble it!

Also, if you were wondering, we tried out the Sico brand of Cashmere paint, which is low-VOC and available at Rona. We’re quite happy with it except that there was no primer from the same line to speak of.

So, this morning after a lazy breakfast of banana-sesame-chocolate chip pancakes savoured while perusing the Edmonton Journal online, we installed the cutlery cabinet. Although Chris is out working for a couple hours, my hope is that we’ll get one or two more cabinets in before our dinner date at the Blue Plate Diner (go there - the food’s fabulous!).

Oh yeah, we did have a little surprise when measuring out our floor space earlier today. Unbeknownst to us, our original and subsequent kitchen design shrunk the kitchen by 11 inches, which when the kitchen is already micro and the dining room hardwood flooring does not extend into the kitchen…is a bit of a boo boo. Thus, we’ve ordered an additional 11 inch cabinet that will push the edge of the kitchen to where it needs to be as well as give us a space to store our longer cooking tools.

It’ll mean a bit more money and a 2-3 week delay, but we’ll gain storage that we needed and a chance to find a light fixture, install hardware, get the sink and dishwasher plumbed in, complete finicky mudding and painting, and find a company to install our countertop. Think we’ll be busy enough? Oh, and then there’s the hardwood

For now, I’m content to be on the optimistic side of life especially since there’s light at the end of the tunnel. Looks like I’ll be able to host book club on the 27th after all And, while the experience of learning how to mud and tape was valuable, we’ve made a pact to hire out any highly visible jobs to the talented trades-people in our area As Chris told me, the wall has ‘character’ and fits in with the rest of the house nicely.

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