Looking back on my sporadic blog entries, I feel compelled to explain myself. And at the same time, we really have no excuse as to why we’re not done our kitchen yet. The question ‘are you done yet?’ got old long ago, but the pesky irritation of it is clearly not motivation enough for us to eagerly hack away at the finishing details that remain.

I won’t say we haven’t done anything in the past two months. Chris sealed our chute box with spray foam to prevent major air leaks, and I finished the painting. Yup. That’s about it. I haven’t told Chris yet, but my fastidious taping of the cabinet edges apparently wasn’t good enough. Paint seeped through in a few spots, so I have to figure out how to remove it without damaging the cabinet finish. Read the rest of this entry »

Since my last post, Chris and I enjoyed a fabulous fall break to Europe. Don’t get all jealous on me now, I’ll have you know that the weather was way nicer in Edmonton than anywhere we were. And, on the one really nice day we had in Rome, we couldn’t even wear shorts because we went to the Vatican! No bare limbs allowed. For real.

Plus, it was England’s wettest summer in 90 years! Anyway, we had a great time, visited with family, and saw some amazing historical architecture. Back to the house.

Here’s a video of us installing, sanding, and staining our reclaimed kitchen flooring. I think you’ll like it. I had way too much fun playing with a couple new video editing features.

We still have yet to put the final finishing coats on - 3 coats so far. If we had used harder wood, I might have considered wax. In any case, the products we used were: Read the rest of this entry »

This has been a long time coming folks, sorry for the delay!

l’ll let the video do the talking. This was way back in the spring when we were working on our countertop. (It gets better toward the end of the video ) More to come soon!

It took all weekend, a load of creativity and much grunting on all fours, but we now have a floor! The sense of accomplishment and satisfaction is fantastic I think because things really look like they’re coming together.

On top of that, our appliance store referred a new installer to us who has, as of yesterday, installed all our kick-plates! Not only did he show up, but he had all his tools ready and spent the entire day completing the niggly detail work that we are more than happy to hand off.

This is in contrast to another installer who repeatedly would not return our calls nor show up when promised. That’s what has been happening for the past 3-4 weeks. Read the rest of this entry »

The malicious cold that’s been taking people out in these parts did me in for most of March. Although my voice is back and the coughing fits are nearly over with, my pace is still much slower than normal and I’ve apparently emptied my bed of all occupants but me this night. Must be that I still have a restless lung or two, and a spare rattle hanging out in this nose of mine. So what better opportunity to catch you up on our kitchen happenings and pluck these straggler thoughts from my sleepless mind. Read the rest of this entry »

Chris and I are currently learning a lesson in patience. It’s been about 54 days since we’ve had our beautiful paperstone countertop at the house, stacked against the wall uninstalled. We’ve been ready for installation for at least 15 days. Alas, with the booming industry in Edmonton right now, we’ve been unable to secure an installer until today.

We now have a date, and it’s one week away. This explains the infrequency of my posts, but I am happy to say that I shall have more to share soon….

It’s been a little while since our last entry, basically because we’ve been waiting for that last cabinet to be made and shipped to us. The only news at this point is that we’ve put all but 6 handles and knobs on our cupboards. They look really great, and now getting into the cupboards is a whole lot easier. Oh, and we had our electrician install the under-cabinet lights, and the over-the-sink light. Looks pretty swank!

If you look back into some previous entries in this blog, though, you will notice that while waiting, I learned how to use imovie in a very basic way. So, a few more videos have been pasted into older entries. Mainly, they show us tearing our kitchen apart. So, if you’d like a visual, do check the videos out

Stay warm…

With all existing cabinets in place, our cupboards full, and the main floor tidied/cleaned/dusted (a huge thank you to Grandma for your help with the cleaning!), book club went over delightfully this past Sunday. It was a small group given the -30 C degree weather, and everyone was impressed with their sneak peek of our kitchen progress. Not quite as impressed however as they were with the veggie chicken rice rolls and green onion cakes I (we) made without a stovetop.

Now with our super cute light fixture that matches the wallpaper pattern and our $20 Habitat for Humanity Restore stainless steel sink (scrubbed with love by Chris and placed in a plywood cutout surface) we’ve entered the semi-functional phase of this renovation. I have to say, it feels fantastic! Here’s a little eye candy to satisfy a few curiosities:

Read the rest of this entry »

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! Read the rest of this entry »

I’ll keep the story of our UPS debacle brief for all of our sakes…

When we returned from our Ontario trip we swiftly arranged delivery so as to prevent storage charges that the local UPS freight office threatened us with. At 4pm, a lift-less truck arrived with our 560 LB recycled paper countertop. UPS had contracted the delivery out, and the truck driver refused to help unload (when actually the manager at UPS had previously confirmed to Chris that there would be help from truck to boulevard). Once the packaging was removed, our chipped countertop was revealed.

With the help of a neighbour, Chris and I hauled the heavy panels inside. All this transpired between strained phone conversations with the decidedly unhelpful UPS manager, who tried to convince the trucker to bring our package back to the warehouse.

With a makeshift waybill and photos of the damaged panel, we’ve filed a damaged product claim to hold UPS accountable. A note of advice: when ordering products from the US, choose your shipper carefully.

On the bright side, we discovered a mystery panel among the cabinet pieces that is meant to prop up the oven and make it fit properly!