It's been awhile!

It has been too long since I've written an update about our progress! I've been enjoying cooking in our kitchen for about six weeks or so. All of the details in these pictures were finished weeks ago. Nate also installed really nice under-cabinet lighting, but I haven't been able to take a good picture of that yet. (Admittedly, I haven't tried very hard.)

We still have lots of small details to take care of, but haven't made much progress lately. Between our jobs and other responsibilities, it's hard to find the time to work on it sometimes. We haven't chosen flooring yet, and Nate needs to crawl under the house to hook up the water to the fridge and then go in the attic to vent the exhaust fan. Then there's the touch-up painting and final details to finish up. Most of the crown molding is done, but we can't finish until Morgan brings us up a little more wood. There MIGHT have been a mis-cut or two when someone was getting near the end and very tired. =) Once it's done, I'll get some more pictures posted...of the whole kitchen. Some of the pictures make it hard to get the overall "feel" of the area.

Our new knobs and pulls

An up-close look: the knobs have a swirl design on them

The pendant lights hanging above our counter . They are the same style as the light that hangs over our dining room table and the new light we put in the hallway between the kitchen and the laundry room (see next picture).

The hall light

Cooking our first meal in our new kitchen in early January. I hadn't been to the grocery store yet, so we had grilled cheese and tomato soup. Unfortunatlely , it was the last of the bread and I completely scorched the sandwiches. It hadn't occurred to me that I'd have to relearn how to cook thing on my new stove! =)

We have working appliances!

Exactly seven weeks after we tore out our old kitchen, I have a functioning kitchen again! Nate and I primered (is that a word?!) and painted two coats of paint ("tealight") on Thursday and Friday. I really like the color. You can't tell what it is in these pictures because we still don't have our lighting done. It's a basically a creamy yellowish color.

My dad came up on Friday night (while I was hanging out with my college roommates and having SO MUCH FUN!). He and Nate got the appliances in, put the backsplash and valence up, and did multiple other jobs. There's still a lot to be done (including choosing and installing flooring), but most of the major things are finished. As long as Nate wired the light cans correctly, that shouldn't take too long. Time will tell...

My "caffe brown" sink (yes, two f's) and fancy window sill

Christmas

Nate and I drove down to Bandon on Christmas Eve. What a thrill to be in a house with electricity and a kitchen! =) Here are a few pictures of our time with my family.

The Boyd Family

Anna's first Christmas as part of the family

Moses hides under a present while Maxwell looks on

My parents' huge, beautiful tree...I took this picture from upstairs

Freezing Rain

So, most of us probably don't want to even think about the storm anymore, but I wanted to post some of our ice pictures from Sunday, December 21. I didn't do it sooner because that's the day we lost our power for FOUR DAYS. It was not at all fun, though I tried to convince myself we were camping. No power meant no heat, and our house got down to 47 degrees. Yikes! We lost a lot of branches and a few entire trees, but thankfully none did much damage.

Frozen trees and our barbed wire fence

Our neighbor's poor trees leaning with the weight of the ice. Two of them fell.

Focus on the crazy amount of ice on that tiny little twig, not on the weird expression I'm making! =)

Thanksgiving Weekend

Nate and I didn't make it to Bandon until 4:30 on Thursday afternoon. We spent the morning painting the walls that would be behind the cabinets. We didn't have time to paint everything and I didn't really want to choose a color until I could see what the cabinets and countertops looked like.

We had a nice evening with my family and then Nate, my dad, and Joe (the cabinet shop owner) headed to Salem at 5:00am on Friday. The guys worked hard all weekend, except during the Civil War. (What a disappointment!) Forrest and Paul also helped.

My mom rode up with me this afternoon. Our kitchen looks AMAZING, though FAR from done. I have so much space!! Here are some pictures. The wood is hickory, so the color varies a lot. Our counters still have to be sanded, along with about a million other projects. It's super exciting, though. My mom wanted me to include a picture of how the rest of our house is looking...Am I getting any sympathy?!

Progress!!

Our kitchen is starting to look like a real room again!

Are we having fun yet?!

Okay, so I won't answer that question. But I will give a little update on progress. Nate worked really hard on redoing the breaker box last week. That was a major undertaking, and it involved the rewiring of several things (heat pump included). I'm not sure how much needed to be done and how much Mr. Perfectionist just wanted to do! =)

We spent the entire weekend working on various projects related to getting the area ready for insulation and sheetrock. Despite valiant efforts from Nate and his brother Paul (who helped us out a ton), we had to push the insulators and sheetrockers back a day. They're came today and our kitchen is starting to look like a room again. Yay! (Nate's brothers left at 11:00 last night and then Nate and I stayed up until 1:00am. Nate was up at 4:30, finalizing things before the insulators came at 7:30.)


In addition to living without a kitchen, our heat pump hasn't been hooked up yet, we don't have a bathroom sink (due to fixing dry rot in the hall between the kitchen and the bathroom), and our living room is a WRECK. There are tools EVERYWHERE!! Fun times for sure. =)