Kitchen Remodel; Part 2

I feel a little more like writing today, so here's a little background and some other stuff you might like to know about our kitchen/house.

In September 2010 we bought our little townhouse with "good bones" and we've spent the last year and a half slowly making improvements one room at a time.

First my husband cleaned, repainted and installed new fixtures in our master bathroom. It went from gross to not gross in a period of 2 days. I wanted to do a different room first, but he insisted - since I refused to shower in the master bath because of the grossness. I appreciated it. There are only so many mornings in November someone can walk to the downstairs bath barefoot on cold laminate when they'd rather be in bed to begin with. ;)

Next we tackled the living room, which was a month long process of painting and patching and waiting for carpet, all the while using the dining room as a living room, before finally buying a new couch and curtains.

My husband surprised me somewhere in there by taking a day off work to repaint the downstairs bath.

Then we did the patio. This one's an ongoing process. Plants die. Pots break. I like to move things around.

Then we revamped the 2nd bedroom. It needed paint and some major organization.

Then we had the dining room repainted - couldn't do this one ourselves, stupid 20 ft ceilings - and my hubs and his dad magically put up a new chandelier. It's a whole new room.

* * * * *

Which brings us up to now. We are remodeling the kitchen. In case you didn't see this, which I posted less than a week ago.

My aunts, uncles and grandparents all pitched in and got us this amazing set of Frigidaire appliances as a wedding gift last August. HOLY AMAZINGNESS!!!! Of course, I wanted to install them all right away, but I was told we needed to wait until we remodeled the kitchen to put in the microwave and dishwasher since we'd be repainting the cabinets and installing new countertops. So two of these four beautiful appliances sat in their boxes in the garage for 11 months while we figured out the best time to remodel the kitchen. The other two (fridge and range) we started using right away - and they were gloooorious.

Two weeks ago we finally started to empty out the kitchen to get ready for the remodel. Everything was put in boxes and stored in the dining room and living room, where it will stay probably until Thursday. : /
Then my husband went around and took off all of the cabinet doors while I started scrubbing down all of the shelves to prep them for painting. This took far too long. Tim also decided to tackle the fluorescent light box on the ceiling and take off a small chunk of old countertop.

Goodbye bizzarro 1975 light box. Love, A & T

The next weekend (last weekend) sh*t blew up. My in-laws came up and the demolition/reconstruction project officially began. Hubs and his dad tore out the existing sink, composite countertops, the old wobbly microwave, and old dishwasher while my MIL and I were down in the garage cleaning and repainting all 1,000 cabinet doors and drawers - no, we don't really have 1,000 cabinet doors. 

The biggest projects for the weekend were, of course, tackled by my husband and his dad. They had to cut the shiny new butcherblock countertops to fit our little kitchen, then fit the new sink - and cut a giant hole for said sink - then reconnect all the plumbing, pull out the old heavy slimey microwave and the temperamental dishwasher. They also took down the entire old weird/gross light fixture and replaced it with a ceiling fan, which will be SO fantastic when we're cooking and trying to keep the smoke alarms from going off (because they're too close to the kitchen).
Then Tim and his dad put in the shiny new microwave and dishwasher before the in-laws hit the road last Sunday afternoon.

This weekend the adventures continued sans in-laws. It was time to paint and tile.

Saturday was just painting - inside and outside all of the shelves and cabinets. It took all day and was exhausting. Especially the climbing into the pantry part. Our pantry wraps around the fridge. It's weird, I know. We wanted to make sure we were doing it "right", so I had to climb inside to paint the deepest depths of the pantry even though no one will ever see or appreciate my work.

Sunday was tiling for me and more painting for Tim. Instead of using traditional adhesive to stick the tiles to the wall, we used simplemat. Tim found it on the interwebs and it ended up being my savior for the weekend.  It's peal and stick with tiling - completely baffling and completely amazing.
The killer part of installing tile was the grout. I think I hate grout. It's my nemesis. Timing it so that I did a big enough chunk to be worthwhile, but small enough that I could wipe off the excess before it dried too much was brutal and exhausting. It took me between 2 and 3 hours just to grout the backsplash. My arms/shoulders were crying.

That was the last thing we did yesterday - until I ran up to the kitchen to put up one of the cabinet doors just for kicks. It was already 11:30pm at this point, so I wasn't about to put up all the doors, but I liked the idea of putting up one. So, I did. :)

The next four days we'll be finishing and cleaning the kitchen. My birthday's on Friday, so we're having some of my family over to see the kitchen and celebrate my existence. : P

So, we have to be done.