Kitchen Cabinet Makeover

The work continues at our house.  Colin says that all these home improvement projects I am making him help me with are my way of dealing with my brother's death.  He's probably right.  At least I'm doing something constructive though, right?  The week after we did the living room, I took a day and painted the dining room.  We did have a dark navy blue on the walls in there, and I just painted it a lighter blue and also painted the windows white.    We also put up new pantry doors.  It is amazing how much bigger it makes the room look now that the dark color is gone.

 Anyway, onto the major project...the kitchen cabinets!  This is how the kitchen looked 6 years ago when we first moved into the house.

I've never been a big fan of the blue cabinets, and over the years, they really started to look worse than this with the paint chipping off, but I've tried to work with them since we couldn't afford to have them taken out and a brand new kitchen put in.  Then, I saw a product in Home Depot where you didn't have to sand the cabinets to paint them.  The product is called Rustoleum, and this is the link in case you're interested.  http://cabinets.rustoleumtransformations.com.  So, I watched the video and it all seemed simple enough, like something Colin and I, who are not what I would call handy, could do ourselves.  "Do it in a weekend", the video said.  Oh how I love that video (insert sarcasm here). In the video they show you how one cabinet is done and how easy it is, but they don't show you a real kitchen that has 18 cupboards and how time consuming it really is.  The work itself wasn't hard,  it was the waiting 3 hours or 8 hours or 15 hours between steps while everything dries that was maddening for an impatient person like myself.  How impatient can I possibly be, you ask?  Well, Colin pointed out to me this week that I have 6 bottles of body wash in the shower, all with about a 1/4 of the product left in them.  Once it gets down that low I stop using it and open another one because it takes too long for the shower gel to get from the bottom of the bottle to the top.  I also can't make grilled cheese because I get too impatient waiting for the cheese to melt, so I turn the burner up on the stove to speed the process along which only succeeds in burning the bread and not melting the cheese.  So, yeah, you could say I'm slightly impatient.  

We had cupboard doors and drawers scattered throughout almost every room of the house, which was distressing in itself to me-and Wally too!

Skittles once again slept through the whole thing.  She's so lazy!

There were 4 doors that we didn't have a place to put, so I had to do those after the others were done.  Not ideal, but we made it work.  I always thought I didn't have enough cabinets for all my kitchen stuff.  After painting 18 of them, I am beginning to think that maybe I just have too much stuff!  Wait- did I just say that?  Nevermind...

I did get to use my very first power tool while working on this project-an electric screwdriver.  Say what you will, but I am counting that as a power tool!

Since real life continued on, we had to complete this in between going to work and it took us about 5 days to do the cabinets.  A couple weeks before starting the cabinets, I painted the kitchen the same cream color that is on the bottom half of our living room.  Here are the finished cabinets.  We love the way it turned out.  All that work was definitely worth it in the end.

We were initially going to use a Rustoleum product on our countertops too, but in the end we decided to have granite countertops installed which will HOPEFULLY be put in in the next 2-3 weeks (impatient, remember?).  We've already picked out the granite, new sink and new faucet.  We just need them to come do the final measurement and then install.  I know we will love them.  Colin can breathe easy- the home improvement projects we are doing ourselves are over.  For at least a week anyway...

My Birthday

My 39th birthday was on April 29th.  We took some time off from home improvements to celebrate.  It was on a Monday this year, so we both had to work.  The weather has been beautiful in NH lately, so we drove up to Maine on Sunday and and enjoyed the coast, ate at our favorite pizza place and got some ice cream.  My mom got me a necklace with my brother's thumbprint that I absolutely love and I haven't taken off since.

Colin made my birthday cake this year, and there is a little story behind that.  I am a Pinterest addict, which I have mentioned before, and I saw this cake on Pinterest back in January and of course immediately pinned it.  Here is the website where I found the cake.  http://thenonpareilbaker.blogspot.com/2011/09/chocolate-cake-with-cream-cheese.html?m=1  I sent it to Colin and told him this was the cake that I wanted for my birthday and then proceeded to text him nearly every day for the last 4 months saying "Have you thought about my cake today?"  His answer was always no, but deep deep down I know he was excited about it too! :)

It turned out great, and only one hand mixer died in the process of him making it. (Don't ask!)  Since it's a big cake, and there are only 2 of us, he took the remainder into work the next morning and it was gone in under an hour.  Good stuff, I'm telling ya!

The home improvement break is over and we're getting started on the kitchen.  I painted the dining room the week after we did the living room and we put on new pantry doors.  I painted the kitchen the week after that and now we are knee deep in the cabinet makeover.  Colin jokes that I only give him a one week break between projects, but hey, at least he gets a break!  Stop complaining! :)