#1096 the kitchen is done!

Yay! The three of us are really happy with the way the kitchen turned out. MT did the things we originally wanted and I think it looks great. He says that he will paint the cabinets eventually, and I think that will look nice, too.

My curtain choice is kind of weird. They are black. They are kind of startling, but I like them, too. I like the tab tops. I'll have them for a couple of days and decide for sure if they are what I want. I think it will be ok. They open up nice and easy so we can let good light in. Plus they are not really heavy; you can kind of see through them already.

You see that red dot on the top one and the red splotch in the upper right corner of the curtains? That red lights comes from the sign at greenhouse across the street. It's kind of annoying, but we are used to it. What I hate the most is that their clock is like, 10 minutes fast.

Just for contrast, here's what the kitchen looked like before:

Yeah, I like the new look better.

Now to get the house back into shape, then we'll find a new project to work on. It probably won't be so intensive or expensive. Maybe some new drapes in the front room or in T's room. Gotta clean out a few closets, too.

One more thing before I sign off tonight:

Both teams I wanted to win today took care of business and will meet in the Superbowl in a couple of weeks! Good job Broncos and Seahawks! I like both of those teams, but there can only be one winner and I hope the Broncos win it all. I've always liked Peyton Manning :)

Hope you all had a fun weekend. If you don't have to work tomorrow (Martin Luther King Jr day), enjoy your day off.

#1093 kitchen reno day 11

Well, it appears that the kitchen renovation will be over soon, like maybe tomorrow. MT spent today grouting the glass tiles, working his fingers "to the bone" he says. It appears his enthusiasm for the project is pretty much over, so he'll go ahead and move the appliances back in, finish the grout and we will be back to normal but with an updated look. He says he still wants to paint the cabinets, but there are other things he needs to do, like get a job or study to get his contractor's license and he also needs to do some work on one of the rental properties. (One of the renters moved out, but the folks in the other house are going to move to the bigger house and there's another guy who is ready to move into the little house. As long as they are all occupied and paying the rent, it's all good.)

I don't blame MT for being ready to move on. It was quite a project and it does look really nice. I'm ready for it to be done, too. The house has been in disarray for the past week and a half, and it's hard to muster any kind of desire to try to keep house as it is for me, let alone with the fridge being in the front room and dust and stuff everywhere. Plus we are getting pretty dang tired of eating out all the time. T is craving an omelet and a sandwich. Really, he could have a sandwich anytime, doesn't he know that?

When we get the appliance back in and get everything cleaned up, I will post a pic. :)

Tonight I bought myself a little something. This is going to sound really strange, probably, but I have been wanting a matte topcoat fingernail polish for like, two months. Why? I saw it in a magazine and thought it looked really cool. I finally found some tonight and I applied a top coat to my (manicured) nails. I do love it! The matte takes the shine off the polish and makes it look muted and, well, matte.

I had a manicure over the weekend. It actually wasn't a very good manicure, but I like the color of the polish. The reason why it wasn't very good is because there were all of these little air bubbles in the polish. At first I thought it was some kind of fancy manicure thing - do you know how the girls are all putting little designs and stuff on their nails? I thought it was a polish that put little bubbles on your fingertips. At least that's what I told myself, but my friend Nicole said, no, it's air bubbles. They were like little warts on my fingernails. The matte topcoat kind of smoothed the nails out, but it looks weird close up. From far away, though, it looks all right.

Maybe on Sunday, when I am watching football all day long, I will give myself a manicure and not have air bubbles on my nails.Maybe I'll paint my toes, too. I love to have polished toenails. A home mani/pedi while watching football! I think YES!

#1092 kitchen reno day 10

No new pics tonight. MT did work on the kitchen; he finished placing all the tile. I just didn't get a very good picture of it. Overall, it looks really nice. I totally love the back splash. Tomorrow he will grout it and that part of the project will be done.

About those cupboards...MT and I were going back and forth on it all night. We talked about it when I got home, we discussed it while we were out getting dinner, and we continued to chat about it while we were eating. I was looking at the kitchen the whole time I was eating dinner and I felt like the kitchen looked kind of dark. We have the black counters, the floor is dark blue tile and the glass tiles are blue and gray, so with the brown cupboards, it is dark, but it looks ok. T's opinion is to grout the tile and move the appliances back in and be done with it. MT says he will do whatever I want.

While we were eating dinner, the TV was on and we had it tuned to the show Property Brothers on HGTV (We love the Property Brothers.) Conveniently, they had just re-done a kitchen that had cupboards a lot like ours and they had painted them white and put pulls/handles on them. The cupboards in that kitchen looked great! The PB had also put dark counters in the renovated kitchen, so it really gave us an idea about what our kitchen would look like.  Even T said, "Oh, is that what ours would look like? Looks pretty good."

Paint those cupboards!!

Tonight MT and I had a night of good, old-fashioned TV watching. It was the first night of the new season of American Idol. I like the judges this year: Keith Urban, Jennifer Lopez and Harry Connick Jr. I wanted to watch for a few minutes just to see how they got on together. We ended up watching the whole two hours. Harry is funny! He's way more charming than Randy Jackson. I don't know what JLo like in real life, but on the show, she seems pretty great. And Keith Urban, well, he's awesome. In past seasons I have not enjoyed the open audition shows because they seem to show too much Ryan Seacrest and people who aren't that good. That was not the case tonight. They showed pretty good singers and not too much Seacrest. Good job AI!

After two hours of American Idol, we settled in for an episode of Scandal. We are on the third season. We are four or five episodes in; we've had to buy them from Amazon Prime, but we really do like that show. I think we have one more episode that we have to buy, then we can watch the rest On Demand. The show resumes in March, I think. We should be all caught up by then and we'll be able to watch as we go.

I know, we're pretty nerdy, but we're nice people :)

#1091 kitchen reno day 9

Saturday was day 6. We bought supplies and MT cleaned up the workspace, but didn't do any work on the project. We bought the glass tiles for the back-splash and paint for the cabinets. We also bought handles for the cupboards and drawers. I still count the day though because I'm interested in seeing how long it all takes.

Sunday was day 7. MT put up some of the glass tiles. I think he did it mostly just because he couldn't wait to see what it would look like! The answer? It looks great!!

The tiles are glass in shades of blue, gray and clear. They come in about a 2 ft by 2 ft square. MT puts some thinset goop on the wall then puts the square on the wall, patting it into place with a rubber trowel-type thing. When it's all done, he will grout the tiles with a light gray grout.

The tiles are exactly what I wanted! I was hoping for some blue to tie into the floor, and the gray works perfectly with the county.

I'm currently still up in the air about painting the cabinets. T thinks we should leave them as is. MT wants to paint them, but I think he will do whatever I decide. One minute I'm all about painting them white, then I look at it and think I might like to keep the wood.

Monday was day 8. He put up most of the tile you see here, then he had to go over to one of the rental properties and install a new water heater.

Today is day 9. He hung the tile all the way around to the window, then he removed the window sill that was in place and built a new one to match all the others on the ground floor of the house. He also painted it. It looks so nice!

tile to the window

new window frame

I really like how this looks!

The next step is finishing up the tiles. The back-splash will go in the small area under the window behind the sink there and then under the cabinet on the other side.

Guess I better decide about painting the cabinets, huh? His plan is to remove the doors and paint them with the paint sprayer out in the garage. Then he will tape off everything in the kitchen and bring the sprayer in to do the cabinets. MT says he thinks it will take a full day to tape everything off. We can't have paint on the new countertops, tile and floor! It's a lot of work. Is it worth it?

As you can see above, we did plug in our "science oven". (Science oven was what the microwave was called in the movie American Hustle. We have adopted the term.) We can heat things up, but there is still no home cooking. It's amazing that you can get tired of eating out! T told me that he wants me to make him an omelet this week. Sorry kid. We can go out for an omelet, but it might not be until Sunday that we have the stove hooked back up in it's proper place.

That's it for today. Sorry that I missed posting yesterday. I was feeling poorly - I've got an owie on my eye. Plus, MT was hogging the computer and for some reason I can't get my photos off the cloud on my Chromebook. So, no post. But I tried to make up for it today!

Check back in tomorrow to see the rest of the glass tile and to find out if those cupboards will be white.

#1088 kitchen reno day 5

We used to have a porcelain sink, but now look...a shiny new stainless steel sink!

Today's progress in the kitchen was all about plumbing. MT installed the new sink, hooked up the water and installed the new garbage disposal. I know the water works. I haven't tried the disposal yet.

Tomorrow we pick out the glass tiles (or maybe ceramic, but I'm really thinking glass) for the backsplash. I don't know if MT will do any work on the project, though. He deserves a little break, don't you think?

#1087 kitchen reno day 4

Here's what happened in the renovation project today:

MT bought the sink, faucet and garbage disposal. Those items are currently sitting in the TV room.

As you can see, he also put the formica on the counter top that he built yesterday. When I got home from work, he had the formica on the back section of the counter, but he had not yet put the formica on the front section. The house smelled very strongly of the heavy-duty glue. I got a headache immediately. (I'm delicate.)

After dinner, MT put a thick layer of glue on the front section of the counter, opened the back door and turned on the fan to air out the room a little. The good thing is that the gaseous smell from the glue was heavier than air and did not rise upstairs. Very thankful for that! After a little time, MT went back downstairs and put the formica on the counter.

T and I helped MT push the counter flush against the back wall. I'm very proud of my participation in the kitchen renovation.

I really really like the counter I think that tomorrow he will install the sink and reconnect the plumbing. I am hopeful that we'll have the refrigerator back in the kitchen this weekend. Maybe the stove, too, but I don't know for sure. I'm not certain how the backsplash business works.

So excited! It looks great!

#1086 kitchen reno day 3

MT made good progress on the counters today! Look at this:

He's got a corner section all made! Doesn't it look good?! He says he's going to make some kind of 45 degree angle on the edges all around.

I think it looks good now, but he says it will look better with the edging.

He built this one and put the formica on it in the garage, but the next pieces are too big, so he will glue the formica on in place (in the kitchen). The glue smells awful. I guess we'll go out for dinner tomorrow if the smell is too unbearable.

Take a look at the counter tops that he built. See that edge? Doesn't it look good?

MT says that tomorrow he will go buy the sink and the new garbage disposal in addition to putting on formica. Sounds like a busy day.

Coming right along!

We were talking tonight about painting the cabinets white and putting handles on them. We think it would look nice and update the kitchen a little more. What do you think?

I'm excited for the backsplash, too. We'll probably go pick out the tile this weekend. We've looked at tiles before and I had some picked out, but those tiles would go well with the black counter tops.

In other news, it snowed here most of the day. The snow and cold and overall wintery-ness really has me dreaming of tropical places. Key West, Cozumel, Turks & Caicos...I'm yearning to go somewhere with white sand beaches and free flowing pina coladas. Better keep saving my money so I can make that vacation dream a reality.

#1085 kitchen reno day 2 PLUS Jazz win!

First of all, do you like the new blog layout? I was ready for a little change. I think it's kind of fun and funky.

Today MT built new counter tops. He hasn't put the formica on yet, but I know he has purchased the sheets. I'm not sure what the steps are in the process, so it will be interesting to see how it all goes together. He also took out our kitchen sink. It's weird to think there is no water available downstairs. Normally I keep a pitcher of water filled up in the fridge, but I think it will be a bit inconvenient to fill the pitcher from the bathtub faucet. I think I'll buy some bottled water to tide us over.

The counter closest to the camera used to be rounded, but MT didn't like that. It looks like he's just going to square it off, so it will be a little shorter. That's fine. See the hole under the window where the sink used to be?

Can't wait to see what will be different tomorrow!

~~~~~~~~~~~

For Christmas this year, I bought a holiday pack of Jazz tickets for me and T. I got a pair of tickets to three games in January. It was a good deal, but the seats are up near the top of the arena. Still, it's fun to go to the games in person because it's fun to be around the other fans and to cheer and get excited.

Tonight was the first game we chose. The Oklahoma City Thunder were in town. The Thunder are probably my favorite team after the Jazz because I really like Kevin Durant. He is such a great player. He dropped 48 points on the Jazz tonight, but the Jazz ended up winning the game 112 - 101!! YAY! That's 12 wins for the Jazz this season. OKC is really good. They have only lost eight games this season, so it was a pretty great win for our guys!

The next game T and I will go to is on Friday when the Jazz take on the Cleveland Cavaliers. We chose that game because we like to see good players and Cleveland has a guard named Kyrie Irving that I'd like to see. He's good. I hope he's not injured.

Here's what the court looks like from near the top of Energy Solutions Arena. Seriously, we were in row 20 of 22 rows. It was the tippy-top of the arena. Good thing the Jazz have a ginormous video screen. I watched a lot of the game on the screen. When you sit up that high, you can really see the movement of the players on the floor and see the plays develop. It can be a little challenging to know which player is which (at least on the other team), but it's fun to see that movement.

 

See ya tomorrow!

#1084 kitchen renovation day 1

When I left for work this morning, my kitchen looked like this:

When I got home from work, it looked like this:

Doesn't Osi look sad and confused?

Yes, I knew all of this was going to happen. MT is going to renovate our kitchen. We (and when I say we I mean MT) are going to put new formica on the counter-tops. He's going to put in a new sink and faucet and maybe install a new garbage disposal. He's also going to put a backsplash on the window wall to that back corner that you can see in the Osi picture.

How long will all of this take? I have no idea. MT says he thinks he can get the counter-tops done in a week. I usually double his estimate on everything (time and money) but he's pretty good, so maybe I'll go ten days.

That's ten days without cooking because the stove is now sitting in the front room, right next to the refrigerator. T thinks it's fun to have the fridge in the front room. It's also ten days without doing dishes because MT's going to be turning off the water in the kitchen tomorrow.

I really hate disruption and change. I am dreading the process, but I am really looking forward to enjoying the results. Also, I'm kind of in awe of the fact the MT can actually do all this stuff. That's pretty amazing! See the tile on the floor? He put that in, too, awhile ago. Talented!

And another bonus? I'll have something to write about every day as I chronicle the progress!