Kitchen: GO!

Kitchen fun times have begun!

I started Saturday with a quick trip to the hardware store for drywall repair supplies. I didn't have to get any sheets of drywall to make patches out of, though -- someone put these 4'x3' scraps of drywall out on the sidewalk. These are perfect for the holes we will need to patch.

Job number one: mice have been having a party on the top of the cabinets, so first thing first, spray down the top of the cabinets with a bleach-water disinfectant mixture:

AJ held up a stage coach right after doing this.

Next step: take down the cabinets!

I should have taken a closer picture -- you might be able to see it here, but none of the corners or joints had been finished, so that was repair job number one.

And here's where the mice have been coming in:

Sneaky bastards!

Here's my first ever drywall repair:

I also found that the back corner ceiling was starting to sag -- there's nothing to attach the drywall to in that corner, so I guess the guys just stuck it up there and hoped for the best. I put up a 2-foot piece of wood to support the corner, and am also now hoping for the best.

Getting that corner to look neat was unbelievably tricky, so I feel compelled to immortalize it, in particular:

Next, we moved on to the cabinets. We are going to try to reuse two of them.

First thing, remove the grease of ages using vinegar, & scuff the laminate surface to help the paint adhere better:

Next -- prime:

Last step -- a coat of semi-gloss bright white:

 

Ready to roll!

Third project this weekend: seal the saltillo tiles leftover from The Big Project of 2014.

We have about 10 full tiles & several half-tiles left over from that project that we can use on the parts of the floor that will be visible after we remove the lower cabinets. We also had a quarter gallon of tile sealer left over, as well, so off we went:

Why are we sealing the tile ourselves & not having the contractor do it, you ask? Because we have decided to lay the tile ourselves! It's completely madcap, but also a great chance to get some experience doing it: it's only about 30 tiles, mostly hidden under furniture, so even though saltillo is trickier than regular tile, it's lower stakes than trying this for the first time on a whole floor.

Even better, all the stuff we will need to do it is covered by this gift card that I got from our mortgage company as a thank you a couple months ago: 

Can't wait to get started on that in a couple weeks.


Lastly, meant to post this last time -- for your amusement, here is the high traffic part of our kitchen, now in the living room, in the bottom half of the china cabinet:

Next week: removing the lower cabinets, doing more wall repairs, and hopefully priming!