Kitchen Project

Call us crazy but we decided to fix up the kitchen so that we could sell the house and downsize.  We knew the kitchen was outdated, but were we really up to that big of a project.  You be the judge.

Don't gag...we have enjoyed this kitchen for a long time.

The project begins,  Terry rips everything out of the kitchen, our garage is full of containers of cabinets, the family room & patio loaded with old cabinets, the double ovens and hutch are in the hall.  Every little thing in the kitchen is in Aaron's old bedroom and the laundry room becomes the kitchen.

Terry rips out the old soffits, I attack the wallpaper and we bring in a plumber to cap off the sink in the island.  Terry rewires everything,(I can hear Tim Allen grunting as I write) puts in canned lights, and eventually under counter lighting.

We put in new wallboard, have it textured, and we paint the kitchen.  Now that it is time to start putting in the new cabinets, I navigate the labyrinth in the garage and select each piece for each spot.  Terry sets about to prepare, and level the space. 

These pictures are to illustrate the hazard potential when working with power tools.  In the foreground of the first picture is Terry's table saw.  In the background you see the drill press, and imbedded into the wall next to the drill press is a speck.  The second picture shows the speck is a piece of wood about 3/4 in thick and about 4 inches by 4 inches.  While Terry was working on the saw cutting wood for this kitchen project and this piece broke off with so much power that it zipped back and lodged into the wall.  Fortunately it missed his head or he might have a hole like picture number 3.

I can't begin to describe the agony over getting the vent over the stove "just right".

Our Mexican guests installing our granite.  They came down from the Snowflake area and rather than make them get a hotel room while they were working on the granite, we let them stay upstairs.  They wouldn't sleep in the beds even though I washed the sheets.  They brought sleeping bags, and their own towels and slept on the floor.  They were here for 2 nights and 3 days. Fortunately both Terry and their supervisor are fluent in Spanish.

Now for the finished product.  Drum roll please, because it took us about 4 months.  Well, we did take time off to go to the cabin, and we don't exactly get up early and hit it at 6:00 am.  And since we had never done this before we took a long time to figure it out and measure, level and adjust and then measure, level and adjust again. 

Terry even did the stainless doors on the frig and warming oven saving about $1000.00.

We bought a new table and chairs so that it would look nicer when we put the house back on the market.

And we're done.

It's Puzzling

Over the last year, Terry and I have been involved in a lot of projects.  It's fun most of the time and it does keep us out of trouble.  One of my projects has been to make personal puzzles for young grandchildren on their birthdays.  I thought I would share some pictures of them.

This is one of Olie, Afton's youngest.  He is a character, and loves to do puzzles.

This is Ryan's puzzle.  He is Coleman's fourth son.  The pictures were taken at our neighbors in Colorado. Although the photos on the puzzle are very good, I lack the photo skills of some of my siblings to do them justice in this blog, but you get the idea.

Last year my sister Wanda visited and taught me how to do scrap booking on the computer.  Well she did her best.  Her skills in this field would be akin to a graduate with a masters degree and mine are more like a kindergartner.  When Terry purchased a new power tool, I decided to combine my new found "talent" (and I use the term loosely) and Terry's talent with wood to make puzzles.  He makes the frame, but he even let me cut the next puzzle.

This is Ashley's puzzle.  She also loves to do puzzles.  The second photo gives you an idea of the size of the pieces and shows depth.  This is Christian's family with baby Reid in the upper right corner.