A doorway you can't use???

Things have been pretty crazy since B has been back in the country. I have had to be much more thrifty in my projects because our income has shrunk considerably(worth it to have him home). So the projects have slowed a bit but the ones we have done are amazing!

Lets start with the popcorn ceilings!!! Sooo ugly!!! But so nice now! We spent days(weeks) sanding and compounding and sanding and compounding and sanding and and and oh man it was a lot of work to smooth out the ceiling. Ill admit, though, it was only one part at a time with a day or two in between. Our living room had so much dust in it that I had to vacuum our couches, then run a swiffer over them, and THEN wipe them down with a wet cloth. We tried covering them but it didn't always work. Anyway, Id include pictures but its just a boring old ceiling and I'm sure you'll catch glimpses of it in the next projects picture bank.

Next we got rid of those awful looking doorways we had...
As you can see there are big modern walk through openings that we normally use. Next to them, however, are the remnants of old doorways. Real doorways... minus the doors. Who, might you ask, would modernize a house by making big grand openings next to old doorways and then neglect to close up those old openings? A crazy person, that's who! We have been wanting to fix this for every minute of every day of the three years we have owned this house. We finally got around to doing it! (So for three years we were the crazy people)
The two openings are referred to as the kitchen opening and the hallway opening. So we did the hallway opening first, and I would totally post an "after" picture but I didn't get one before we started in on retiling the hallway... Suuuuper messy!!

But anyway, we ended up working with an architecture to make sure our house was not going to fall down when we closed up the openings and made the hallway opening a little wider.

The pictures at the bottom are the "after" pictures for the kitchen opening and on the other side of that wall we put in that custom shelving unit instead of closing it completely!

Kitchen Phase 2: Round 2!

I am done with the cabinets!

It took FOREVER to finish sanding and staining and sealing the cabinet doors. I had to work on them three or four at a time with a week or two in between because Jan and Feb have been SO busy for me! This post has taken two or three attempts to finally publish!

I wish the counter tops and floors were done for the full effect, but whatcha gonna do with limited funds and time!?!

I think everything came out really well, however, the sections below the stove did not come out as evenly as I would have hoped. I think my drawers were made from a different kind of wood as my cabinet doors, and on top of that I think they were all made from fake woods while the base cabinets were actually real. This made for some funny differences in textures and "character" lines. I'm thinking in another year or two I will probably end up doing a antique white paint job over the whole lot. For now, though, I will enjoy my hard work!

I had to do four or five layers of polyurethane on top of the finish to get the finish the way I wanted.

Hope ya like them!

-S

Kitchen Phase 2: Round 1

Well not new... just refurbished.

OH MAAA GAAAASSHHHHH

My friend and I finally got around to picking up some cabinet stain and by the time we got home from our quick Lowes run, I was WAY pumped. So at 6pm, the "little" project began! I didn't clean up till around 10.

Vacuum attached to help with dust.

I have had really good luck with Skil branded stuff. I used my Skil sander for most of the sanding.  In previous blogs I have mentioned tools that have been really helpful to me. I have referred to these tools as "my" tools. Unfortunately, they are not all mine. Some are my husbands tools and he wanted me to be sure that you knew this! Now that's out of the way, here we go!

I advise wearing some sort of ear protection.

Once all of the cabinets were empty, I took the doors off. The doors still need to be sanded, but this project isn't even close to being done. Anything I couldn't fit in the lower cabinets, I covered with sheets. I used sheets instead of plastic because I was worried that when the cleanup started, the dust would just fly off the plastic sheets. The dust kinda stuck to the cloth sheets and I was able to fold them up and get them into the laundry without making an even bigger mess.

Oops

In my haste to begin the project, I left a few things out on the counter. OOoooops!

I almost forgot to sand the inside edges of the cabinets. I was aaaallllmost finished when I realized this sad detail, and it made the project feel like it took forever.

 It got pretty messy. But between old clothes and swiffer wet mops, cleanup wasn't too bad.
The next afternoon I made tortellini over the stove. My stove MAJORLY started to smoke. I think I may have gotten some wood dust in the catcher thingy below my burner! I cleaned it all out and things were fine, but it kinda smelled like a bonfire!

Soooo Purdy!!!!

Tomorrow I plan on doing the rest of the kitchen.


Here's my Plan Of Attack! :
~Sand Cabinet Faces
~Stain and Seal Cabinet Faces
~Put Stuff Back In My Cabinets
~Sand Cabinet Doors
~Stain and Seal Cabinet Doors
~Be SUPER Excited.

I figured I didn't need the doors to be able to utilize my cabinet space. If I do the doors last, then I have a functional kitchen much much sooner! Plus I can sand the doors outside where the clean up will be virtually nonexistent!

Cant wait to get started again!!

-S