Kitchen Progress

OK so here are the original pictures of the kitchen...

 

We moved it June 1st and breakfast looked like this!

That was a Friday, the fridge was in on the front porch--it wouldn't fit through either door. So Saturdays project became rip the front door out. It turned out good because we canceled the special order front door that was tiny and bought a standard door for 1/2  the price.

Buuuuuttt, it meant we painted it ourselves. (And it has a few finger prints in it) And that oil based paint just doesn't dry super fast. So that night we put up paper for our "door" Sunday when we came home from church it was blown right open. So I said to Isaac "...I know its not a Sunday activity, but do you think we could at least set the door in place...maybe be a couple screws?" He agreed. 

I got a picture of the fridge in the front room but not ever one of it on the porch, I’m slipp’n but hey I’m telling you it was a stressful and crazy few days.

But if I’m telling stories about the kitchen...I really have to start with the floor.

Honestly I don’t know if that picture really shows it very well but the kitchen and dining floor was raised up a step from the rest of the house. ...and you know 6 inches higher on one side 7 on the other...level not really a thing around here! But anyway I guess the dining room floor had rotted and instead of fix it they had built a new one on top of it. Well...Isaac HATED that step-and after he helped move the lady and her stuff out (prior owner was basically just squatting here as the bank owned the place) anyway after stepping over it all day one day he hated it even more. So he had some contractor come look at it who told him it would be “no big deal” to tear it out but never got back to him with a bid. But on account of that “no big deal” Isaac tore into that floor. Oh Boy! Cannon was helping here--But President Vorkink and Isaac really got after it one evening. He was probably our first victim aka helper on that dang floor. (We have had so much help and we are so grateful!)

 

His wife and daughter helped me paint in the other room and he and Isaac just pried and pounded away at the floor. They worked and worked and...dented it but there was so much to do. The Williams kids helped us pick off layers and layers of linoleum off that underneath layer. Colt wanted to save the green layer. Yikes.

Oh wait! I almost forgot the most important part, as he was pulling it up Isaac was SAVING the old floor to reuse it.

Which-if this is the record-may it clearly state I thought was a terrible idea—all along. But he was set in his mind and after the flooring guy came and told him it was still good he was set and bounced “what the flooring guy said” off me every time I told him I thought it was a terrible idea. 

Anyway—we’ll get back to that darn stuff 

But eventually we had a hole...

 

And a house up on jacks

They did they did one side-the kitchen- and then the other-the dining room

And they built a couple of walls downstairs and built a new floor on top of them!

My dad came to do "electrical work" ha yeah right--well he did some of that too, but slave labor was more like it. Thanks for taking days off work too come work like a rented donkey Chip!

(Gotta document our cute little helpers--Colt was watching Bob the Builder some time after this project and informed me they didn't do it right on the show. Haha...)

Once the new sub floor was in Mr floor guy and his assistant (me...okay Grandma Ison was the first flooring assistant but I took over when they went home) worked and worked on that dang floor putting those pieces back in, finding ones that would fit and lining them up for him. I think a significant insert in this story is Our 87!!!! year old home teacher pulled some of the original nails out-then he started just grinding them off. Oh boy.

  Some how, by some act of mercy we survived that retched floor project!

And then we...(mostly Isaac, I did run the sander a little) had to sand and stain it. UG.

We had to rent a sander-no, two different ones, and sand it all down, then he stained it, just typing it is a nightmare to remember one of us was always at this place. It was literally working around the clock—oh and trying to pack up the rental house in there somewhere too—so glad those days are behind us!

We sanded the living room down too going for a darker look. But left what we call "the wood floor room) alone. I like the dark so much better but I am also SO glad we didn't touch that room.

...I think the floor probably should have been a post in an of itself. oh well...

Oh one more goofy thing was the master bedroom had a door to the front porch and a door to the living room. The first thing we did was fill those in. Well we had a guy do it (we've definitely done most of this project ourselves though--well that totally not true but with the help of family and friends)
Anyway that door do the living room would be nice sometimes but we really didn't want the complete racetrack loop for the boys to go round and round. Sooo we paid Joe to mud them in but it was completely stupid of us to have him do that before we had the floor disaster wrapped up because we ended up with no access to the rest of the house when there was a hole there, or none at all while we were waiting for polyurethane to dry and such.

 Oh well live and learn.

But anyway back to the kitchen stuff-where I started- you saw the picture at the top of Cann and Tanner eating breakfast, we had a microwave behind me but that's how it was the first few days (and a lot of Burger King meals too-seriously NEVER had we eaten so much fast food) but then after we moved in on Thursday lived here Friday then I took off Monday morning for a week for Girls camp.

BUT!!! This is what I came home too!!! Cabinets and a SINK!!!! When we moved in we had a working toilet and a shower but no sink--so we washed our hands in the shower.
A kitchen sink was a big upgrade.

And now the oven is in, the dishwasher is in, the fridge is in (opposite wall) the microwave took a while but Isaac got that in last week. The kitchen is pretty much done except those outlets and the back splash. Yay. Oh wait..and that ugly window it still needs help but we've mad a lot of progress!
But honestly I kind of like this pre-sink picture better. Isaac sent it to my mom when they put them in. He didn't send it me I had to wait and be surprised!...and my counter has just never been this cleaned off since! Ha its part of LIVING!

Life is pretty good.