Granite Template

The guy came today from the granite company and glued up all his little plastic pieces for our countertops... Tommy is going tomorrow morning to figure out the layout and pick the specific slabs... and then it will be installed on Tuesday!!! woohoo!

Granite Shopping

Well, since I was out of the hospital we decided to take a drive to shop for granite.  We found what we wanted... New Colonial Dream for a great price so we should have granite soon!

CABINET DOOR FRAMES

Worked on the cabinet door frames this weekend.  We cut 3.5" strips of cherry board first... then we ran one side of that through the jointer to get a straigh/flat edge... Then each board was run through the shaper with our door frame bit.  They came out great!  In between we glued up a majority of the remainder of the door panels. 

LONG DAY

I would say today was one of the longest days of my life... haha... i guess after the midweek break from work yesterday it dragged a little.

Tom's dad was at the house today... He put another coat of spackle in the basement... then he kinked the basement wall at the bottom of the stairs... When we had the stairs made a while ago we asked the stair guy to flair them so that it wouldn't be so closed in... so he moved that wall and installed the stairs... it looks good... Then he came upstairs and put sheetrock inside that little nook between the kitchen and family room.  We have decided that we at least want the option to be able to put the entertainment center on that wall and with that nook the wall wouldn't be long enough for that.

We got home super late from work because of traffic.  Tommy moved the fridge and re-hooked up the water...We think we may move its location again... We are trying to figure out the final layout for the kitchen appliances and we are having a hard time... It seems like wherever we put things the kitchen seems cramped or closed off... so we will leave it in its new location for a while and see how we like it.

TEMPORARY KITCHEN

Mark, tom's cousin, has let us borrow some cabinets he got at a job site that he will one day use to renovate his house. He isn't planning to do it anytime soon and Tommy is going to build our cabinets from the cherry logs we got when we cut down trees which will take some time. Therefore, Tom's dad was here today and installed them in the kitchen and started working on the countertop too.

Tom's mom tackled the lovely job of removing nails from the 2x4's we used to frame out the driveway pad.

When we got home we continued with our cleaning and organizing frenzy.

DEAR WATCHING

This morning I repainted a section of the kitchen ceiling. I guess when it got sprayed we missed going over it with the roller so you could see lines. It looks better now. Then Hooper and I worked on cleaning the kitchen floor today. There is still a haze from the grout on the travertine floor that I cannot get off. I have to be careful what I clean it. I can't use anything acidic because it will eat at the calcium in the travertine. It looks better then it did this morning but still not 100%. I guess I really did the cleaning while Hooper put his footprints and spent some time staring down the deer. He watched them for at least an hour.

BUSY

Sorry I can't keep up with the blog!

Since the last time I updated we started the kitchen floor tile. We laid down the plywood in a day using the superdrive screw gun... it is typically used for installing ceiling sheetrock because it is long and is self feeding... that is why we bought it but we didn't do the sheetrock ourselves so we still had screws leftover on the strips and it was great to use for the plywood on the floor so you could stand up and drive the gazillion screws in.

We decided to buy Travertine tile for the floor. We thought we wanted travertine and had been looking around for good deals and everywhere we went it was somewhere between 6 and 9 dollars a square foot and there was a lot of fill in it. BUT we stumbled upon it at Home Depot for less than 3 dollars a square foot. The only issue is that the tile is 18" x 18" and that is not what we wanted on the kitchen floor... soooooo we break out the tile saw and start cutting it up!!! We decided to do a Versailles style pattern. There are 4 tile sizes, 12x18, 12x12, 6x12 and 6x6. We have to cut each one out of the 18x18 tiles. It is a lot of work and the reason we are still working on the kitchen floor. We have about two thirds finished so far and it looks great. We ran out of tile on Saturday of this past weekend and spend Sunday looking for more. We went to Flemington Home Depot and they had a few boxes but they were from an older lot and looked TOTALLY different, went to Bridgewater...same deal... went to the other Bridgewater... same deal... then we drove to Phillipsburg and they had a whole pallet of the stuff we needed so we took a little more than we think we need just in case...

Meanwhile Tom's parents have come over a few days... His mom brought all the rest of the 2x4 firewood inside so we can burn it... His dad hung the flood lights outside, checked and fixed all the switches and finished everything I had not started... and he wired up all the outlets... then he put in all the breakers in both the upstairs and basement panels.

Also painted the dining room a darker color recently... It was very light and the curved ceiling was disappearing so I painted it darker and it looks better.

We had one 'small' fiasco... We were laying tile one night and Tommy went into the foyer to cut a tile... but all of a sudden he ran upstairs... a few seconds later he yelled "shut the water off"... I had no idea what he was talking about and ran upstairs... he was in the Princess Bathroom and water was everywhere... I ran back downstairs and flipped whatever water levels there are by the well inlet and hoped for the best because I didn't know which one was the main water... it stopped... turns out one of the compression fittings for the sink hoses was not tightened enough or wasn't slid on all the way so it popped off... oops... we will go around and check all of those now, if not change them to sweat fittings... There was no damage although it doesn't look good in the pictures... Because of the curved ceiling of the dining room the water rolled down the walls and came out on the floor downstairs... no damage...yay!