The cabinets! The cabinets! Oh, and first day back to school

Guess what?!?! The cabinets have arrived! And some are installed! And they look amazing. Plus, I spent my day working from home and listening to the Pennsylvania Dutch language and watching as the installers figured out how to get the master bath cabinets to the 2nd floor. (Spoiler alert: They brought them up through the 2nd floor window of the master bedroom! We didn't actually see it happen, because Dan and I went out to lunch at that point.)

But first, the new students:

 Half asleep brand new high school student. All reports are good so far, even though his schedule was still a bit messed up. He handled it, some of his friends are in his classes, some are in his lunch, and the carpool worked!

4th grade! Last year at this school (our 10th there as a family). He just keeps refusing to stop growing.

Now as promised, the cabinets! 

The Kitchen

 Facing where the range will be, with the sink area to the right.

 Facing the dining room. The plastic has all come down! The desk area can now be seen to the right by the window. There will be shelves above the L-shaped part. The pantry can be seen to the left by the dining room doorway.

Facing the sink area. The dishwasher is waiting patiently in the basement to be placed in that open spot. Also, it's hard to see, but to the right of the gap is our new garbage and recycling center, with pull-out cabinets that hold plastic bins (one on the left, for gargabe, two on the right for two types of recycling). Between that and having access to the laundry chute from the kitchen, our counters might actually stay clear! Oh, and the appliance garage on the left can't hurt, either.

The Master Bathroom

 Looking in through the doorway from the bedroom. There is one cabinet perpendicular to the doorway and two facing it. The one on the right of the facing ones is open at the top because the hinges aren't fully installed. Shelves and a rod also have to go in, obviously.

 Facing the perpendicular cabinet, as I mentioned above, with the linen cabinet to the right, next to the bathtub wall. We discovered, quickly, that the light in this picture will have to be pretty flush to the ceiling for the cabinet door to clear it. Good thing I hadn't made a final decision on the lights in here!

 The vanity for the sinks. SINKS, plural. Oh, the joy. In fact, I'm not sure who's happier, the one who is sick of shaving trimmings and toothpaste splatter or the one who wants to use the sink RIGHT when he's ready to use it.

 Another view of the linen cabinet, with the tub and some tile in the background.

A better view of the tile and the vanity.

The rest of the cabinets will be installed on Thursday, along with the knobs and pulls, and the counter people will come out to measure on Friday. It will probably be another two weeks before that's ready to go in, so we expect a full 3 weeks before it's all done. The restaurants around here will soon know us by name.

Nearly back to school

I really thought I'd posted more recently than nearly a month ago. There have definitely been some changes since the last pics, but it's not nearly as dramatic (at least in the kitchen) as I thought it would be by now. The cabinets, it turns out, are everything. They cost by far the most, and they set the time schedule for much of the rest of the process. And, we are still waiting on the cabinets (which is actually in the time frame of the project, I just am now feeling the "waiting" more). In fact, today may be the least productive day of the entire project, as one of the workers came by about 8, picked up the trash they'd been accumulating, and then left. Tomorrow, the floor refinishing process gets started, so then it should pick up again.

Kitchen with new oak floors that will match (as closely as possible) the existing ones in the rest of the house. Also, all wood framing is up except that one window on the left.

Facing the dining room. We still have lovely plastic sheeting about. Probably is keeping a lot of dust out of our remaining living areas, but we still have a LOT of dust everywhere. All our allergies are acting up.

Facing the back door.

Where the sink will be.

Tile in the powder room!

Still powder room, where the toilet will be. There will be a decorative tile above this and then I've chosen Sherwin Williams naval paint to go above that. I'm waiting for the day, soon, when I walk into the SW store and everyone says, "Hi, Lynette!" because I've been in so often.

Sink area of powder room.

A better view of the floor tile.

 Master bath, where the bulk of the recent changes have occurred. The blue tape will, of course, be removed. We had a little mishap with the glass tile, in that we ordered the "natural" (which is shiny, see-through glass) but they sent the "silk" (which looks like it's been sanded). The guys started installing them before we realized, and it would have delayed things 2 weeks anyway to get the correct ones in, so our contractor used some product that basically got the tiles back to looking transparent. I may or may not have had to sing the "Let it Go" song in my head while this was happening.

The quartz outlining the cut-out area is the same as will be used for the counter top in this room.

Have decided on the color swatch on the left: Sherwin Williams comfort gray. I brought home every possible variation of teal/aqua/blue/green, none of which was correct, before just googling "blue green gray paint" and coming up with the SW one. I don't know why I try to do things on my own anymore.

Just got word that the floor people can be here today due to a problem at another job (so I have to get everything we need for the next few days out of the basement, as we won't have access) AND the cabinets will be arriving next Tuesday. Yay!!

As of today (Friday)

Finishing of the drywall, I think. I'm a bit unclear on this part of the process, but it looks nice! Facing the stove/oven area. You can now see the vent area for the hood. The white cords hanging out of the wall are for the under cabinet lighting.

Old breakfast nook/toward dining room. The wood at the bottom is the flooring. We are attempting to match as close as possible to the existing oak floor.

Sink area. I've been in search of lighting today for above the sink, the island and the desk area. Lowes didn't have anything that grabbed me for these, although I did choose the pendants for the bathroom. On to Home Depot and a local lighting store tomorrow.

Facing the back door. Hasn't really changed much since before, except for the drywall finishing.

Doorway into the master bath. The wall ahead is where my closet used to be, for reference.

Where the toilet and sinks will go. The inset area will be a small cabinet.

Bathtub shower area. The tub is under the cardboard. The grey stuff is special drywall for wet areas (wetwall?). I'm realizing how totally ignorant I am about this whole process as we go.

Where the window was (and still is, behind the drywall). I still can't quite get over that there's a window! Behind there!

Facing the bedroom from the bathroom. The built-ins in the distance were recently installed, and at first I thought they were too big but now I love them. It will be so lovely to have our bedroom back when this is all done, and I can make it all pretty again. We are also getting a king size bed, and I'm looking forward to new bedding and drapes. We will have to repaint the bedroom, but we'll most likely stick with a similar color, since it is FIJI purple and makes Dan happy.

Wednesday this week (just the kitchen), and how we're living during the renovations

Mudding! Of the drywall! Apparently the least favorite task, according to the workers. Dan asks these kinds of questions of them, sometimes while offering them some of his beer collection. I'm thinking they hope we come up with more projects for them.

Facing the stove/oven area.

Old breakfast nook, looking toward the dining room.

Sink area. 

How we wash dishes. Hence, we are using LOTS of paper & plastic products.

Welcome to our litchen - living room/kitchen hybrid. There is barely space for two people to sit anywhere. The microwave is in the dining room, so at least we have that.

Two holes have had to be cut in the wall/ceiling of this room to access pipes & such. We will be tackling this room right after the current renovations are done, needless to say.

As of this week, Monday-ish

A tub! Installed! I was very tempted to climb in.

Drywall! In the kitchen! I'm definitely a fan of drywall, although the smell is a bit overpowering during some of the process. This is, in case you haven't been following along, facing the sink area.

Stove/oven area

Was the breakfast nook, dining room is just beyond, will now have the fridge, pantry, and a desk area.

Facing the back door from the mudroom. The dark square to the left is the laundry chute, which used to be covered up (on this floor - we've always had access from the 2nd floor). This will now be accessible from the kitchen. I've been finding random items to send down just for fun. Perhaps the drywall fumes are getting to me.

Kitchen & bath, two weeks later...

I took these today. Much of the work that was done between when the last photos were taken and these was plumbing, electrical, framing, and moving ductwork, none of which makes for dramatic photos. However, drywall is now going up in the bathroom and some in the kitchen, so it's more obvious that work is moving forward.

Kitchen:

Looking down the hallway between the kitchen and the stairs to the 2nd floor, toward the front door

Facing where the ovens, stovetop and microwave used to be. The shiny duct that goes up the wall was the one that had to be moved the most, from the middle of the room to the wall.

Facing where the sink was (and will be again). I'm quite excited about all the lighting, because what we used to have cast a shadow no matter where you were working. And, I just realized from looking at these that the ceiling is in! I hadn't even seen that when I took the photos. Now I must go back and admire it in person.

Facing the dining room, where the breakfast nook used to be. The fridge will go where the drywall on the left is, and there will be a pantry cupboard between the fridge and the wall going into the dining room.

Looking down the hallway toward the back of the house. That small room was our too deep and narrow pantry but will now become a cleaning/broom closet. I need to figure out what shelving we should use, because it's still deep and narrow. At least it keeps us from getting any bigger, or we wouldn't be able to get to the back of it!

Bathroom:

The new doorway into the master bathroom. I don't think I posted a "before" pic, but this used to be an archway. It will now have a door, partly because the room is now entirely the bathroom, but also because then when Dan has to get up earlier than I do to go to work, he can turn lights on without worrying about waking me. We will be using the same door that originally went into the old bathroom area, which is why the doorway seems smaller than usual. It is.

Facing where Lynette's closet used to be. The bench does not stay, as lovely as it is.

There used to be a window here! It's actually still there, behind the drywall, and from the outside you can't even tell that it's boarded up. The guys put the blinds back up before covering it up. Hopefully they never fall or break, or we will become THAT family.

Facing the old bathroom area.

Where the shower was, and where the bathtub will go. The tub is currently sitting in our garage, so I expect it will be put in soon. I had to hurry up and choose the fixtures last week so they could know where to put everything before finishing the drywall.

Where Dan's closet used to be. The linen cabinet/built-in will go here. Dan discovered that the light switches are not wired the way we thought they should be, logically, so the electrician will be changing them. Little details like that are why I'm glad we didn't vacate the premises during the construction. We are really happy with our contractor & the workers, but there are always these things that pop up you never think of.