The big kitchen prep

So the time has come when I have gotten so frustrated with this silly kitchen layout that I simply cannot wait any longer. I mean this was workable.

Well, the rolling dishwasher really did suck

But it was dark, cramped feeling, and not particularly functional. 

I made a grand plan--we would move around the cabinets and stove, install a dishwasher next to the sink, install new cabinets next to the fridge where the old dishwasher was and pop some shelves on top, paint everything so that it matched, and plop on some new countertops. Sounds easy, right? (Spoiler: no, not easy.) Using our old cabinets would save tons of money, and I planned on buying Ikea's cheapest dishwasher and otherwise keeping other appliances as-is. (Ha, ha.)

I drew a lot of doodles of what I dreamed the kitchen could become before I convinced Adamo that my plan was the best plan of all plans that ever planned.

Step One was figuring out where the hell we would put everything and how to keep track of all of the moving parts. I figured a good start would be to keep track of all of the doors (this is important later, when everything is painted and looks the same). 

Here's the map! I'm so clever.

If that map made no sense to you, that's ok. It made sense to me. ;) We took off all of the doors in one sweaty night.

I've heard that taking the doors off of cabinets makes it feel more open, but this just feels more cluttered

We taped labels on the doors to keep track of them (which was especially difficult for the pantry doors, as they all seemed to be exactly the same).

Those boxes contain the doors for the new cabinet and the door cover for the dishwasher

We also put the hardware in labeled sandwich bags, which we then popped in the box holding all of the handles that I got on sale from Home Depot. It belongs together! We briefly considered having separate bags for the top hinges and bottom hinges, but that was a whole lot of extra work and wasted baggies.

They are really nice quality hinges, so we resused them

The next step was moving the kitchen. I mean, not the whole kitchen, but as the actual kitchen was going to be a war zone construction zone, I needed somewhere to cook! And maybe eat. And somewhere to keep the dishes... So I cleared out all the decorative dust catchers from the sun room and we started hauling things in.

Feels kitchen-y already! OK, not really

We brought in the kitchen cart and put it against the window; it was going to hold the toaster oven, some food supplies, my pots and pans, and (probably a bad idea but we didn't die so) a propane camp stove to cook on. Then, it was time to bring in the fridge. I was not going to have a temp kitchen without it.

I supervised the Hauling of the Fridge

Then we brought in the essential small appliances and essential food. I had already made about a month of freezer meals that were waiting in our spanking new basement freezer, but I knew that some nights I was going to want fresh food. It actually ended up feeling quite nice and cozy, with a sort of bed & breakfast vibe.

NOW it feels kitchen-y

All the non-essentials, you ask? Well, most of the spare food went into giant plastic bins and boxes that we stowed under the dining room table. All of the spare dishes and glassed went into the downstairs bathroom garden window, because we ran out of spaces...

We did wash it all before using it again because ugh

Then, we set up the dining room as our tool staging area. I knew things would spread out of the kitchen, and since it took over the dining room last time, I wanted to pretend it was on purpose this time. :P I put several layers of padding on the dining room table before putting the dropcloth on it to hide all of the boxes of food and kitchen crap.

That's the dishwasher box on the left

Now, we were ready.

Bye bye bead board

Step one of the Kitchen Fixin' Plan was to move the Thigh Destroyer peninsula between the stove and the rest of the kitchen. We unhooked the stove and moved it out into the dining room, and got to work removing the beadboard so that we could bump the cabinets against that wall.

So pretty, I miss u beadboard ;(

All of the instructions I read on removing beadboard said that you should start at one end and move over one by one. That was hard, so we started in the middle like (not too bright) rebels. 

I feel like I should mention that it was my terrible idea to start in the middle.

As soon as we had the first piece off, the yawing black depths of Spidertopia Kingdom were exposed. Just kidding, I made Adamo check and he said there weren't any spiders. 

I didn't double-check. 

It turns out that removing beadboard is an enormous pain in the ass when the person who installed said beadboard managed to nail each piece to the next piece sideways, at the most delicately attached part. It's even more of a pain in the ass when you are trying desperately to save the beadboard to reuse in another portion of the kitchen. Not sure that's gonna work out :(

I tried so hard, and got so far...

Eventually, after approximately five thousand years of toil, we got all of the beadboard off. And we were confronted with this:

...

Like... what? How... drunk..? The stud spacing... they cut the bottom plate?! Twice! There's a wall on the other side of the studs, even though it is behind another wall... I hate to say it but I seriously cannot even.

I had to force myself to turn away from the horror show, so I turned around and ripped the back off of the peninsula. (On purpose, as part of the plan.) There were still bits of old flooring under there!

It was really therapeutic.

Of course, as soon as the cats realized that there was a hole in the wall into which they could disappear for presumably forever, they were desperate to get in. Adamo and I hastily covered the wall with some random plastic tarp that I bought for painting but turned out to be really terrible for painting.

Then it was drinkin' time at the tool bar.

GET IT!!?? TOOL BAR!?? 'CAUSE THERE'S TOOLS! TOOLBAR LOLOLOLOLOL

We also realized that there was something super off about our drywall--there are two layers! (Seriously, wtf is up with the people who built this place!?) That meant that we would need to shim the studs a bit in order to get the closest sized drywall to fit. Luckily, some leftover beadboard paneling that we had was the perfect width for shims!

High quality work station right here, folks

Using the penisula as our workbench, we cut out little shims, then I nailed them to the studs. I have no idea if it's really necessary to have the shims go along the whole stud, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

I AM THE COMPLETE OPPOSITE OF A PROFESSIONAL HOUSE MAKING PERSON

Around this time we realized that home remodeling is a) super dusty and b) really nerve-wracking when there is a possibility that a cat might be an asshole and trip you while you're trying to do something important with a saw. I bought some fancy construction zippers and used the aforementioned plastic drop cloth to block off both entries to the kitchen. It was great; it really gave an "Outbreak" feel to the whole operation. 

Idiocy is our only option.

Next, we had to get the drywall! We weren't able to borrow a truck from anyone and Adamo wasn't a fan of my grand plan to put the drywall between two pieces of plywood and strap it to his car, so we rented a truck from the Home Depot. 

Less expensive than two pieces of plywood

It was really exciting when Adamo pulled in with this big van; kinda like a construction Santa Claus! Until he threw open the doors for the disappointing single piece of drywall.

Worst Constructionmas, ever.

Using our handy-dandy counter-tops workbench, we cut the drywall to size and cut a hole for the outlet.

We did end up popping a stool under the droopy drywall

The guy who is good with the straight lines does the double-checking

Adamo checked for fit and then I screwed that puppy into the studs. 

The girl who is bad at figuring out spatial placement does the drilling

Next, because Adamo has done most of the heavy lifting on literally everything else, I offered to do the drywall mudding. I'm obviously an expert after watching two and half youtube videos about it. 

I can do this. It's kind of like grouting, right?

It's not really like grouting at all.

The corner was the absolute worst, and, in retrospect, I'm not sure why I agonized over it so much, considering the majority of it was going to be behind the cabinets. 

Next came the stupid sanding. I hate sanding. Why do I have to use a light? I still don't really get it even though Adamo patiently shows me over and over again. Anyway, I thought it turned out pretty well for my first mudding job ever.

Stupid light, why are you so hot

Then we primed it and our wall was ready to spoon some cabinets! 

Oh, we should probably screw the outlet back in, huh?

But first, I couldn't resist doodling a little something on my wall for whoever removes these cabinets. 

:D

Body freezer

So, like any self-respecting gardener, I decided that if I was going to both grow a boatload of tomatoes AND maintain a Costco membership, it was going to be necessary to acquire a chest freezer.

I trolled craigslist for AGES looking for a decent used one, but after dealing with more than one seller who refused to sell to someone who was planning on briefly putting a freezer on its side (jeez dudes, let me make my own poor life choices), we decided to buy a new one from Costco for approximately the same price as a used one. (I'm assuming they sell them so cheap so that you will buy more Costco food, which is exactly what I did.)

See, craigslist pessimists, it TOTALLY fit in Adamo's car. Jerks.

Of course, as soon as we got it home, I realized that a) the cord is really short, and b) the best place to put it also sometimes a bit... leaky. As we had some pallets lying around, I figured I'd just cut one in half, plop the freezer on top, and call it a day.

Actually a pretty good idea

I also put a pre-primed board on the front of the pallet so that it would look pretty and so that I wouldn't accidentally put my toes into what is most surely Spidertopia by now.

Maybe putting food next to toxic supplies inn't a great idea, in retrospect

It worked out for the best, though, because I was NOT prepared for how many tomatoes one roma tomato plant makes. I should have listened to the smartgardener planner, but instead I figured "eh, I'll just double the number of plants 'cause I like tomatoes."

ONE day of tomatoes. This amount, every day. For a month.

Good thing tomatoes freeze well. (FYI, freezing them makes them easier to peel!)

Poison Ivy Jungle

So, when Adamo and I first moved in, there was a fenced-in area with gravel, presumably a dog yard.

With suspiciously verdant grass right in front of the door [poop joke]

It was such an eyesore, but I saw some potential for it. On August 5th, 2013 Adamo and I made a deal: if one year from that day, the chain link fence was still standing there, I would get to convert it from a dog yard to a quail yard. QUAIL. With their funny little faces and delicious little eggs!

For some weird reason, Adamo was not super into the idea of jumpy, stinky little birds so close to our house. One month before Quail Day, a pair of dudes came over to pick up the fence. Adamo got poison ivy. Like everywhere. I shall not comment further on that.

I was a bit disappointed, not going to lie. But the day before the dudes were supposed to come pick up the fence, I really looked at the space, and saw the untapped potential of the area behind the old dog yard (which has now been dubbed The Patio). I had a lace-leaf japanese maple that desperately needed to be shoved into the ground somewhere, and it was decided; this poison ivy jungle would become my meditation garden.

You can totally see it, right?

We put on our gloves and some old clothes and ripped out all of the poison ivy, weird vines, and random shrubbery, except for the one in the back that I thought was cute. We tried to save some of the ferns, but I don't think that worked out so well.

In the back in the middle; it really is quite an adorable shrubbery

You may have noticed the neato lantern sitting on the stump in the foreground. The stump is from Adamo's mom and was supposed to be my mushroom garden, but it turned out to already have non-delicious fungus. T_T The lantern is made of lava rock, and it is pretty sweet; so I combined the two and now I have a focus piece for my meditation garden!

Yeah, I'm just gonna focus on how sweet this looks

It was immediately apparent that just having this area open would lead immediately to invasion by the weeds we just ripped out and to erosion. We did what we could to edge the side of the patio with some cinderblocks that were were already there, supplemented with some random ones that I found under the porch. The plan had been to do the beginning steps of the meditation garden for free, but it was clear that reinforcements were needed. 

I should not have been allowed to also go to the store

At Home Depot we got cinderblocks, garden stakes, and half of the planned reed fencing. And switchgrass because it was 50% off and I walked by it. Somehow it ended up in our cart. >:3

PS I planted the poor japanese maple that has lived in that pot for almost five years!

Based on my completely-not-to-scale doodle of the garden plan, I laid out the plan for the fencing using my ugliest yarn. I hammered in the stakes over a foot deep in hopes that the winter wouldn't screw up the fencing too badly. I mean, it is basically made of grass, so I don't exactly have high hopes for it surviving the winter, but we will see.

Adamo and I then started digging, and leveling, and hauling the stupid cinderblocks into place in hopes of preventing erosion. As we went, I kept getting distracted and went looking for rocks. I don't even remember what I wanted to do with them, but I found a lot of neat rocks. And I somehow didn't get Lyme disease from mucking around by the stone wall where 19,834,268 deer mice live.

TWO TYPES of neat rocks, amiright!?

Then, to finish off the leveling, we hauled over the last of the dirt STILL hanging out under a tarp in our driveway. FINALLY. Really, Pollilio's, I appreciate your generosity of dirt, but I had actually only planned for the amount that we bought.

Eventually, the plan is to have half-height reed fencing along the patio, wrap it around the japanese maple, and cut it at an angle where it makes a sort of shell pattern so that it is not too overwhelming. A fire pit will be going in the middle of patio, and now we have a sweet party space! I just need to find a way to integrate the arbor my mom gave us.

And hope that no one falls down in the corner by the fence; it's a bit of a drop.

And even though we were wearing gloves and immediately washed our clothes, Adamo got poison ivy again. Above the gloves. 

He wouldn't have gotten poison ivy from a quail farm, just sayin'

Oh, right. The blog. The blog for our house, the blog chosen especially for renovating our house, our house's blog. That blog?

Super long title aside, yeah, we haven't forgotten this blog. Generally, what happens is one of us casually mentions, "oh, we should put this on our blog!" and the other replies, in hushed tones, "yeah, but then we'd have to bring it up to date..." The topic is dropped immediately.

We've done a lot; it's a big project just writing down all the crap we've done. But I'm going to do it—this weekend! Maybe I'll even be able to convince Adamo to pitch in! ;)

All entries will be back-dated to keep them in order.

Annnnnnd here's a cat picture to tide you over:

Kicking each other... with *love*