Finally Cooking!

So it has officially been one year since we moved out of our old house and in with my parents. On July 9th, it will be one year since we purchased this house.  Almost done, but we still have a lot to do. But there has been great progress made, so wanted to share a bit of that here...


The kitchen is well on it's way. We have assembled all of the cabinets and have to put in a few filler pieces and the baseboard around the bottom before it's complete, but it is usable and functional and I am grateful. There have been several mishaps along the way...

 Not ordering enough countertop was one.  We bought butcher block intending to use it as shelving. For our kitchen countertops I had grand ideas of Joe building polished concrete ones from scratch. That takes a lot of time and expertise, so in the interest of getting into our house this year, we decided to use the purchased butcher block for our countertops until we had a little time and freedom to do what we wanted.  The problem is, we didn't buy enough, as you can see in the picture on the left. So we will head off to Ikea soon to get another piece. Until then, we have easy access to the drawer underneath!

 Also we discovered that our large farmhouse sink had a crack in it right out of the box.  Thankfully, Joe's grandpa hopped up to Ikea for us and painlessly exchanged it. While we waited for a sink, Joe got the backsplash taken care of.  It went a lot more quickly than the shower, and this will be the last subway tile we install for awhile. It's small and tedious.

 When we did get the sink exchanged, the drawer meant to be installed underneath suddenly didn't fit. It banged against the bottom of the sink.  We tried lowering it, to no avail. Joe decided to raise the entire countertop slightly, since the sink rested on that. Success! But now we have a bit of a gap in between in the cabinets and the bottom of the counter so we have to get creative with covering that up.

 Once the sink was in place, I sanded down the counters and oiled them.  This looked nice for a little bit, but I think it's more maintenance than I'd like, and may seal them.  If you have any pointers on that, I would love to hear.
 We also got the stove hooked up.  It is interesting cooking completely with gas, but so far I can't complain!  I'm so glad I went with the extra wide stove. When we host things, it will come in handy!

 We have not installed lights in the kitchen yet, so we have the lovely work lights (see left) plugged in help us in the dark.  We have the range hood above the stove screwed in, but have not installed the pipe that leads the smoke/steam outside so for now it's just our work light so that we can see what we are cooking.

A few weeks ago, some friends came into town for the sole purpose of helping us get the house ready.  The guys were able to put up most of the baseboard trim around the house and begin working on the windows.  These are the things I didn't think about when we were gutting the walls and redoing floors. There are TONS of minor details to take care of. We installed baseboard throughout. Then you have to go back and install quarter round moulding on that, followed by caulking the seams and painting everything.  When you have a whole house to do, this is quite daunting!  Thankfully, we're on the tail end of it. Everything is now installed, most of it caulked, getting started painting. We've been blessed with selfless family who have come alongside us on these simple, but incredibly time consuming, tasks.  Shout out to Joe's dad, Michael and grandfather, Poppy and my dad, Phil! Window trim means that I finally get the window sill of my dreams in the kitchen.  Look at how wide that is.  Love it and can't wait to grow some more cute plants.

Since Joe redid all the plumbing in the house himself, I asked if it would be possible to have a pot filler. Joe came through, but we've had a hole in the tile waiting for a bit now. We hadn't had an opportunity to install it, trying to work on other parts of the house.  Some dear friends came into town and decided to help us tackle a few tasks, including installing that beauty!! The kids love it, and are very excited about water coming out of a weird place in the wall. I wonder if they make child locks for those things...




All in all, it's coming along. Lots of finishing touches to be done, but it will come.  We are very excited to welcome Joe's step dad, Buddy, who is coming into town just to help us finish up.  No words. I am just grateful.  Until next time..