remodel my kitchen

A few weeks ago we called in a work associate of my husband’s (he works in construction) to complete the missing pieces of our remodel and he spent a day nosing around and then disappeared to do someone else’s job in a city 100 miles away. So we haven’t done anything else. But the kitchen is entirely liveable this way, it’s just not done. Unfortunately, my fear is that we won’t ever get past 75% completion. But I’m not tripping on it right now, given that I’m recording an album and have a 6-month-old baby…

We have a dishwasher! A dishwasher that is installed and washing dishes every night! This incredible piece of technology is totally worth it! I’m so proud we’re the first people in the Bay Area to own one ;-)!

All the cabinets are installed. There’s still painting to do in spots, and sanding. The back splash is up behind the sink. It’s really coming together, and most importantly, it’s entirely liveable, so if the baby comes tomorrow we’d be OK.

We bought IKEA cabinets and it was pretty amazing that an entire kitchen fit in the back of a small pickup truck! My husband is finishing the painting now. It remains to be seen if we can actually assemble everything and install the dishwasher. Hope springs eternal!

I mixed a few samples myself and toned down the turquoise a bit. It really looks great now. My husband painted the walls yesterday. I still have to do the corners and the trim needs another coat. There are some flaws that we’re not fixing but I guess I need to let go of the idea that it’s going to be perfect. We went to IKEA yesterday and last night I was measuring everything again. Still haven’t bought the cabinets. Oh, other signs of progress—hubby moved the fridge out of our son’s room and back into the kitchen, and sheetrocked the old door between the two rooms closed (on one side).

... the color is godawful. It’s a true, saturated turquoise (I checked it against my jewelry) but it looks horrible. I have to mix some of the paint with some black and white and either blue or green or indigo and see if I can get a more palatable color. The other option is to do a faux finish on top of the turqoise and mute it that way—but are those still “in”?

We were waiting to see if we were going to start to like it but it still looks icky two weeks later. Now my husband has some construction contracts and I’m focused on songwriting for the next record, so I hope we get some time to get back to the kitchen. I had a premonition today of it remaining in its present state after the baby comes in April…

I made a huge list of all the tasks to be done, and my husband has been taking advantage of slow work to do the demolition. He ripped up the old linoleum last week, laid down cement backerboard and tile that someone gave us. Turns out it was now out of stock, and we didn’t have enough to finish. We found a cool slighly contrasting tan tile, and pulled up every other cream-colored one and together tiled a checkerboard pattern on Saturday. Sunday, he cut most of the side pieces. So it’s getting there!