Our house is starting to feel like a home...even without a kitchen!

Our counter top

Well a lot has transpired in the past week and a half.  Last week, Mike and I finally splurged and bought the kitchen cabinets, counter top and sink.  It was a pretty interesting process and took all of about 15 minutes.  We ordered the in-stock cherry cabinets at Lowes and our counter tops are Corian solid surface in a color called silt.  The undermounted sink came free with our order, so we are getting an 8 inch deep stainless steel Revere sink.  We had the cabinets delivered over this past weekend and the counter top will be installed mid March once they've custom manufactured it for us.

Our kitchen floor

We also got some bad news about our kitchen flooring.  The place we ordered it from called us after the measure and gave us a price twice of what they quoted us for.  We decided to look at some other options and settled on installing the subflooring ourselves and picked out a click type flooring that is almost identical to the linoleum we had picked out.  We bought all of the materials for the floor this past weekend and Mike and Kevin did some manual labor pounding in almost an entire 5 pound box of nails into the floor by hand.  In addition to all of that, I was able to get the dining room painted and the kitchen primed.

We also managed to completely clog the basement sink beyond what we want to repair since it is an ancient concrete double basin tub, so we ordered a new utility sink.  Needless to say, laundry is piling up since our washer drains into the sink.  Mike was able to get the basement organized and I finally ripped the carpeting off the stairs going into the basement.  I knew it was time when the guys delivering our cabinets were joking about them.  Seven of the treads were hot pink and the last two were blue...yikes.  Like many of our other discoveries, they stairs might as well have been outside judging by the amount of dirt under the carpeting.

This week has been hectic but Mike has been working on building the valence out for the upper cabinets since we are putting more cabinets in than were originally in the kitchen.  I was able to get some of the kitchen painted and Mike unpacked all of the cabinets.  Our most exciting change this week was that our carpet was FINALLY installed.  We ordered it all the way back in mid January so it's been a long wait, but totally worth it.  We moved some furniture in and we are both loving it...Callie does too.  We are also excited because there is enough left over carpet for us to have bound into a runner for the stairs.  We're going to install it ourselves to save on labor costs...which are astronomical to do a stair runner.

My parents and my cousin Lauren are coming out this weekend to help us finish installing the cabinets and flooring.  Once that is done, we can finally move our new appliances in and unpack the kitchen.  We're hoping our new laundry sink will be in so we can install that as well.  Things are finally coming along and we're definitely looking forward to slowing down and starting to enjoy the house...not that we still won't have a million and one things we still want to do.

The kitchen with new subflooring and a close up of all the nails.

Mike working on the valence.

Callie loves her house.                      The peachy dining room.

Some of the army of cabinets and the kitchen getting painted.

                                                 

The living room with carpet...and a mess.

Holy Crap, we got another room DONE!!!

This week was a great week for us.  We finally finished another room...the bathroom.  After discovering that the tub didn't need to be replaced, it was just dirty, we bought a new vanity, sink, faucet and mirror.  We removed the wallpaper and repainted.  We also installed a brushed nickel curved shower curtain rod.  Now for the before and after pictures.

Before

 During

 We found a toy canoe under the old vanity.

 Mike installing the new sink...at 1am.

 We moved the canoe to be hidden behind the mirror.

After

 Looking into the bathroom.

 Vase with curly sticks...to hide a missing piece of molding.

 Toilet, we replaced the heating duct next to it.

 The new sink.

The sink and mirror.

 Shower with a new rod and Mike's shower curtain.

We also worked on ripping out the sub-flooring and many layers of linoleum in the kitchen.  I sanded and plastered the ceiling and walls in the kitchen.  The plastering is a ton of work, but the kitchen will look great when we're done.  Oh yeah, we had to shovel, a lot.

 Mike working hard removing the floor.

 Me, covered in plaster dust.

 It's not a fun job...

 Plastering, not the master that my father is.

 The kitchen floor stripped down.

 Callie, sitting in the middle of the mess.  I guess she's trying to help.

 The ceiling is almost done.

 We had to scrape the walls and fix the plaster in another corner of the kitchen.

 All the cabinets are gone.  The brown stuff is glue from the backsplash.

All our snow...and the garage.