Sunday, August 18, 2013

Between Trips

*This post is out of order chronologically, in case you were wondering.

After our big trip to Texas, we left Clark in Mississippi and headed home.  We did a couple of things during our week and a half home before we headed on another big trip out to Oregon.  It was weird not having Clark around.  He had a great time at Lena's though and being with his cousins.  I thought he would get sick of being there after a couple of days, but no.  He loved being there the whole time. He even got to earn some money!  Thanks Lena for letting him work there!  I planned on getting more done while we were home, but that didn't happen. Oh well.  Remodeling stuff takes A LOT longer than I was planning on.  And we still aren't done with kitchen.  We are getting closer, and the major projects are done.  Maybe in a couple of weeks I'll do the big reveal!       

Before we did the backsplash, one night we covered up the walls. We used joint compound (used in drywalling) as that is what the fix-it person used to cover up all of the wall paper in the kitchen.  The owners of the house just left the bucket behind of left over compound and I am glad they did.  We used it to cover up the grape cluster/fruit wall paper. 
June 6 2013 bar (2)

And notice all the dishes and stuff??  Our kitchen was like that for a couple of weeks...
DSCN0801

All covered up. The blending isn't perfect, but looks so much better!  And I am sure when people come, they won't even notice unless I point it out.
DSCN0803

See the yucky yellowish wall behind the stove?  It was like that on the wall that we covered up using the joint compound.
DSCN0799

Ahh....all better.
DSCN0804

One night we did the backsplash.  I was really excited to do this project.  Once we started though, I was really glad that we had already done the floor.  Doing the backsplash was a little more tedious. We emptied the cabinets before our big trip in preparation for painting the cabinets. I sanded them down first, then primed them, then sanded them again. Can't remember when though....... Oh and the undercabinet lighting is one of my top favorite things about the kitchen!!!  They have three settings of brightness.  I love them!
DSCN0800


So the tile came in one big sheet like this.  We wanted a staggered subway tile look, so Shanna and I cut them apart into rows of three tiles.  I must say, backsplash tile is expensive!!!  I found some that I liked that cost almost $30 a square foot!  This stuff was about $7.50 a square foot.  And our floor tile was about $3.50 a square foot.
DSCN0797

The first tile is up!  It's looking good!  It was so nice covering up the old yellow glue.  There used to be a green formica backsplash that matched the counters.  (Love the lights!)
DSCN0806

6-27-13 back splash

6-27-13 putting in backsplash

This is a fairly representative picture of the space in our kitchen.  It's very small.  The fridge is where the stove is, and the stove of course is normally pushed back against the wall. Actually the fridge sticks out to about where you see the stool and bucket below (we bought a little-bit-bigger-than-normal fridge.) And this time around we made sure to wipe off the grout!  The grout for the backsplash was a smoother texture than the floor grout, so that was kind of fun/different.  It was unsanded grout, so it wouldn't wreck the tiles.  It reminded me of brownie batter, in a way.  And actually had a faint chocolately smell, like cake batter or something.
6-27-13 putting in backsplash 2

We also took a trip up to the temple.  Lee and I swapped at the temple and then went and saw our newest nephew, baby Rhett.  Now my parents have 16 grandsons and 16 granddaughters.
6-29-13 Shanna and Rhett

6-29-13 Shanna, Rhett, Ruth

Lee took some pictures while I was in the temple. And remember, Clark was in Mississippi still.
6-29-13 temple 1

6-29-13 temple 2

6-29-13 temple 3

6-29-13 temple 4

6-29-13 temple Cal in tree

6-29-13 temple Shanna

I love this photo of the girls!  Haley is getting noticeably taller than Shanna, which is kind of fun!
6-29-13 temple Shanna and Haley

After we stopped at Lois' to see her new baby, I completely forgot to bring the camera with me.  Oh, and I had dropped our camera a little while before that.  It was even in the case and it busted.  We couldn't get it to work.  So we bought the same exact camera, again, for the third time.  Lois shipped it to Ely, NV where we would be by the end of the week.  So that is a little of what we did in between trips. 

1 comment:

Hanna Caldwell said...

The kitchen is looking fantastic! I'll have to come to you if I ever want to redo a kitchen. Actually it's still all in the works but we are looking at buying a house in Orem and I would really like to repaint the kitchen cabinets sometime so let me know how that all goes!