Kitchen Renovations ~ My Intentions

This is what I was going to use all my creative skills to create out of the kitchen we purchased and elbow grease and paint. Cause paint was all we could afford when we bought the house (well, that and the house payments)

keep going...

Kitchen Renovations First Attempt

Well, sadly ~ all the creativity of every cell of my body could not recreate our kitchen into that kitchen. Somehow I don't even seem to have a picture of the attempt at magazine perfection. I came to decide that the blue doors looked pretty horrific, but still - only money for paint. So I painted the boxes white and left the doors. It lightened up the kitchen. That's all I can say.

Blogspot won't accept the HTML code for the slideshow from Photobucket, so I will have to link you to it here...
Maybe someone will take pity on me and teach me how to do it right. Now I am really aggravated (I don't seem to have much patience with technical difficulties these days) So I have to quit. I will rebuild the next slideshow on my computer and upload it but not right now. After I have done some yoga or something. Or chocolate and soda. Or hot wings. Yes, hot wings.

Keep going...

Kitchen Renovations Second Attempt

The slideshow starts with the delivery of our new kitchen cabinets! We purchased stock, ready to finish cabinets from Lowe's. They aren't really ready to finish. They have to be sanded. I coated them with shellac (smelled like it anyway) This is the short version of the work. It's actually a fairly involved job, but saved us oodles and oodles of dollars. We did all work ourselves.(sometimes it shows)

Keep going...

Kitchen Renovations Third Attempt

*I guess I forgot to mention that we bought the house three years ago. The initial paint job and some cabinetry removal happened right away. The hole to what is now the dining room was put in maybe a year ago, and when my husband came home from Iraq this May, is when we got into the major broohawhaw. *
I was pretty pleased with the Nutmeg Brown. Until we got the cabinets up. The more work we finished, the less we liked the color. SOOOOO, we changed it. This is as current as the renovations get. We still have finish work to do. It's actually a lot more tasks, but they won't be as noticeable as the major de-and-re-construction we have done thus far.
Things really slowed way down when my husband went back to work and the children stopped going to school for the summer. When they start back up again, hopefully, I will be motivated to finish up the tasks that are mine.

DIY - Why?

The next time you have the inclination to Do It Yourself, throw out your palm and yell, "Get thee behind me Satan!!" Just kidding. If Satan wants to help you lay tile - you should let him. He's probably better at it than you. Nah. Just kidding. But seriously. We wives at home were discussing what we were going to do when our men came home from war. One said, "We're going to Greece." One said, "We're going Mexico." I said, "We're going to Lowe's." And THAT my friends is what we did. No cruising for us. Unless you count cruising the aisles of the local Lowe's with the big blue cart. The possibilities are endless and the sites are different around every corner. Some day I'd like to take my camera there just so you can experience the beauty of it with me. Trying to order kitchen cabinets with your man fresh back from war - not the best activity. However, if you get smart and send him to oogle tools while YOU work out the cabinets. Now THAT's inspired. So - poor Suzanne has been looking for something new to read and here it is. Hubby returned on Saturday. Sunday we attended both services at church and hubby was honored. At first service our 12 year old daughter sang, "I'm Proud To Be An American". *sniff* Monday evening, many many women descended upon our home. Hubby took the kids out to dinner and a movie, and I had the entire western hemisphere over for dinner. Minus the men. The funnest part of the night - in my opinion - was when we had about 14 women and 2 toddlers crammed into my dining room, and our incoming president banged the cowbell and yelled, "Musical Chairs! Time to pick up your plates and find a new seat." I stood in the doorway and laughed HARD and took pictures. Who knew she would actually MAKE them move when I suggested it flippantly??

The timing of my husband's return happened to coincide with the week that our local chapter of PWOC was having a trainer in to train us on next year's theme and how to lead women. Our trainer Melinda is a good friend of mine who was stationed here a few years ago (and got to leave) and is also a blogging maniac - you've read her stuff before here. She blogged about her time here which is really cool, cause that means I am free to fast forward. Anyway, she stayed with us while she was here and we had a great time! I titled the time - Driving Miss Melinda. That was good junk. On Wednesday morning, I had the Praise Team over for one last hurrah. My husband grilled up steaks and other delicious meats - and once again - the Western Hemisphere was here. There were SIXTEEN children here! And do you know, that is not ALL of our children?? Lordy Mercy. Anyway, this was a wonderful time for us to be together. I gave them the appreciation gifts I had worked on for them and we sang a few songs too. Including the new PWOC theme song - THE MORE I SEEK YOU (I'll post the video later). It was really cool to have Melinda add another beautiful tenor sound to our group. I also received a couple of special gifts. Then it was time to send the team on their various ways, and to send Melinda back on home. We sang together our farewell song THE LORD BLESS YOU AND KEEP YOU. I'll try to post the video of that sometime too. After dinner - the demolition started! And we have been going non-stop (well, except to shop) ever since. I will probably be scarce for a while still as the projects that we are working on, we are trying to complete before my husband has to go back to work on the 9th. These include - completely re-doing the laundry room. Tiling and wall re-configuration in the music/craft room. Completely and I mean COMPLETELY re-doing the kitchen. This will be the final goodbye to the 70's faux brick flooring. The last vestiges of it will be replaced with ceramic tile. All clean and bright and simple. Ahhh. Here's a sampling of the work thus far. OF COURSE I will be doing collages when the dust clears and the man is away. Until then ~ think twice about DIY. I'm kidding. It's FUN! Okay - I'm half kidding.