Almost There

The kitchen is finally coming back together. I showed you a while ago when they put in our sinks, and how excited we were to finally have running water. Now, we've almost got all the stuff back together. The dishwasher is in, and we've started bringing down dishes again.

Look at this, real silverware, not plastic stuff that breaks if you try to press down on it at all.

Yesterday, we had a guy in to re-do the lights. We had these ugly fluorescent panels before. He put in five can lights.

They make the kitchen surprisingly bright. I think we had two burned out fluorescent tubes in our panels, so it had been relatively dim in there up until now.

The next thing they need to do is texture the ceiling, and they install the pendant lights that will hang over the island. That's supposed to happen on Friday.

Before you know, this will all be a memory...and by before you know it, I probably mean several more months from now.

Thoroughly Modern

I know shouldn't be something that a person gets excited about in this day and age, but holy crap it's so EXCITING!

We have sinks with running water coming out of them! And they don't leak or anything! I can't believe the day has finally arrived!

That's the kitchen sink. They also redid our bathroom for us!

The left hand sink in the bathroom has been broken for probably more than a year. It's so nice to have this stuff fixed and be able to use water whenever I need it.

Of course, I'm going to have to get used to it again. A few minutes ago, I got something on my hands, and I almost walked all the way to the bathroom to wash them off before I remembered that the kitchen sink worked again.

Countertops!

This summer has been about as garbage as a summer can possibly be for me. Instead of doing things that summer is known for like relaxing, having fun, and going on vacation, we've spent the whole summer working on our house with every available moment of free time.

I told y'all about the stuff we did to get our damaged floors redone. The new floors were in a month and a half ago, and since that day, the work hasn't even paused. Instead, it moved to a new focus. Now we're trying to get our kitchen put back together.

It looked like this when I did that post back in mid-July:

And we've lived with this ever since, as we steadily added to it, assembling Ikea cabinets, mounting them, painting the door front, etc. We've had no countertops, no oven, no stove, and no sink this whole time. At least we were able to keep the refrigerator going.

It's been a monstrous pain in the ass, and I have to say that there is no way the finished product can be worth what it took to get there. My wife would probably disagree, which is a little weird since she has done more of the work on it than I have, but she really cares about shit like kitchens and floors. This was what she wanted in the first place, so I suppose she will be happy when it's all done.

We worked on the kitchen every weekend this summer, and it went from what you see above to this:

 Then to this:

When it was mostly assembled, my wife started painting all the doors to the color she had chosen. And the kitchen looked like this:

The doors had to dry inside the house for the most part, because the humidity of Houston made it impossible for the enamel to harden completely otherwise. Of course, it also has been raining every few minutes here as well, which makes it tough for paint to dry.

With some doors painted, she started putting them on, and our kitchen began to look like a real kitchen.

Now that it was looking like we were close, my wife decided it was time to order the countertops and get the installation appointment set up. It was set for yesterday...which gave us a deadline. We had to have everything ready for the countertops to be installed. Worse yet...well for her, not so much for me...I was scheduled to work the two Saturdays leading up to the installation, so I was only going to be around to help for half of the weekends we had available.

We struggled out way through it. If you've ever done home renovation, then you know that nothing works like it should, and everything takes at least twice as long as you expect, and each problem you solve actually causes two more problems you have to deal with. But yesterday morning, we had it as ready as we could get it.

The installation guys didn't even show up until after noon. They had scheduled to be here for two days to put all the countertops in, but instead, they just worked non-stop until 9:30 at night. By the end of the day, we had new countertops, and our kitchen really did feel like a kitchen.

It's pretty amazing to have a stove cooktop right there available for use.

And look at this amazing thing. It's a sink!

Don't get too excited, it's not hooked up. It still can't be used. Tomorrow, a plumber is coming to hook up the sinks. That will be a red letter day for sure.

The bar got extended, so it can be used as a place to sit and eat at if wanted, instead of just a place to pile crap and make a big mess.

Since we'd already paid for the slabs for the kitchen, there was enough left over to get our bathroom countertops too. So those were replaced with the quartz that my wife picked as well.

As you can probably tell, the sinks there aren't hooked up yet either. We are without any sinks on the entire main floor right now. We have to use the bathtub in the master bathroom to get any water or wash any dishes right now. Hopefully everything will go well when the plumber comes tomorrow, and we won't have to deal with that much longer. I'm tired of living like it's 1900 before indoor plumbing became a thing.

So, that's where we are. There's still a lot to go. The vent over the stove is something that we are going to have to build from scratch. There's several cover panels that need to be put in place to fill in gaps, gotta bring in the dishwasher and hook it back up, get the new oven mounted and hooked up, and stuff like that.

It'll probably be well into the fall if not past the winter solstice when we finally finish all of this shit, but at least it's starting to feel like we're over the hump and onto the downhill slope.

My wife has complained about how this year has felt like we haven't done anything fun. We did go to Disneyworld in February, but after the summer we had it feel like a distant memory, like we actually went there in February of 2018 instead of February of this year. I have to agree.

The real problem isn't that we haven't done anything fun, it's actually that we haven't done anything normal. We spend all our free time on the kitchen, which means our kids get none of our free time, and our family is suffering because of it. Hopefully, we'll be back to normal soon, and we can do things like watch movies on a Sunday afternoon with our children, and let them see that we still love them and think about them sometimes.

All I can say is that if you are thinking of re-doing your kitchen, save up enough money that you can pay someone to do it for you, and get it done in a week or two. Using every moment of your free time for months on end is no way to live, and no kitchen, no matter how fancy it turns out, is worth that price.

Getting There, Slowly

If we had the money to pay someone to assemble and install all of this, we'd probably be done by now. Sadly, we spent all the money that we could have used to pay someone on buying the cabinets in the first place. It was either buy cabinets or pay someone to assemble and install cabinets, but we couldn't afford both. So, you can see which one lost out.

Here's where we are so far. The kitchen progress report.

It's getting difficult to wait for it all to be finished. My wife and I are installing this stuff a little bit at a time, taking our weekends and any other spare time we have to get a tiny bit done here and there.

I don't know how much longer I can take it though. I'm beginning to understand what those people who got flooded out during Hurricane Harvey felt as they waited for their houses to be restored to their pre-storm condition.

It feels like it's been forever since I was able to wash dishes in the kitchen sink. You wouldn't think that would be something that you'd miss, unless you didn't have a sink, but still needed to wash the dishes. Then it becomes more of a longing.

Floors Are In

The floors are finished now. My wife came home, and called me at work just so that she could gush euphorically about how beautiful they were. Unfortunately, I'm not a very good audience for such things. I don't really get excited about home improvements or decorations. If something is serviceable, that's probably enough for me.

She was in love, though. She couldn't stop talking about them. She sent me this picture, which was the one place in the house where things looked complete.

They had another day of work to do, however. There was still a few spots they hadn't made it to on the first day, and they were supposed to come and install quarter round on the baseboards to connect them in with the floors.

That turned out pretty well, but now we have to go through and caulk and paint all of the baseboards. There's always more work for us somehow.

We discovered one big problem on the final day of the flooring install. When the guys went to put our toilets back on, they found that the flanges that they are supposed to attach to were broken. They said they couldn't put our toilets back, because they either wouldn't attach properly, or they would rock back and forth and probably leak from the bottom...and that's the worst spot for a toilet to leak if you ask me.

So our bathroom was just a hole in the ground, and that wasn't changing quickly.

They told us we needed to call a plumber to come and install new flanges, so I called around and the best I could find was one that was unable to come that day or the next day. Not until Friday could they arrive to fix it. So, we were going to be without toilets on the main floor for a little bit.

My wife was not pleased about that, or the fact that we were going to have to caulk the quarter rounds ourselves. She assumed that they would be doing that, but they did not.

That night, my wife had to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, and had to walk all the way up the stairs to do so. By the time you make that big of a trip in the middle of the night, it's hard to get back to sleep afterwards.

I suppose it's a first world problem, right? Wait, or maybe not. Not having indoor plumbing isn't a first world problem...though we did have the one toilet, so that's not an honest assessment. Not having multiple toilets is a first world problem, so I guess I should quit moaning about it.

On Friday, they fixed our flanges, and wanted hundreds more to install the toilets. My wife is all about DIY, and we've installed toilets before, so she said no thanks, and the two of us put them on the next morning. It was pretty exciting to have our own thrones to sit on again when we were done.

Huzzah!

After we'd finished there, my wife got right to work assembling kitchen cabinets. We've had a crap ton of Ikea cabinets in our garage for months waiting for this day.

So, we're on to the next phase. I can't wait until we have a kitchen back and I can use some dishes again. At least we have toilets though. That's a big improvement. And I'm very excited to be able to walk indoors without shoes if I want to.

It's Finally Starting

We've pushed the rock all the way up the hill, and it's finally starting to go down the other side. This morning, the guys arrived bright and early, and started laying down the new floors.

We had to leave to take the cat to the vet, and by the time we got back, it was looking like this:

My wife is probably giddy as I send her these pictures. She's sad she's at work instead of here to watch. It does look pretty nice, but I don't get as excited about floors. I'm just excited to be able to put things back together now that the floors are going down.

I need to make something to eat for the BBBE challenge I'm doing with Marshal, but they're doing the kitchen right now. My fast is getting longer than I expected it to be because of that, which is fine because I ate really late Sunday night, so it would have been really short otherwise. 

I don't know when I'll be able to get in there to cook though.  I may have to just go by Costco and buy me a pack of those pre-cooked frozen hamburgers that they sell, and warm them in the microwave when I get to work. I guess we'll see.

Maybe I should quit writing this right now and go get in the shower before they move to the bathroom and I have to go to work without one. Yeah, I'll do that. See you guys later.

We All Float Down Here

They came bright and early today. I was still in bed when the doorbell rang, because I hadn't managed a good night's sleep. Since they were already there to do the floors, I wasn't going to manage a good night's sleep anymore.

They are only doing the float today, which is where they put down a thin layer of concrete to level the floor so there won't be weird divots in your floor that trip you every time you walk across them. I'm afraid that may mean that the toilets downstairs will be removed today. I'm not looking forward to when that happens, and we only have the one upstairs to use for the whole family.

Also, they're floating the kitchen. Will we have to unplug the fridge for the day while it dries? Can other outlets in different spots of the house handle the power demands of the fridge or will they trip the breaker?

I'd ask, but the supervisor is the only one who speaks English well enough to carry on a conversation, and he already left. I think he'll be back later, but by then the actual worker, who I believe is the supervisor's dad, will be done, and whatever needs to be done will be done. My Spanish is not good enough to go in the other direction either. Si ele fosse Brasileiro, não teriamos esses problemas.

There's already a lot of goop on the floor, ready to be shaped and flattened though.

I don't know, but I'm not looking forward to any of the next few days.

Oh, well, the guy just told me he's done already. I guess the toilets and the fridge get to stay another day. All they really did was remove any bumpy spots. I thought they would have to raise the kitchen and the bathrooms to the same level as the rest of the house where the hardwood had been, but they just needed to smooth out the transition areas, I guess.

Okay, so we're already done with day one. Tomorrow, bright and early again, they'll be back to lay down some luxury vinyl planking. Yeehaw.

How I Spent My Weekend

My back hurts so bad right now. This weekend was just the worst. We started out first thing Saturday morning trying to remove the last of our kitchen cabinets before the flooring guys come in on Monday to start the installation.

We ripped out a couple of cabinets, but still had the one with the sink in it to go (which would be the hardest), when I had to leave to go to a farmer's market that my daughter was a vendor at, trying to sell porch signs and similar crafts.

It was unbelievably hot out there. Houston is in the middle of a heat wave right now, and this weekend was the worst of the year so far. The high temperature where we were was 102°. That's bad, but in Houston, you always have to factor in the humidity as well. 102° means a feels-like temperature of about 110° or more. 

We were sweating a ton just sitting still in the shade of our tent. It was pretty miserable. We had a lot of ice water in a jug we'd brought with us, but that wouldn't have been enough if the market organizers hadn't also brought around cold water bottle to us periodically through the day. 

What's worse is that, of course, not many people came out to the market. Why would they? It felt like 110° outside! Who wants to go to an outdoor market in that? 

My daughter only sold one sign the whole time. So, we suffered as much as we did out there, and made no profit, only breaking even on the day.

It could have been worse for us. One of the other vendors (who wasn't selling anything either) started throwing up from the intense heat, and had to have their husband come pick them up and possibly take them to the hospital, I don't know. We sweat profusely, and I got a bit of a rash from the heat that I noticed the next day when I got out of the shower, but it never went beyond that.

I was wiped out for the rest of the evening after we got home, though. I had no energy remaining to do any of the work in the kitchen demolition that we needed to get to this weekend. Don't worry, I still had to, but we would do it the next morning instead.

The one positive about the market was that we were next to a lady who was selling farm fresh eggs. She had both chicken and duck eggs. I don't think I've ever eaten duck eggs before, and when I heard the lady say she only had one dozen with her, I quickly went over and reserved them. It would be perfect for my Beef, Butter, Bacon, and Eggs Challenge that I just started with Marshal Latham.

It was $5 per dozen for chicken or $6 per dozen for duck, so it seemed like a bargain to only pay a dollar more for something I'd never experience in my life.

They look like they might be just regular old eggs from this picture, but they're actually a little bit larger than chicken eggs. Here's a picture of one of the duck eggs next to a chicken egg I had in the fridge.

Not a huge difference, but some. I cooked some up the next morning, and they were pretty darn good.

The yolks seemed larger and a more prominent part of the egg...like the eggs tasted more yolky, I'll say, even though that's not a word. Sthat was, at least, a positive part of the experience.

At home I was dead to the world all evening. We got in the pool, but the water was hot. It felt like a bathtub. The only good part was being out of the pool while soaking wet, because the wind kind of cooled you off.

I almost didn't write Saturday night, as well. It was late, I was exhausted, but I still forced myself to head to the computer and type on the keys a bit. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. That's what I typed. Over and over.

The next morning, bright and early, we were back in the kitchen, getting the rest of the cabinets removed. I cut my leg several times, and gouged my hand once as well. I often think that it's a good thing I don't work construction, because my legs would be a patchwork of scars so unsightly that children would be brought to tears by the sight of them.

We did eventually get them all out, and this is our kitchen right now.

My wife is going to clean the room up as best she can because, Monday they come to put in the new floors. I don't know how long it will take for them to finish, and how much longer we'll be without a sink, a dishwasher, an oven, a stove, or any dishes to eat things off of. I'm afraid it may be a while, though my wife says it won't. We'll see who's right in the end. I hope she is.

Once they're done, then we can start rebuilding the kitchen. We can start assembling and installing our Ikea cabinets. Probably have to replace a little of that drywall we just exposed today too. That's the spot where the water damage was.

So, with none of those appliances, I'm trying to successfully complete a 90-day Beef, Butter, Bacon, and Eggs challenge. That's going to be tough. I can't just run out to McDonald's to eat like the rest of the family.

Oh, I forgot to mention the kicker in all of this, as we were carrying the granite countertop slab to the garage, I messed up my back. It hurts something awful.

I'm probably going to have to take an extended break from running because of this, and I've only gone twice so far. What a way to start out.

I left the house after finishing up the demolition, because I had to work on a Sunday again. It's the fifth Sunday in a row that I've had to do this, but happily the last. The funny thing is, I wasn't upset to leave for work. I've never wanted to be at work more than today. I just wanted to be able to sit down and rest, instead of working in our shell of a home.