Today I mowed my lawn. Oh wait, that’s not what you’re here for. But it’s relevant, you see, because to mow my lawn, I borrowed my dad’s lawnmower, which meant my dad was at my house. And with only a very little persuasion, he awesomely agreed to help me hang the rest of the upper cabinets. So all of my uppers are up! I still have to gang them together, cut filler for the ends against the front wall (since the doors will open towards the wall, having at least a little space for them to swing is a good thing), and tighten them all. But they are on the wall, and they are awesome!

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Yay, progress! Tonight when I got home from work, I covered the floor with paper – well, partially – I ran out midway through, so tomorrow I’ll go buy more, but for now I’ve got a dropcloth helping protect the floor. With that done, I brought my ladder in and checked how level my ceiling is. Surprisingly, it’s not bad – there’s a bit of wobbliness, and it was definitely possible to find a low spot for each cabinet run, but the variation is less than an eighth of an inch. Having marked the low spot, I then measured down 3.25 inches from the ceiling at that point, and drew a level line on each side. Then I got to hacksaw my suspension rails into the correct lengths, brought them upstairs, and then had to go back and cut one a second time because I can’t add. Oops.

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Well, I have been informed by a good friend with impeccable taste that the faint lines showing on my floor impart “character.” I’m embracing this theory, since my floor guys came back this morning and told me the news… that bottom layer of linoleum? The one with the stars? Was cut in place, on the floor. So the lines that are showing now are actually cuts in the wood, and they’re too deep to sand out. So unless I replace the floor, I’ve got stars. Character.

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Today the floor guys came, sanded, and stained the floor. I’m a little uncertain about it at the moment, because you can see lines where the edges of the bottom layer of linoleum met the cabinets/changed colors. This means I have faint star medallions in the not-quite center of each side of the room, and I really don’t want them. I’m hoping maybe they can sand more and get below the lines, but if not, I may have to live with it until I come up with a better floor solution. Or maybe a rug. Rugs are nice. It looks great from a distance, though.

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Today I got the second coat of paint on the walls, and though it’s not quite dry yet, it looks miles better than yesterday – nice solid color instead of that first-coat patchiness. I feel like everything’s suddenly moving very slowly, since I’m the only one doing work on the kitchen at the moment – last week it was a big surprise every day what the contractor had achieved, and now I’m like “painted more, see the tiny difference?” But it’ll get more impressive again soon, I hope, since the floor guys come tomorrow and then it’s time for the actual cabinet installation.

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Today was pretty productive, considering I didn’t actually start anything until 4:00. I’m always happy when I remember how much nicer paint is than primer – primer gets everywhere and spatters and glops and is always really annoying, so switching to paint is a relief – it goes on nice and smooth and is pretty. Admittedly, I only got to do one coat today, so though it’s hard to see in the photos, it’s not actually pretty yet, it’s more haphazard strips where it’s thinner so you can see the primer coming through, and brushstrokes at edges and general weirdness, but at least if you squint, the room’s starting to look like part of the house instead of some strange other place (my eldest sister once called it “the land of knotty pine”). So here are today’s progress photos, where the walls have been painted tan, but nothing else has changed…

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Well, today was the beginning of the painting – I started by priming absolutely everything, and drywall definitely drinks primer – I ended up using around 2.5 gallons for the room – that’s including the ceiling, though, which is a big surface. The humidity thwarted my schedule a little bit, because it’s making the paint take forever to dry – so today, all I got to actually paint was the ceiling, which I finished about ten minutes ago. I’d also forgotten that the 3 doors in the corner (side door, basement, and studio) all needed to be painted too, so that made it a bit more complicated. But anyway, the room is currently veryvery white, and tomorrow I’m hoping to at least get one coat on the doors, and maybe a coat of color on the walls, too – I’ve got other commitments during the day tomorrow, so we’ll see how much time I have. The ceiling’s what I really wanted to do before the floor guys come, because it’s really hard not to get paint on the floor when painting an entire ceiling, and I don’t have a dropcloth as big as the room.

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Well, what I’ve been thinking of as phase 1 of this project is complete – I have walls, trim, and a big empty room in which to put cabinets. Now my contractor gets to go do something else for a couple weeks while the painting, floor, and cabinet installation get done (also known as phase 2). So this is what my kitchen looks like today – tomorrow, I paint!

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Today was more finishing – sanding down the mudding that was done yesterday, putting on the second coat, and starting to frame out the openings – new windowsill, doorframes, etc. There’s plastic up to limit how much the dust spreads to the rest of the house, which is bemusing the cats a bit. It’s almost ready to paint, though – that’s the weekend plan…

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Today the walls got completely sheetrocked! It’s back to looking like a real room again, rather than studs and wiring all over the place. They’ve taped it all, and started mudding – making all the seams smooth and covering the screwheads so they won’t show in the end. Also moved the floor vent a few inches from where they put it yesterday, since I measured and discovered it was going to be partially under the fridge… not so helpful. Now it’s just at the edge of the fridge, which will work much better.

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