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Just curious if any bloggers out there using Blogger have had trouble with people being able to leave comments on their blogs...if so, what have you done about it? Please share if you have any advice!

Update

The issues with the photos in the cabinet post appear to be corrected now. Please let me know if any of you still have trouble viewing them though!

Update

I apologize for some of the photos in the Cabinet Post not showing up right now. I'm in the process of fixing that.

Kitchen Post #4 - Cabinets Part B

To see my first post about building our own Kitchen cabinets, click here. We started constructing the cabinets in October 2009, and they were built (minus the doors, molding, etc.) by September 2010. Doing it yourself while working 70 hours/ week and raising a newborn may take longer but it's so worth it. :) 

Since I posted the last post, I did find a photo of some of our plans. This is what Pat & I drew up to construct these. Amazing, huh?

So once the cabinets were done, it was time to gut the rest of the kitchen. One beautiful October Saturday, Dave & I tore out the old cabinets. It was a blessed day. One I'd been waiting for since we bought the house.

The best part was when we carried the cabinets out to the driveway and beat them with a giant hammer. Nothing like taking out all your aggressions on inanimate objects.

And this is what we were left with. Ew!

Due to some terrible wallpaper fiascos (previous owners hung a border on top of a border and also painted over entire walls of wallpaper - I hate wallpaper!), we ended up deciding to re-drywall most of the room. But this also gave us a great opportunity to re-insulate the kitchen wall (which was drafty) and fill holes in the bottom wall plate where mice were getting in. We also took the opportunity to widen and reframe the doorway (shown below on the right) to have an actual header in it since this is a load bearing wall and when the family room was added on, this opening was NOT framed correctly. Big surprise...(We have found SO MANY THINGS not done correctly! And we're DIY novices!) So, all that stuff took about 2 months.

Meanwhile, we were living in the midst of chaos like this - this is our family room, folks! Ah! My blood pressure rises just looking at this photo! This is a sign of what remodeling does to your home. You've been warned.

And this was our temporary kitchen in the front room when ours was under construction:

Dave's face was scrunched into a constant frown like this (and I'm sure my countenance was worse...). You see, he was working like crazy at work and on side work and every time he came home he felt like he had to work all hours of the day and night on the house. It was not fun to be home for either of us. Or for our little baby.

Still, we tried to be "Merry" and set up our Christmas tree and all. It got covered in drywall dust of course. We had to dust off our presents before we could take them to our family members' parties. Thankfully, this phase of our life is over.

So finally, the week leading up to Christmas, it was time to install the new cabinets. Our brothers-in-law, Rod & Linn, came to the rescue. They came out and stayed with us for days and worked on this big project. And I am so thankful for their help.

And by the time they left, the kitchen looked something like this:

 

Even though it was a long way from being "done" I begged Dave to let me put stuff away in the cabinets for Christmas so I could feel like I had a kitchen again. And he said "sure" since he knew it would be months before he'd have a chance to finish it all or even till the doors were done.

One of my favorite parts about this whole process is that since we were doing it ourselves, we decided to use 3/4" poplar for the drawer bottoms. This would assure that I could store heavy pots and pans in the drawers and know the bottoms wouldn't bow and fall out! When you build your cabinets yourselves, you can make little upgrades like this for a fraction of the cost that you'd pay when buying the same thing at the store.

Somewhere along the way, Dave began planning out how to produce the crown mold. He bartered with our woodworking friend (rebuilt his transmission) in exchange for running off the crown mold on his equipment.

Here's a cross section of a crown mold display at Lowe's. We wanted something like this.

This is what we decided on finally:




Dave went over to our friend's woodshop one Thursday night and came home at 1 a.m. with a ton of this stuff. Here he is holding it up to the cabinets. Beautiful!




And here it is mounted up to the cabinets.

 

Over the course of a few more months, Dave added all the crown mold on and our friend Jack came over and stained the cabinets one Saturday. Then in March 2011, Dave's brother Pat and his wife, Michelle  (and their 3 girlies) came out for a long weekend. While the guys were off doing mechanical stuff, Michelle and I brushed on 3 coats of polyurethane on every square inch of the cabinets. (All while watching 4 kids I might add...):

 

Then David and Patrick sprayed on 3 coats of poly on all the doors and came up with this handy dandy little way of hanging them all up to dry in the family room.

Later that weekend, the guys hung all the doors on the cabinets and Dave added the black spray painted dentil mold to the crown molding. I really wasn't sure that I wanted him to do that but in the end I love it. It brings out the black speckles in our granite counters.

Isn't it amazing what a difference the stain, poly, crown mold and doors make?

Here are some more after shots of the room after the bottom molding was added (again, another huge difference!) and the backsplash was tiled. And the floor.

When all was said and done, we finished up every last detail sometime in July 2011. 1 month shy of 2 years after we bought the woodworking tools. So this was NOT a fast process. But it was so worth it! Not only was it very rewarding but it also saved us probably around $7,000!!

So what do you think? Do ours resemble this Lowe's display we were going for?

I think so....we went back and compared ours in detail. Ours are definitely built more sturdy and will surely handle the weight of pots and pans and dishes over the years better than the manufactured ones. Ours also fit together better and seem to be constructed better. And ours have a lot more character because we chose the actual pieces of cherry lumber to use for door frames, etc. Patrick did an incredible job with that. Some of the pieces are just absolutely amazing!

The only aspect that ours do not measure up in is the finish. The manufactured finish of this nice display is sanded much more smooth than ours. But ours are a lot smoother than the in-stock Lowe's cabinets. So...if we were ever to do this again, we'd have to figure out a way to sand our cabinets better.

Which brings me to another question you may be wondering, "Would you ever do this again?" And the answer is "YES. ABSOLUTELY!" It is so worth it to take your time and build your confidence and do a big project like this and save a TON of money.

However, I personally, would probably time it so that the kitchen remodel was not occuring simultaneously with the remodel of 6 other rooms during a pregnancy and first year of a baby's life. That is basically my #1 piece of advice about this.

I'm sure the guys could add a lot more about the construction of the cabinets and tips and things they learned along the way. So, if you do have any specific questions, go ahead and ask and I'll talk to them to try and get the answers. The main thing is that you can't underestimate yourselves. If we can do it, so can you!

I linked this up to Beth's blog at Home Stories A2Z!

Happy Anniversary to Us!

Today is a great day. Not only has it been 9 years since Dave & I tied the knot!

(photo taken on our 4 year anniversary...hard to believe it was 5 years ago!!!)

But also, Jen from IHeart Organizing is featuring my computer armoire over on her blog today!!!

I am a HUGE fan of Jen's blog. She has tons of fabulous tips for organizing your home and dealing with everyday clutter. And I am unbelievably flattered that she'd share my little home office transformation with her readers.

In the spirit of Wedding Anniversaries/romance, I'm going to leave you with a few of my recent favorite master bedroom ideas from Pinterest (go there for what sources I may have!):

I LOVE this chandelier - and the best part - it was only $49 from Home Depot. In my next master bedroom I'd love to have a chandelier like this on a dimmer switch.

I like the pops of yellow in this bedroom. Especially the yellow barn door leading into the bathroom. And that rug! And there's a cute window seat on the right. How fun! And yeah, I like the floors too!

I'm a huge fan of the mirrored {but also framed} closet doors in this photo and the use of dressers in lieu of night stands.

The Christmas lights on the IKEA four poster bed is a nice romantic touch.

I also love this chandelier as well and I'm sure Dave would love the rustic reclaimed/repurposed door headboard.

Another great use of dressers in lieu of nightstands. So practical. And handy.

 And these madeover IKEA dressers could totally work!

Love all the comfy seating in this bedroom. And that looks like my lamp!

This headboard is gorgeous and I love the stenciled wall. And yeah, the rug too. This room could come live at my house.

The wall mounted lamps are a great idea. I think I'd like that for reading in bed. And the headboard is a fun way to add red into the otherwise neutral room. A little bold for me, but cute.

And ok. This is pretty crazy,

but who wouldn't love to take a Sunday afternoon nap on a swing bed?

Keep checking back with me by the way, I promise to reveal before the end of the week just how we DIY-ed our own custom cherry kitchen cabinets!

Link Party

I'm participating in a Mix and Mingle Party over at The Mustard Ceiling today.



I found this blog last week and was so amazed by her laundry room transformation

that I immediately added that blog to my Google Reader list and I've been checking it ever since. And of course I was thrilled to participate in the link party over there today.
Also, check out the to do list I posted on Friday. So far we've crossed off 5 items. Many more to go...but we're getting so close to putting our house on the market I can taste it!

Fabulous Friday

Since becoming a stay at home mom / part time piano teacher, I've found that my Wednesdays and Thursdays are more like my weekend. I kick back and relax on those 2 days as much as possible (a.k.a. just focus on household tasks such as laundry, dishes, cooking, cleaning) and it's a good thing because I've found I have to save up energy for the crazy weekend of remodeling that we always seem to have.

Today my mom (whose birthday is just 2 days away!!!) is coming to visit us to help me with my giant weekend to do list. How generous of her to come work on her birthday weekend, huh? I love her!

Here's the list...we're overly optimistic as usual that we'll get all this done in 2-2 1/2 days (meanwhile making sure our almost one year old Levi doesn't get into trouble):

1. seal granite countertops
2. polyurethane remaining few kitchen cabinets
3. hem patio door curtains (from IKEA)
4. plant flowers around front porch
5. mulch flower beds
6. continue to water grass seed and pray that it grows
7. paint Craigslist picnic table and benches red with white geometric accent on top (can't wait to show this off!)
8. install 2 new exterior light fixtures
9. recoat front door with red paint
10. paint trim around laundry room exterior door
11. spray paint bar stools
12. deep clean entire house (in preparation for appraisal)
13. pack up anything that we don't want out during showings
14. rearrange furniture again (is anyone else constantly shopping their house and rearranging things like me?? i know The Nester always is and that's why I LOVE her blog!)

There's more but I can't seem to find my handwritten list at the moment. ...as usual...

Introduction

Hello everyone!  My name is Katie. As a child I was obsessed with drawing floorplans of dream homes and imagining what each room would look like. Somehow my path of life lead me through 5 years of college to land a career designing wastewater treatment plants and storm sewers. Not really what I was going for, huh?

Currently I’m a stay at home mom. Over the past 3 years or so my husband and I have had the wonderful opportunity of gutting and renovating our 1953 3 bed/2 bath ranch. We have both learned so much. Most importantly, I have learned that I absolutely love this kind of work. It has rekindled the intense passion for design that I had as a child.

I have been blogging off and on to keep family up to date on our life and occasionally our remodeling adventures but I've decided to create a new blog dedicated solely to remodeling/design.

I hope that you enjoy the content and if you ever have any questions, please contact me.

Thanks for stopping by!