Kitchen Renovations 3

Thursday is going to be BIG!

Last night I came home from a church group and a friend was in the house with David measuring the kitchen floor. For the porcelain tile! It looks like this is actually going to happen. In fact it is going to start happening Thursday!

Of course on Thursday, one of my LOLs has two doctor appointments.

Thursday from 10am to 2pm is the window for the countertop people to come and make a template. That means tonight we take the old countertop off and finish the preparations.

Thursday evening our friend, Jason, the plumber, is coming to repair the vent pipe and figure out what we need to do to install the dishwasher. That can't happen until after the countertop is installed in 7 to 10 business days, because the countertop comes with a brand new sink. All that will probably require different measurements, etc.

Also on Thursday evening, Mike comes back to begin the linoleum tile removal and porcelain tile installation! He will start in the laundry room, under the almost 3 week old water heater.

Normally if I was expecting this much company, I would clean the house thoroughly and bake cookies. But the house is in semi demolition disarray and I don't have much of a functioning kitchen!

Is this all really happening? I was thinking about the fact that since we have very seldom paid anyone to do stuff in our house, why aren't we more of the "do it yourself" types? Then I realized that we have never really done anything in our house. So .... it is about time!!

Anyway you look at it, Thursday is going to be QUITE a day!!

Kitchen Renovations 2

The lovely dishwasher arrived at about 5:10pm on Saturday. It is so pretty! Right now it is in the laundry room, but it is out of the box, so we can look at it.

Dad cut away the drywall in a suitable square shape and got things ready for the next step. Since we were waiting on the delivery at that point, he made up a little of the cement we bought and repaired the crumbling edges around the foundation. Now we can't see daylight out of the bottom of the wall! Of course it is night, but the hole is gone too. He had enough mixed up that he repaired the outside threshold of the front door. It looks really nice.

The big discovery is why everything in the wall in that area behind the fridge is damp. Apparently the vent pipe that goes to the roof has rusted out just above the main water pipe. So, whenever we have a backup, or a surge of water, it was going into the wall -- and out onto the back porch! What a mess!

Now we need to figure out how to fix that. But it is Saturday night and there is a Regional Youth Activity and Dance in Newport News, so Dad is gone. We have a call in to our friend, Jason Miller, a plumber. Meanwhile, no laundry or extensive dishwashing until we get a pipe in that creepily empty space. Then we can put in the insulation and drywall we just got, and it will stay DRY. I wanted to take a picture of the pipe, but Dad sweetly pushed the fridge back and tidied up before he left.

So considerate!

Kitchen Renovations 1

There seems to be some special curse associated with home improvements, that whatever you try to accomplish keeps multiplying.

Today we are having the dishwasher delivered between 4:30 and 6:30pm. This is a monumental experience for us.

So, this morning and afternoon we are making some preparations for the rest of the new kitchen plan. We have to have the cabinets and dishwasher in place when they come and make the measurements for the new countertop on Thursday.

David is sick with a cold and still working very hard at this.

In attempting to remove the cabinet between the sink and the fridge (this is where the dw will go) we had to move the fridge and take off some baseboard. Surprise! The drywall and insulation are rotted away at the base of the wall, probably from the numerous water backups we have had over the decades.

This is what happened when we took the baseboard off.

This is when David started removing the damaged drywall.

Off to the store to get supplies: drywall, concrete (might as well fix the cracks at the front and back door outside thresholds with the extra), insulation, assorted tools and the wood to make new endwalls to the kitchen base cabinet area - the areas between the sink and dw, and the dw and fridge.

This has taken all day. Now we are at a stopping point waiting for the dishwasher! We have to make a path to the laundry room to store the dw in there until we have its new home properly prepared.

Water!

We have had a lot of rain the past couple of weeks, but that wasn't the most troublesome water.

I went to NC with Bethany on Friday, October 2, for a visit. Bethany went home all by herself on Sunday. Thanks, sweetie, for the ride! David came to NC Wednesday afternoon to visit grandbabies and go to the county fair. On beautiful, clear, Thursday we had a great, long afternoon at the Dixie Classic Fair and then we started home in the evening. Friday morning after class, David was off to northern VA for a conference. I had considered going to "Time Out for Women" in Richmond for the weekend, but it looked like it was going to be too hectic. Friday night Bethany and I went to "La Boheme" my favorite opera.

Saturday morning I woke up way before my alarm for a very busy day of church and social obligations. That all changed when I went into the kitchen and noticed a puddle in the laundry room.

Yep, it was the water heater. David was at his conference with his cell phone off (surprise!) and our home teacher didn't answer his phone either. Well, I went up the chain of command and called the Stake President! He came right over. Long story short, he and another brother had the old water heater to the dump and the new one installed by mid afternoon. It is really nice. We are especially grateful for the expertise and unselfish service of friends! David missed all the work -- and excitement.

Spending all that time in the home improvement store started me really thinking about the state of our kitchen, but that will be for another post.

It is still raining.

Kitchen

Tonight was very frustrating. After our excited anticipation about making some changes in our kitchen, we had our first meeting with designers/contractors. Everything they said was much more expensive than what we had figured by the store posted costs and estimates. Even the measurements for our kitchen countertop was somehow much larger and more $$$ than what our tape measure indicated. We were hoping to have the major part of the changes done by Thanksgiving or at least Christmas, but now we will have to rethink and talk to a lot of other estimators/salespeople. Not good. It is hard enough to get a night when we will both be home, let alone one when we actually want to tolerate salespeople!

Sigh,

I have so much catching up to do, I don't know where to start. This summer was filled with wonderful visits to children and grandchildren. I feel like I should post all sorts of pictures, I know the few people who follow my blog are the parents of those very same beautiful babies. The pictures would probably be their own!

Ariana on her blessing day!

Kevin in the bathtub!

Elena making friends at Old Navy!

Okay, so I couldn't resist!


This summer I also finished a few quilts, thanks to incentive deadlines by my favorite quilt store. Maybe I will put up pictures of those, too.

This is David's Astronomy quilt. The pattern is called "Turning Twenty Again."

I bought the fabric for this one about four years ago and just started it this spring. It's called "Mosaic Garden" and is for the guest room bed (as soon as we get the mattress!)

This is a baby quilt made from scraps left over from the Mosaic Garden, so I guess it is for baby guests.



This was from a class I took at my favorite quilt store. It is called "Belgian Waffle."

I didn't even know when I got this kit that it had pigs all over it!

This is a quilt using the technique of English Paper Piecing. It is my first attempt at it and I worked on it off and on for about the last 4 years!

So, it was quite a summer!

Grandbabies

This post is going to take a while to compose. I am holding my 12 day old grandson, Kevin, and trying to type with one hand. Kevin is sound asleep, as is his mother on the couch.

This is heaven - a warm, snuggly baby cuddling up with me.

We have 3 grandchildren now. Elena is a marvel and adjusting to her new brother well.

Kevin seems to be growing and developing overnight. He already looks different than he did at birth; and is making marvelous attempts to hold his head up. I moved the mobile over his portacrib around slowly yesterday, and he followed the motions with his eyes.

Ariana is a beauty that we cannot wait to see in person. That will happen in just a week. We are very grateful for all the pictures!

We have been so blessed with wonderful, loving, honorable children and their perfect, happy, healthy offspring.

Yes, this is heaven!