Where We Belong

We recently found something in our basement that turned out to be pretty amazing. I think it is definitely a sign that we are doing the right thing and are even in exactly the right house that we should be in. Below is a picture of the general area in the basement where we found our sign; yes, it's an actual sign. You can see a little bit of the bottom of the sign right in the middle of the picture below.



The gentleman who owned the house before us was big on reusing items in the house for different things he was doing. The little bit of that sign (a label really) you can see was actually off the end of a wooden fruit/vegetable crate. Upon closer inspection, we saw that the label actually looked like this:



We were both pretty blown away that it had Fresno on it- the place we moved here from! And I don't think there are too many packing sheds in Fresno since it is more of an urban place. Most sheds are located in smaller towns surrounding Fresno. It seems so amazing that the label/sign would turn up in the house we bought in Iowa and it makes me feel pretty good about what we are doing.

Sparks are (Still) Flying

Though we've had some mishaps with the kitchen remodel (paint coming off the walls, putting the drawer hardware in the cabinet wrong and a few smashed fingers, etc), tonight was our first accident that got exciting. First, let me give you a little background. We had electricians come out about a month ago to put in a few new boxes and move some other things around. We did not have them put the actual outlets in because we figured we could do that ourselves and save a few dollars. Rob has been doing a great job swapping out all the other outlets in the house and installing a few new ones too but the one tonight got away from him a little, as you can see below.



Somehow, the wires touched each other and sparks went flying everywhere! Big sparks, probably 4 feet into the air above the box. As you may have noticed in the picture, the tip of the screwdriver is melted off and you can see that piece is melted onto the torched outlet. We called it quits for the night not too long after that. It's even starting to seem a little funny now :o)

There's a big storm coming and it's thundering quite a bit so I better end this now and get my computer turned off before it becomes the second thing we've torched tonight!

The Latest

Here are the photos I promised in my previous post...




The base cabinets are firmly in place and bolted to the walls. The wall cabinets are bolted to the wall but still needed to be bolted to each other. We decided to do a stainless metal backsplash all around between the cabinets but nothing up and over the window, which is something we were contemplating. Unfortunately, this means we need to drag the brown paint back out and paint the area around that window. If only we'd done that when we painted the rest of the room. Oh well- it is the best solution to everything we have going on and can be done quickly.

Such a Bad Blogger

I knew it had been a while since my last post but I was still a little shocked to see it had been 10 days! You can chalk it up to lots of work in the kitchen, a trip to Minneapolis and my obsession with finishing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I finished up the book and I thought the ending was great! And that is all I will say- I would hate to give anything away. Rob and I went up to Minneapolis on Friday for a quick trip to IKEA. We spent about 4 or 5 hours there and by the time we were done, we just wanted to go home because it wiped us out. We had exchanged all our kitchen cabinet doors and drawer fronts and were now traveling with our new Adel Birch cabinet doors. In addition, we purchased a king size bed frame and five lighting fixtures so it was a tight fit inside the XTerra. I meant to take a picture of our cozy quarters but I forgot until after we had unloaded it all back at home. My thoughtful husband asked if I wanted to load everything back up and take a picture but I decided against it.

The work in the kitchen continues. Rob has almost all the base cabinets installed and next up is the wall cabinets. We’re doing it a little different than last time so hopefully it still goes well. We continue to debate whether or not we want to do a backsplash and what material we should use. A decision on that needs to be made soon because we can’t install the microwave or some of the cabinets until we decide. I will try to take some pictures tonight of our progress.

Sorry for being a bad blogger and I promise to be better!!

Do-overs

Our kitchen remodel seemed to be going rather well- the walls were painted and we had some of the cabinets up and we were just starting to work on installing baseboard. The base cabinets would have followed and then our appliances and we would have been done. And then we realized we had a problem with the paint. It was 10 days after we had finished painting and you could easily scratch the paint off the walls with your fingernail. It seemed it would just not set up and cure. The next problem was that we had decided on white trim which meant the existing original mahogany window and door trim was going to be painted over. We both had a problem with painting over the beautiful wood trim. Then I finally admitted I did not like the green paint. So now we were pretty much back to square one. We took the cabinets down and did a ton of research to find out what to do about the crappy paint that was on the walls and how to cover it up. We had a picked a fairly dark brown (it looks like melted chocolate ice cream) so covering the color wasn't an issue. Finally, we decided to just paint right onto the paint- with Valspar paint this time. I am certain that the Olympic paint (that I complained about originally) was a big reason we had so many problems. I was not happy with the paint when we were applying it and it was awful once we were done. But now, we have a beautiful brown kitchen that will match our new cabinets, new appliances and existing trim wonderfully.



And best of all, it seems to be staying on the walls without any issues. After just a few hours of drying, it is like iron. You can't scratch or gouge it. I love it and Rob is warming up to the color too. He was the one who wanted to go bold and now is having a hard time with it. With the lighter cabinets and floors, I think it's a great choice and am very pleased with how it turned out. And now we can get on with base boards, installing cabinets again and hooking up our appliances.

Cabinets are hung!

I know the postings were pretty scarce last week and now you can finally see why. We got kitchen cabinets up on the wall!




We did have our all-American fun but we worked a bunch too! We finished painting on Wednesday (on our day off- yuck) and put the last two cabinets together. Saturday, Rob was patching the walls from some holes the electricians left us with (thanks guys) so we could get the cabinets going. We got them up on the wall pretty easily on Saturday with the exception of the microwave cabinet. It turned out I ordered the type of cabinet that does not work if you have a fan on the bottom of your microwave, like we do. So on Sunday, Rob cut it down and was able to make it work. One thing that we discovered that will not work, however, is all the doors and drawer fronts. We knew the cabinet frames would be lighter than the doors and drawers and that we would have to put end panels on exposed cabinet ends. I thought the cover panels would be either veneer sticker sheet things or really, really thin sheets of veneer. Turns out they are 1/2 inch thick, heavy duty pieces of wood and by being so thick, it throws off our measurements to where the cabinets don't really work anymore. We decided the best option, since all the doors and drawer fronts are still boxed up, would be to go to the nearest IKEA (approx. 200 miles away) and try to swap them for ones that match the lighter color of cabinets that the frames are. We like the color of the cabinet frames so this really wasn't too big of a deal. I called IKEA to make sure we could do this and wouldn't be charged any fees and was told it would be fine. It looks like we'll be taking a weekend excursion up to Minneapolis this weekend to switch our stuff but we were planning on going anyhow to pick up light fixtures and a few other things so it's not so bad. For now though, we have been working on installing baseboard in the kitchen and Rob had to do a little work to patch the walls as I mentioned earlier. Once we get those couple of chores done, we will be ready to start putting in the base cabinets. I will put up some pictures as soon as we get them in- I think we are getting really close now to having a working kitchen!

Why Iowa?

For those of you still wondering why we moved to Iowa, maybe these pictures from our drive Friday night to the Corn Carnival will help make it a little clearer.

The All-American Week

The All-American Week started for us on Wednesday, July 4th with a trip to the city-wide free pancake breakfast. We got up early that morning and rode our bikes downtown to the breakfast. We were told to get there early and we were glad we did because it was busy! There was a parade after but we had to get back to the house to get some work done. We enjoyed the break though and the yummy pancakes :o)





On Friday, we tried out a new restaurant that is a little north of town and kind of in the middle of nowhere- one of the kinds of places we were wanting to try but having a hard time finding. It was exactly what we had been looking for! We both had the roast beef lunch with mashed potatoes, corn and gravy and it was soooo good. It is just like going over to grandma's house for dinner. I had the peach pie and Rob had the rhubarb and they were both great. The biggest compliment I can give them is to say that it didn't feel like we were eating out- it just tasted like a great, home-cooked meal. Definitely our new favorite place and where we will be taking anyone who comes to visit us.

We still needed a little more small-town America so we decided to drive over to the Gladbrook Corn Carnival.




We met some friends over there and enjoyed the sweet corn, a walking taco and the grand parade. I desperately wanted a funnel cake but I decided to hold off until the Iowa State Fair. After the big lunch and then snacks at the Carnival, eating a funnel cake too just didn't seem like a very good idea. We had a good time at the Corn Carnival and then enjoyed the gorgeous sunset on our way home.

Another Busy DIY Weekend

No VIP treatment this weekend- it was a weekend of hard work and a lot of progress. We had planned on priming (with B-I-N) the kitchen and getting that painted but it was such a beautiful weekend that we just had to be outside. That worked well considering we had 3 ugly stumps in our front yard left from juniper or cypress bushes that I cleaned out a month or two ago. You may remember the post about my adventures in trimming those.

Now it looks like this!



It's not the best picture but it looks really nice. We are going to put some wood chips down still but we need to find a pick-up truck to borrow for that. So we finally got around to painting on Sunday night, but only the primer coat. Tonight when we got home from work, we got the first coat of our Soothing Aloe paint. It looks really bright in the picture I took below- it really doesn't seem that bright when you are standing in the kitchen. I think getting on the cabinets and window coverings in there will tone it down some too.



We needed some color in the house so I'm loving it and think it's going to be great for us. Make life sizzle!

A final comment- we've been using the Valspar paint from Lowe's and have been very happy. We couldn't find a green that we liked with that brand so we went ahead and got the Olympic brand paint in the Soothing Aloe color we liked. It is not good. It does not go on the walls as easily as the Valspar. I didn't think there could be that much difference- how different can paint be? Well, it is much harder to work with but the color is great and it seems to look good on the walls once it dries. And anyone wanting to use B-I-N should be aware that it is extremely watery and does not have the consistency of paint at all. It is also very, very stinky. Those are my observations on paint for the weekend :o)