We had a very long weekend, full of late nights.  Luckily so far Alex has taken pity on us and Saturday she slept later than ever which was awesome!

Friday night we got the final coat of spackle on in the kitchen and back hall before dinner.  Then after dinner, once it was dry Ryan got the whole kitchen sanded, then I vacuumed it down and we got a coat of primer on the ceiling and walls.  We got tinted primer so we really can get away with one coat of pain most likely.  It was 2am when we finished priming so we called it quits and we ALL slept till 8am saturday (alex usually gets up at 6:30).

Ceiling primed!

kitchen primed!

Saturday we got a coat of paint on the ceiling and walls while our neighbor was over to play with Alex.  Ryan also got the last piece of cement board put down in the kitchen section (it had to be re-cut).

Painted!

And everything moved out of the way to start cabinets

And finally it was time to start cabinets.  First we had to unpack the cabinets, we decided to start with the base cabinets because it was almost impossible for us to do the uppers since Ryan mostly had to do them by himself since I was watching Alli and because the base ones are what we need in to get our counters templated and we need to get that done this week if we can.

So we dry fit the first few cabinets and Ryan started the long arduous process of getting the cabinets leveled and installed.  By bedtime Ryan had the cabinets between the stove and dishwasher all installed.  We also dry fit the 2 cabinets to the right of the dishwasher to see where we were at.

Cabinets going in!

And the end cabinets ready to go the next day.

We slept even later on sunday, Alli was very accommodating and after waking up to eat and play a bit, she occupied herself in her pac n play in our room while we slept in.  It was very necessary.  Sunday we didn’t have any helper so Alli spent a little time in the kitchen with us 🙂  She thoroughly enjoyed herself!

Alli and Fitz, big helpers in the kitchen install project

Ryan got the rest of the base cabinets installed!  We are just waiting on one last cabinet that is coming Tuesday night (the original showed up broken), but it goes on the other side of the stove so it worked out well at least.  Hopefully we can get that cabinet installed quickly tuesday night.  I have to call and set up a template appt for this week if they can do it.  They have a 10-14 day time between template and install and we have xmas next week so no idea when we’ll get installed counters!

Cabinets with doors on!

Once the base cabinets were done, Alli was napping so we pulled out the pantry cabinets and got a start on that craziness that surrounds the monstrous fridge.  With a break after nap time was over to hit up home depot and then to buy our xmas tree it was back to it.  Once Alli was in bed we got one of the cabinets above the fridge installed and the other clamped in.  There was a lot of trying to figure out how to get the fridge with the surround kit to fit and still allow cabinet doors to open but we think we got it figured out, it just took a lot of time tonight.

Pantry cabinets

So we are positioned very well. I really only hoped to get the base cabinets done and we got a start on the fridge section so I’m excited! I was able to move all the uppers over to the diningroom area, clean out the livingroom and we got the tree up in the cupola!  Tomorrow night I’ll probably get the lights and decorations down and start on that.  Last week was a lot of kitchen work so hopefully this week we can focus on christmas (minus one night to install the one last cabinet).  We’ll see how it goes.

It’s so awesome seeing a kitchen come back together!  This is certainly the hardest project we have taken on.  Even harder than the built-ins.  The walls and floors are so out of whack that nothing was easy.  Now I just need a recovery day (Ryan probably more so) – too bad it’s back to work tomorrow!