Island Demolition: Part 2

Day 2 and 3 are mixed in here: there's been less overall change, but still lots of work.

Nate removed the last of the old frame. We're going to reuse the section at the back.

 

Holy crap is that live wire dangerous looking! We've taped it, but still have to watch Jill.

We spent a bunch of time spray painting the new cabinets. I think from here on out we'll paint by hand.

We decided to place everything to make sure our idea would actually work.

If it didn't, I'm not sure what we would have done.

But it does! (If you've got a good imagination)

While I was busy painting, Nate built risers for the cabinets. The cabinets are 1.5 inches shorter than the bookcases, so we needed to bring the cabinets up. Nate used 2x4s for the frames.

Nate then fed the electrical wire through the riser. We'll be able to hide it entirely!

At this point, we placed everything again, and marked the linoleum about an inch further out all around the island base. We're adding baseboard to the bottom of the island, which is 3/4 of an inch thick, plus we want a little extra, so when the rest of the linoleum gets removed in a few months in favor of tile, the workers won't have to ding our new island (hopefully!).

Nate used a utility knife to slice the linoleum, and then pulled!

 It took a little bit of time to clean up the cement, but my parents had lent us a tool to help. While I cleaned the cement, Nate worked on installing the new beadboard backings to the bookcases.

Thankfully, my grandparents had bought us a new tool bit set for Christmas. We used up two bits making the holes!

There's a bookcase with a new beadboard back! We're continuing to make progress; expect more photos soon.

Island Demolition: Part 1 (the one with all the pictures)

Some establishing shots of the kitchen as it was right before the change:

The solitary Taco Cabana cup of iced tea is symbolic of nothing except my laziness.

Here are the new cabinets, in their raw, unfinished form.

Step one: pull off that off-center, tilted tile top.

Step one, part 2: Destroy!!!!!

Here's what remains inside:

One thing that came up late in the afternoon was the placement of the wire for the outlet. The electrical wire comes out of the ground at the corner nearest the oven. This is not ideal - in order to hide the wire, we'll have to move the cabinet forward about 3.5", which will actually balance out the new island better, but means we'll have to do more cutting away of linoleum than we wanted. There seems to be no logic in this placement of the electrical, but it does explain the ugliness of the original island. I wish someone would explain to us why the builder installed drywall on the inside of the island, between the stud grounded to the slab, and the backs of the cabinets. Considering what we plan to do to the island in the next 72 hours, perhaps I'm not one to judge.

Wire coming up, looking very ugly.

Drywall?!

This is where we leave the island on Day 1. The cabinets are out - we have assessed the electrical situation, and adjusted our plan accordingly, and we have mapped out priorities for tomorrow.

Blanket Chest - Refinished

A couple of years ago (three, precisely), Nate went up to Eureka Springs for Christmas while I stayed in Houston, and he came back with a blanket chest. His parents had bought it from another artist at an art show, probably in trade. It had spent several years in a storage unit and had significant water damage.

I started sanding it down by hand, but got tired after 10 minutes. And so it sat, partially sanded, for another 30 months.

My mom recently took it off of my hands and stripped it in no time. She returned it to me at the end of September. I've been a terrible procrastinator on these types of projects (see the kitchen table that remains half done 5 years later), I was determined - determined, I tell you - to finish this project. I had already bought a can of stain-and-varnish and so I set out to refinish my first piece of furniture.

The whole thing took so little time it's embarrassing that it took me almost three years to complete it. I used two coats, each of which took less than 20 minutes. I started on Saturday, and it was completely done on the following Wednesday. I did the bottom first, then the top, and then the rim.

Here's the completed thing. Hurray! A place for our blankets.

Den/Living Room Reorganization

It's been almost two years since we painted the downstairs and made the living room livable. And earlier this year we got our curtains all together and got them hung, and they have really changed the light in the house. But we've only been sort of happy with the furniture. It's good Pottery Barn stuff, but it wasn't enough for all the things we now have attached to the TV. Somehow, even without having cable or satellite, we still have a lot of cords.

Before:

See those cords connecting the two pieces together - not very classy.

Everything's just so exposed. 

Early in September, Nate and I made a little trip out to Ikea to look and wander and have fun. But we also knew that Ikea had some nice looking entertainment centers, and we spent over an hour selecting exactly what we needed for the space.

Our only mistake was not purchasing the items that day. We decided to buy online, which meant the items had to be shipped from a warehouse somewhere else in the country to a local delivery company. That took three weeks. The local delivery company took another week to delivery it, very ineptly and unprofessionally. If you are near an Ikea, buy it in store and take it home, or pay for the local same-week delivery option. Cheaper than online and much, much quicker.

It took four weeks exactly for the items to arrive. And when they did get here last Saturday afternoon, we began to build.

And build.

 And build.

Other important steps were replacing the baseboard...

Which seems to be secured by painting it into the carpet.

...and hiding all of those pesky cords.

Then it was time to finish things up and test the electronics. Which we did by watching football.

All put together.

Jill helped by reading the instructions.

The new unit has tons more storage, hides all of the components, and gives us a space to display all of the wonderful pottery we are lucky enough to own. And we didn't even fill up the unit! There's empty space. What a concept

Again, Before:

And After: