Living Swiss Family Robinson Style

When I envisioned this project my big worry was how to survive without a kitchen for a few months. We are 2.5 weeks into not having a kitchen and I can say I really don't miss my old kitchen. I kind of like my "Swiss Family Robinson" kitchen (It really isn't that bad, we have running water and electricity). What do I miss? Only 2 things, my dishwasher and the kitchen sink.

Ben and I have become pros at washing dishes in the bathtub. I bought 2 deep dish tubs from Target and dish drainer and our guest bathroom upstairs has become the "Dish Room". Besides the first night, it has been no problem. The first night of dishes a pyrex container slipped out of my hands and shattered in the tub. I was more concerned for our freshly refinished tub than about the glass everywhere. We got lucky and the tub was fine, and Ben and I spent 10 minutes picking up glass from all over the bathroom. I really do miss the luxury of a dishwasher, but we only had one for our last year in Mound so we are used to washing dishes.

My cooking has changed in my mini kitchen. First, because we come home and work on the house and spending an hour on dinner is not really an option and also because I am now limited to one "burner". I have made pita pizzas, spaghetti, a few frozen skillet meals from Trader Joes but I haven't been too adventurous. Ben and I are fortunate enough to have wonderful family that have dropped off frozen meals for us as well that we can just heat in the microwave. We are very lucky!!

If you ever have to live without a kitchen, here are the key products you need to survive besides a refrigerator, microwave and toaster:

1. A hot plate,  here is the one I ordered. It works great! It would be nice to have 2 or 3 but that seems excessive for a temporary kitchen. :)

2. A toaster oven, I have an awesome one that is a convection oven. I have made brownies and scones in it and they turned out great!!

I also use my crock-pot a decent amount and I use the crock-pot liners from Reynolds and this saves a ton of clean up!!

Here are some pics of my temporary kitchen:

Toaster oven, scones baking!!

Our counter / table :) 

The new appliances on half the room. YAY for getting to use the new fridge!

I use my new oven to store pyrex and baking sheets, etc right now!

The kitchen looks mostly the same as the last time I posted, except there is no drywall or ceiling anymore. The good news is the plumber is coming out next week to move the pipe that is in the way of where the cabinets need to go. After that the carpenter needs to come and take out the door, and put in the new window and the electrician needs to work his magic. Then we need to start putting everything back together. In the meantime, Ben and I are going to install a new door to the garage, scrape the ceilings in the living room/dining room and work on picking out lights and tile for the kitchen. I have already adjusted our end date of this project to be June 1. It could be May 15 but I am trying to mentally prepare myself for June 1.

Some days I just stand in the dining room and stare at the empty, torn apart kitchen and try to imagine it. It makes my head spin to think of all of the work to be done, but I am excited for the end result. :)

Cheers!

Ali

A disaster....

If you need a laugh tonight here it is. I was in my temporary kitchen whipping up some tacos for dinner and talking on the phone to my mom. Next thing I know I hear Ben yell an expletive and I hear a sound I can't place. I yell "what is that" and Ben yells water. I look and there is water shooting out of one of the kitchen water pipes flying across the entire kitchen. I quickly tell my mom I have to go and drop my phone. First I try to stop the water with my hands, I know this will come as a shock but that didn't work. My second thought is towels, again water shooting out like a faucet across the room, not helping. Next I grab the huge garbage can in the room and turn it on its side, but the water just kept running out. Finally, I grab a garbage bag and manage to get most of the water to spray into that. After about 5 minutes (which felt like 2 hours) Ben finally found the main water shut off and the water stopped. At this point, I am dripping wet, the tacos are done cooking and the floors are dripping with water (and dripping into the basement since there are holes in the floor).

Ben comes upstairs and we look at each other and start laughing.

Turns out Ben was trying to drill a hole near the water pipe to lift the floor board over the pipe but it didn't really work when he hit the pipe. We moped up what we could with old towels, and turned on 4 fans to dry out the house. Ben is currently working on fixing the pipe so that we can turn the water back on for the house.

I just keep imagining what I must have looked like trying to stop the water and I can't stop giggling. :)

I am sure this wont be the last disaster.

Cheers!

Ali

Kitchen Remodel (Demo Edition)

One thing Ben and I discovered while we were living with my parents is that we are not good at downtime. So it is not surprising that as soon as life returned to 'normal' on Monday, I walked in the door to fine Ben tearing up the laminate flooring in the kitchen. Demolition had begun. We are now 7 days into the demo and we have worked on it everyday except Friday.

There were some fun surprises (that is sarcastic) like finding some beautiful green cobblestone linoleum in our kitchen, and a pipe in one of the soffits that now a plumber needs to re-route. While this project is a little overwhelming at times, we are hiring out parts of the work so that helps to make it a little more manageable. The most exciting thing this week was finally using our new fridge (it has been at our house since December). 

I will let the pictures of the demolition speak for themselves....

First what we started with, painted counters, a sticker back splash, tiny drawers, terrible pantries...

The flooring, only one of about 5 colors of wood in the house

I am hoping to widen this doorway

The wall to the kitchen is coming down, hello open concept!

No. Words.

Stickers!

Now for the demo pics:

The first layer of linoleum

The second (and thankfully last layer!

The first hole in the wall

Our temporary kitchen complete with hot plate, microwave oven, microwave toaster and crockpot.

Bye bye soffits!

Creeper!

After 7 days, looking into the dining room

From the dining room

We have a long way to go......

I am a girl who hates mess, so I am trying to not have a panic attack about the mess. We are close to being done with demo, it will be nice to start putting it back together. I am going to put a finish date of April 1, 2016 (might be a little optimistic!).

Cheers,
Ali 

A quick bathroom redo!

As usual I am behind on blogging! December flew by, and January led to some unexpected life events which derailed our house projects for a few weeks. Now life is back to "normal" which means we started demo on Monday evening. :)

Before Christmas I decided I wanted to give our upstairs bathroom a face lift. I loved the tile on the floor, the fact that there are double sinks, but little else about the bathroom. First step was hiring a company to re-glaze our bathtub. It was a hideous beige color and we could tell that had been "re-glazed", but obviously a DIY project gone wrong. We used the same company we used when we did this in Mound and they did a fantastic job. Once the beige was stripped off, Ben informed me that the tub was "baby poop green"...haha. The only downside was that is was an extra $200 to remove the lovely DIY job the previous owners had done. Totally worth it for a sparkling white bathtub!

I also sanded all of the cabinets, put three coats of espresso paint on them, and 3 coats of clear coat on them. In addition I ordered new hardware for the cabinets and got the hardware for a steal from Amazon (1/2 the price of Lowes). Putting the new hardware on went smooth until the last cabinet. With the new hinges one of the doors was now too wide, I ended up sanding down the inside edge of the door 5 times before it finally closed. I still need to repaint that edge of the cabinet....that hopefully will get done within the next year. :)

Ben and I had a romantic few days of painting the ceiling, and painting 2 coats of blue paint on the walls. Not exactly the shade I had in mind (I was picturing something a little more chalky teal) but once there was one coat on, Ben told me we weren't changing the color. I think the color looks fine now that we are done.

Ben replaced one of the lights, the outlets and light switches and we were done. I would love to get a new counter in the bathroom but at this point it is good enough.

Here are some pictures of the transformation!

The before pictures:

The cabinets before

Notice those classy hinges!

The tub before...yuck!

The original color around the edge

 The After...

All done!

New hardware!

Bright white tub!

New outlets/switches!

This was a nice 1 week project that wasn't too labor intensive. This week as I mentioned earlier we began demo on the kitchen. The kitchen project is bound to be full of interesting experiences and is by far our most complicated project to date. Updates on that coming soon.

Cheers,

Ali