Motivation

A few friends have asked us if our kitchen cabinets are installed and the short answer to that is "no!". I think we're a little tired out from all the renovating and we've definitely slowed down. So today I decided to post the state of things to answer that question, but I also thought that possibly the embarrassment of showing the sad state of our house will push me to get cracking.

The picture of our hallway really tells the whole story. Most of the IKEA cabinets are in boxes - and when I say most I mean all but the one that we've assembled so far. Just past that we have the shower fixture that we can finally install onto our clawfoot tub now that the plumbing has been fixed. The new flooring has raised the floor height of the entire area by around 1/2". So we had to wait a few weeks for new supply lines for the tub to arrive.

Across from that you can see our old countertop propped against the wall which we are getting rid of. Also the doors to various closets that are all around 1/2 an inch too tall now to fit back in place. Then on to the kitchen with more IKEA boxes.

This wooden strip is called a "reducer" and bridges the big gap and 3/4" step that was between the tile and wood floor areas. There were rough edges on either side and old floorboards and ditra showing in the middle. I sanded a little chip from the bottom corner of the baseboard to fit over the reducer.

It's partly that everything seems to take more time and trouble than expected. Just finding this wooden reducer to bridge the tile to the hardwood took weeks. But we were thrilled when we found one at Home Depot that was the right wood, the right stain, the right length, with a shallow overlapping bit for the tile side and a 3/4" step down to the hardwood floor side. Then it was just a small matter of borrowing a power saw to cut it, after cutting the adjacent new baseboards to make sure it would be the right length. Then finding the right glue to attach it and then going back for the caulking gun that was needed to apply the glue. Phew! So more trouble than we expected but it's finally done and it looks finished now. Now we just need to do the gap between the hall and bathroom...
Oh... and hidden behind some of those IKEA boxes were these shelves that are going into the bathroom over the washing machine for storage. We also need to replace baseboards throughout (the old ones were removed when renovating the floors and most were damaged and too short and yucky to begin with).

This is the one cabinet we've put together so far - now it just needs soft shutting mechanisms on the drawers, handles, legs and a countertop!

Which brings me to today's goal. I've painted the left side of the kitchen in the alcove area with our new colour. Choosing the perfect grey took a looong time but I'm happy with it now that it's on the walls. It's Benjamin Moore's Titanium, and it's a very soft pale grey that actually seems to look grey rather than a bit green, or blue, or beige as grey's often do. It also works nicely with the cabinets and the new floor which has tiny pale grey stripes in it.

But the walls on the other side still look like this:
And the original bright yellow colour is still there in the eat-in area past the cabinets. The wall was damaged in a few patches so we definitely couldn't have kept that colour. And I find it a bit too heavy. This is the left side:
And the right side:What a mess. I really dislike the air conditioner too - and not sure how to remove it now it's been installed into the wall. But that will have to be resolved later. Maybe we can just put a cabinet in front of it!

And last but not least, the mechanized shutters that go over the back doors are broken and stuck halfway up. Or halfway down depending on how you want to look at it. So someone is supposed to be coming by today to repair those. So that's the state of things, now I'll surely be motivated to post some "after pictures" as soon as possible!