kitchen update

YEA!!!!! we are done, or as close to done as we can get.  The floors will be done later this month while I'm gone and the table and chairs will eventually get painted, the weather has just not cooperated with doing spraying outside.  We started the first weekend in January and here it is the the first week of June. We had figured by the end of March we would be done, ha, ha. 15 weekends of nonstop work and almost no social life.  We did take time to go see the kids and parents but other than that it was work, work, work, approximately 600 hours.  We are both pleased with what we have accomplished and think all the upgrades we did makes the kitchen far more valuable than what we spent.  We came in about $300 over the high end of our budget and stuck mostly to the initial plan.  It is very difficult to plan how much gets spent on things like sanding disks, paint, stain, drop cloths and necessary hardware.  That is where most of the extra money went.  We stuck pretty close to the original floor plan which meant we didn't need to move much of the electrical or plumbing.  We bought unfinished cabinets so we have the exact finish I envisioned with plenty of custom details. We made our own counter tops to get an exact fit. We tried to maximize every square inch of storage and upgrade our pantry along with the kitchen for extra storage.  I can't think of a single thing I would change.

how different this shot looks from the first day of the project 

remember this little open look

now it blends right in

this pulls out to reveal a tall skinny storage space for cookie sheets and cutting boards

you can't see the crown molding well in the previous pictures but it made a huge difference in the room and made the cabinets look finished

As soon as the floor is finished I will go over all the cabinets with steel wool then wipe on a mix of mineral spirits and a little stain to catch any stray nooks and crannies that might have gotten banged up in the whole process.  Unless you've done this kind of big project yourself you can not begin to understand how good it feels to say IT IS DONE!!!!