The last weekend devoted entirely to the kitchen. Ever.

Ta-da! What you're looking at, friends, is a completed kitchen. I made the big push last week and all through this weekend to knock the project out and I am beyond proud to say that I did it.
Yesterday I finished painting all of the moulding and doing necessary touch up, and today was the oh-so-precise job of installing the cabinet hardware, installing the piece of butcher block counter top, and installing under-cabinet lighting (I do have one thing left to do with the lighting, I need something to gather and hide the cords... right now, painter's tape is hiding them beneath the cabinets).
I could tell many stories, but I'll let the pictures do the talking. I'm also working on a slides show that highlights the past 3 and a half months and will try to embed that here. Until then, I'm going to go and bask in the glow of the under-cabinet and hood surface light glow of my NEW KITCHEN!

Take note to keep your eyebrows

While I haven't been posting as frequently, it doesn't mean I haven't been learning and taking multiple notes--as I often do. Here are a few important ones:

Note to self: Even if IKEA says it's a good idea to tape around where you're caulking to keep the lines clean. Don't. Caulk is easy to clean up. And if you tape it, then it will stick to the tape so that when you remove the tape you no longer have a clean line. And then you need to re-caulk. Blarg!

Note to self: When installing a gas stove and checking to see if it's connected. DO NOT lean over the burner to smell for gas flow if you have the knob held on ignite and have had it there for at least ten seconds. Just because it hasn't ignited yet, doesn't mean that it won't... right when you have your face over the burner.

Note to self: When installing a gas stove yourself, don't. Get a professional to do it.

Kitchen? What kitchen?

Hello, friends! Have you missed the DomestiKat? I know it's been a month since I've posted, and I don't have pictures really, because I've been working on the time-consuming and minute details and it's really hard to tell a difference in things. Oh, and I'm lazy.

Since the last post after installing my cap and crown mouldings, I've done a lot of little things. Ooh, except one big thing, the microwave debacle got all straightened out. So I have one cooking element, I have yet to use it, but it does send me little messages like, "Have a nice day," "Do you want to set the clock," "Your food is done," and "Nice kitchen!" Okay, I may be putting words into its display, but anyway...

I sit here typing with paint all over my hands (and residual caulk in the crevices). Over the weekend, I caulked every single solitary crack, seam, and space. Wow is caulk amazing! And then I primed all of the moulding (before that and actually before caulking, I taped everything... which took two rolls of tape). Tonight I painted all but the baseboard mouldings. For those of you keeping track at home, here's what I have left:
1. Paint the baseboard moulding
2. Touch up wall paint--and maybe do some re-caulking
3. Install pulls and knobs
4. Install butcher block
5. Install gas stove (rather get a professional to do it, but that's another post)
6. Oh, and move back in to the kitchen.

Yes, it means that it is highly likely that the kitchen will be completed this weekend, and some of you have heard me say that for the past month, but this time I'm not crying wolf... I mean it.

Cap and crown

This past weekend, I installed cap moulding on top of all of the cabinets. And I also had a friend (whom I owe big time) come over and help install the crown moulding.They need to be caulked, primed, and painted... they'll all eventually be white to match the other mill work and cabinets in the house/kitchen.

My ceilings are 9'5" tall, but for some reason all this moulding makes them feel so much taller. When I walked into the kitchen this morning I felt like I was in the foyer of the haunted house at Disney World--you know how the room grows taller as your standing there? Either that, or I was a Lilliputian in a kitchen made for Gulliver. Seriously, I've created a kitchen for big people. Five foot ten never felt so small.

Long lost update

Oh my heck! Has it really been two weeks since I've updated? My how time flies when you still can't cook for yourself. But I'm getting so so so close. And the fact that I can't cook is not my fault--either the manufacturer or the appliance store provided me with the wrong mounting plate for my over the range microwave. Too bad I took a ton of time to meticulously mount it to my wall and tile all around it. Blarg!

But no worries, a new one is coming (and it better be soon), so I can install it and then my stove, finally.

In the meanwhile, I'm to the point in the kitchen where I'm just doing detail work--and I've found where the devil is hiding out, for sure!

Since my last post here's what's happened:

1. Grouted the tile--not nearly as fun as laying the tile, but it looks really nice (will post picture of this soon)
2. Got water! Yay! With the installation of the faucet, came the installation of the new dishwasher and hooking up the icemaker in the fridge.
3. Got electricity! Yay! So far, my new light fixture has not burned down the house, phew!
4. Installed the remainder of the cabinets, cover panels, and cabinet doors (here's my standard update picture).




5. Installed cap molding to match the mill work on the windows and doorways throughout the house.

Things left on the to do list:

1. Install cap molding on all of the cabinets.

2. Crown and base molding installation

3. Install microwave and range

4. Install butcher block counter top on a small unit next to the stove

5. Install toe kicks under counters

6. Caulk, caulk, and caulk

7. Prime and paint molding

8. Touch up wall paint



The to do list is getting smaller, but these detailed tasks are definite consumers of time. But I'm so pleased with the results that I don't mind the extra time... as long as I get that stove installed, pronto.

Update in pictures

Tired. Tiled until 2:00 AM last night and got up and at it again at 7:00 this morning. Must go to bed. Here are some pictures for you... words to come later.

Domestikat's pop quiz

I'll give you one guess at what I spent the better part of the day doing today.

Did you guess tiling? Holy crapola, Einstein, you are genius!

I had really really really wanted to lay my tile in a herringbone pattern, but the more I thought about it, the more that seemed like too much trouble. I worried that I might regret not trying it out, but after putting in around 12 hours of tiling today, I realize how time and labor intensive it would have been and I can say that I'm loving my back splash one hundred percent and I have zero regrets.

So far I've done two and a half walls and hope to finish up laying them tomorrow. I'll probably grout them mid-week. You have to see the full effect of the tile with the counter top (and right now the counter top is covered in painter's paper and... you guessed it, cardboard!). When I do my week in review, I'll post a picture that captures it all, but in the mean time, here's a teaser (and can I just say that those little spacer dudes are perhaps the greatest invention of all time).