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.