Plugging Along

Our kitchen is coming right along.  A huge amount of time in the last two weeks has gone towards sanding the multiple layers of lead paint off the bead board that is going into our kitchen.  Much time has been spent at the drawing board (which is any piece of plywood or extra 2x4 nearby - most commonly this plywood hung in the kitchen is used:)

We stand and discuss all of our options and Vinnie draws us lots of pictures of all the ideas he has in his head so we can try and figure the best options out.  We got the layout for the kitchen finalized and a peninsula designed after much discussion.  Vinnie threw this together for us two days ago so we could see what he was thinking:

This is a rough idea of what the peninsula/bar/whatever-you-wanna-call-it will look like:

View from the front as you walk in from front door ↑ and the view as you walk 

around it into the kitchen ↓

View from standing in the kitchen looking towards front door ↓

Now, of course you have to use your imagination a little. It will be closed in from the front (so you don't see those studs in the first two pictures) and the cabinets will of course be out of their boxes in the end. As you may notice, there are three different levels - bar height in front where we will be putting a few bar stools, the counter height coming around from the rest of the kitchen, and then the appendage that sticks out in the back is table height so we can eat/hang out/work on stuff comfortably there. We love it and are so excited with what Vinnie came up with.  

Also, you may notice that there is plywood hung on the walls in the kitchen - at this time we are ready to hang/install the cabinets directly to that. Vinnie likes to put them onto plywood as it is stronger, due to the fact that you are sure to hit wood, no matter where you screw a cabinet into the wall. We're going to wait to hang them though until after the dry wall is up, so they don't get damaged during any of that and aren't in the way as we finish other things.

All of our siding has now been replaced on three sides of the house - we will deal with the front eventually, but for now it's not necessary.  Here's the left side of the house all re-sided:

Since March, the back of the house/yard has gone from looking like this:

   To this: 

I guess the house looks better - the yard certainly does not though.  Looks like we'll be needing another dumpster soon... We're still needing to paint the exterior and that back porch will have to be replaced as well - it's all about priorities though, and for now those are cosmetic things, which rank last on the list.

We've gotten bids on the sheet rock this week and hope to be able to get that started by the beginning of August.  We still have lots of little details to get finished up before then so we're trying to get the tedious stuff out of the way as quickly as possible to move on.