Finally...Professionals!!!

We're finally at the point in the kitchen remodel, where the pros can get in there -- marking the end of my serious sweat equity in the project.

New lights & Painting
We had some electricians come out, remove the old fluorescent lights in our kitchen, install recessed lighting, install a light for our pantry, move some outlets up by 4-5 ft., and prepare the cabinets for cabinet lights.

Once that was done, painters came in patched where the electricians did their work, painted the ceiling, and painted the rest of the walls in the room.

Painted walls, painted ceiling, and new recessed lighting!

I'll miss using my phone's flashlight in my pantry to find food, but onwards and upwards I suppose...

New* Cabinet Install
When we were first talking to vendors about this project, I noticed one day that the floating island we had, looked like it could be a natural extension of our existing counter tops. The guy building the rest of our cabinets agreed, and came out last week to fix that sucker in place saving us some decent coin.

Our old kitchen island being reused

Getting Ready for Backsplash
Removing the backsplash last week was key in a) getting the electrician in and working (we couldn't have raised the outlets that needed raising nor prep for the under cabinet lights without it being gone), which b) got the painters in and working and also c) allowed the cabinet to be affixed with the outlets moved to their proper place.

It also allowed our tile guy to come during a time it would be easiest (and cheapest) for him to do prep work for the eventual backsplash install. He removed the old (emphasis on ooooolddddd) plaster, and installed new backer board that our backsplash will eventually be tiled on to.

Backer board installed!

Next?
This week's "big" task will simply be picking out the sections of marble we want to use for the cabinets and our new island!

So much better than sweaty Khaner...

Kitchen Update

Short update today. We finally have the kitchen ready for cabinet install, which feels great. A few things had to be done to get it there:

1) We had a window taken out and boarded up where it once was. A siding company came in and did it in one day, removing the window, dry walling, and replanking the exterior with cedar planks that match the rest of our house.

Where the window was removed

I had to paint the new planks (luckily, we had paint left at our house for the exterior), but the thing that I'm horrible at was resealing the end of the planks to the corner beams. I'm horrible with a caulk gun. I wished the company took an extra 30 minutes to do this for us and tacked on $5 for a tube of caulk, because it now looks like a three-year-old got a hold of several tubes of toothpaste.

2) Removing the backsplash. No tricks here, just a ton of sweat -- well I did use my hand saw to make a starter cut which got me going. I bought a chisel which was a solid investment, and basically drove that sucker under the backsplash for about 5 hours.

Was not aware my loving wife took this photo...

Make sure your Shop-Vac doesn't need to be emptied/cleaned out before sucking everything up. It reached a turning point and started kicking all the dust it was sucking up, out and into the kitchen/dining room. Boss lady was not pleased about this. But because I was covered in sweat, and my hands were kind of bleeding, I got a pass.

Werkin

Lights are being installed today, old counters ripped off this week, new counters installed, and the new back board (going with hardie board I think) installed where the old backsplash was, all this week. So finally moving quickly!