Water

Its been a long time coming, but our kitchen now has running water. Sink supply, check. Sink drain, check...dishwasher supply, well, you get the idea. Needless to say, the dishwasher was busy for most of the weekend as we unpacked the plates, bowls, pots, and pans that have been in boxes since June. New electrical circuits had to be installed for each of the new appliances (disposal and dishwasher) - bringing to an end the 250ft of romex we bought when the kitchen upgrades began.

At long last, we have a fully functional kitchen. We still have work to do, i.e., the trim around the doors and windows, tile backsplashes, toe kicks, and a couple of side panels. Oh and we still have a few knobs and pulls to install but those are on order. On to the pics:

Note the sink!:

Plates are clean and in the cabinets (and theres that sink again!):
And we're liking this faucet selection:

Soapstone Commeth!

Tick that one off the list!

This stone is greener and more veined than the sample they gave us. Less chemistry lab, more new kitchen. Definitely not like Grandma would have installed. Seriously though, its better than expected. This looks fantastic!

Skim coating dining room

Progress is being made downstairs. Finished skimcoating the dining room walls over the weekend. As you can see from the pics, its not yet dry. Just have to sand her smooth then the paint begins!

Technical note for myself. When adding water to joint compound, mix it very well. The mud seems to be slightly aerated (little air pockets in it) so if those are still in it when you apply the mud, you'll have little bubbles on your wall when you sand it smooth. I was afraid over mixing could introduce bubbles but that wasn't the case.

Kitchen update

As mentioned below, we are now contracting out the countertop installation, so once thats done the sink and dishwasher will be installed and the kitchen will more or less be fully functional. Trimwork around the windows, floors and doors, and on the tops of the cabinets all still need to be done as well but that isn't as important as running water.

So the cabinets are all in. We're evaluating pulls and knobs right now. Heres a few new kitchen pics. Note the Samsung fridge - bottom mount, french doors. This thing is great. Tons of space. Really works well. And the stove has 2 ovens. Good for turkey day. We were at a friends place in Albany last weekend and they have the same stove. They use the top small oven all the time. I think we'll do the same, and the smaller size should translate into shorter preheating and lower gas consumption.

whole house update

We're kind of at a standstill at the moment. Cabinets are all installed. The next thing is the countertops. The plan from day 1 was to have that be another DIY project. Soapstone cuts easily enough. Just check out some videos and see for yourself here. Two problems with that - 1) I've been traveling a lot lately and simply do not have the time to coordinate the time and resources (i.e., friends with healthy backs) to get it done and 2) the corner area looks tricky. The walls aren't square and you need to glue 2 slabs together so its not as easy as it could be. Sure a good template will resolve that but that gets back to reason 1, no time for templating. So we have a contractor lined up and ready to go.

Offloading this project will allow me to spend what time I do have on skimcoating the dining room walls. Once thats done, we can paint that room and then the living room. Then we get the floors resurfaced on the rest of the first floor. That will make the house superficially complete. Trimwork will be an ongoing project thru the winter (as will some other projects), but getting the walls and floors done is obviously high on the list.