Sneak Peeks

Lots of moving pieces in the house renovation. For now, here's a little sneak peek at a project Ghon is working on, kitchen cabinets!

 A couple before shots...

In the picture above, you can see where I've been working on fixing pennies. That section has been horrible, and caused me much delay.

With all the drawers removed in this section, Ghon started painting the cabinets a slightly off shade of white, using chalk paint.

The trim on each door and drawer is painted a blue-green color.

Here's a long view of the kitchen - and penny progress!

Later that evening, he took out all the drawers and cabinet doors and started with the white base coat.

And yes, as seen below, had a little paint spill.

What do you think of the color combination? Our accent color for some of our appliances is going to be red. All cabinets and drawers will have new pulls installed at some point down the road.

Interested in another sneak peek? Here is a quick test of some sanding in the dining room, after the kids and I painted on Saturday.

Dining room floor - before. Brown paint, orange paint - looking into the kitchen at right.

Hard at work!

Isn't it gorgeous??

This angle is from the opposite direction of the "before" picture.

Are you wondering why Ghon is using a small belt sander?

A few weeks ago, we did rent a floor sander for the weekend. Unfortunately, we didn't get enough time with it and only pieces of rooms were done. Here's a few shots of it in action. He wanted to see what kind of progress he could make with the belt sander - and the answer is, good progress!

The bottom held 4 sanding pads. This thing was SO heavy!

Hard at work.

A middle stripe - this floor, despite bowing in spots, also has great potential!

A little more complete!

Ghon, always on the phone, and Jonathan, helping sweep up excess dust.

Genevieve wanted to help, and I was wearing a mask while scrubbing logs - so she wanted one too.

Nice work clothes, huh?

About those logs. Another design factor that Ghon and I kept going back and forth about was the number of log exposed walls in the living room. I wanted one, the fireplace wall. He wanted two. Reluctantly, he wins this one. :)  Hopefully, our stone mason will be back later this week to chink the logs -- basically adding the mortar between the logs. I've done the prep work over 2, maybe three different days.

Back wall - the wall you see when you enter the living room. The door to the side porch is at left.

To the right of the window...which is at the end of the pic above.

A little side by side - before and after comparison of my log scrubbing!

A couple weeks later, I was back at it, but removing the mortar from between the logs. This gets pretty interesting. In some spots, there were different types of mortar. It's a little hard to see in the pictures, but I would find clumps of hair that was used to make the mortar. What a history!

Look close, center - about 2/3 of the way down - you can see the hair!

After all the mortar was removed - and laying on the floor!

Wider view of the wall - this is the wall that had two "before" pics above. Lots of mortar and dirt to remove!

We have had rain for something like 845 consecutive days. OK, maybe 13 or 14. When the rain continues, the mason comes to work on our inside job. Fingers crossed we see him later this week. He stopped by earlier to see what we had done, and recommended clearing a bit more out of places I left. Ghon's working on that. Here is a progress shot!