A dash of color in the kitchen

Hello all. We left the kitchen in a state of "things are basically in place for now." Well we've come a long way, baby.

We had a couple last cabinets to arrange. The skinny one is new, but the end unit used to sit next to the left of the stove. We had a lot of repair and cleanup work to do on the walls in this area after taking down the pantry, which explains why these were the last to install.

To prove that we are fully capable of goofs and gaffes, we plan to thread the cord for the refrigerator into the end cabinet to hide it. We needed access to the outlet (which we first had to install) behind the cabinet. Despite measuring twice we cut once in the wrong place. Fortunately there was enough space to enlarge the cut. No one ever said home reno was perfect.

But we managed to get everything into place (not yet ready to tackle the island, that's coming) and ready for...

You guessed it, primer!

With the cabinets locked in place we could turn to the countertops. Here they are!

Well ok that's a countertop in its natural state of plywood and hardie board (in this case a 1/2-inch board that is the preferred surface on which to tile). Below are the butcher block countertops that will make up most of the kitchen. A bigger version will go on the island.

The tiled area will go around the sink because of the tendency to collect water. We're going to finish the butcher block but even that's less waterproof than ceramic. To make the area around the sink we started by cutting a piece 4x2 feet and removing the area for the drop-in sink.

This part of the countertop will actually be 5x2, so we cut another piece of the plywood to fit before overlaying the hardie board with a matching cutout.

We tend to operate under the principle of working from top to bottom--ceilings to floors. In this case because we needed to finish the cabinet before the countertops and the walls needed so much work that we ended up painting the walls last.

Here's where things stood after this round. We're definitely liking what we see.

Until next time.