NOW we're cookin'!

Well. It's done. Don't scroll down, now...you'll ruin the big finish.

We moved into our house and started out with quite the kitchen. It had been the recipient of several small upgrades recently, but you could tell it was one of those weird realtor things. Granite countertops? Check! Tile floors? Check! Stainless appliances? Check? Rest of the kitchen completely ignored and dated? Er, check? Yeah. We had a LOT of work to do and very little money with which to do it. So we started stripping the place down. And of course, the first to go would be...

Did you guess "popcorn ceilings?" Of course you did, you big smartie pants! So we pulled out the knives, razorblades and spray bottles and went to town. It was a nightmare, like every other room. But because we're incredibly hard core, we pretended it was nothing and spent a couple of weeks on ladders, chatting and having fun.

From there we went on to easy stuff. Removing hardware, ditching what we couldn't use and spray-painting the rest, removing light fixtures and putting up curb alerts on Craig's List. Huge flourescent kitchen lights with plastic covers? Mmm. Yes, please!

Brass hardware, meet Rust-Oleum. We've been friends since our first home-ownership go-round and we meet up regularly.

When the Deacon popped down to the Lonestar State last week, he and I got to work on the cabinet bases. I'll post a separate post with Cabinet Transformations pointers and tips, since we learned a lot and really like the finished product. It had it's pros and cons, but mostly it was a big PRO. Deacon Daddy-O and I painted cabinet bases until our eyes crossed. It didn't seem like that many before we started, but it felt like the more we painted, the more little cabinet babies were born, just waiting to be painted. I would guess it took about 4 days of straight painting to get the bases de-glossed, 3 coats of white paint, one coat of glaze and one coat of protective top coat. Gag. And that was just the bases. After living without cabinet doors for about 2 weeks, Andrew got all "I'm the boss and what I say goes" on me and announced that Labor Day Weekend was going to be it. He spent Friday night finishing the walls and trim around the cabinet bases. He was up until 2am, and he did a fantastic job.

And he still loved me when he was done!

Saturday - getting ready to show the cabinet doors who's boss.

Don't look to closely. It'll make you seriously question my position as the daugher of a professional organizer. Girlfriend just moved in and has a 4-month-old. Let's not judge to hastily.

We had thirty doors and one 6-foot table. As you can imagine, we had doors everywhere.

They were on every flat surface we could find. It was like a maze of cabinet doors.

Ah, glazing. I'm still having nightmares. This is seriously the worst part of the process. You have to work very fast, you can't leave a single fingerprint, it's sticky and gets everywhere, and the results are totally hit or miss.

Once you've painted it on, you have about 2 minutes to wipe it off and get the tone you want. Yeah. For someone like me, it's enough to drive you to distraction.

And it's disgusting.

We got our final door glazed around 11:30 and we just turned out the lights and passed out, not really caring what they looked like when we woke up. Not a smart way to work.

I was volunteering in the church nursery this morning, so Andrew and Lucy stayed behind to add the protective top coat and start hanging doors!

Yeah...there's a reason she can't find a job. She requires far more sippy cup breaks than required by Texas law.

My big strong man, hanging doors!

Er.....

Something's seriously wrong, here.

Okay, get ready....

Here it comes....

Scroll back to the "before" pics just one more time to refresh your memory. It's worth it.

We still have a couple more things to tweak/add/do, but all in all, it's just about done and we finally feel like we can walk into the kitchen without feeling all discombobulated and overwhelmed. Ahhhh...peace.