Feb 20th

Got a nice early start to the day today.  Went to McDonalds for breakfast so I could use the free wifi and uploaded the last journal.  Then got right to work at 9am and worked through until midnight.   Yep, 15 hour day and I feel pretty good, although I think I'll sleep pretty well.

I spent the first 3 hours of the day painting doors.   We're doing doors in the same color as the walls, just in a gloss.   All told I did 6 doors.  But they're 6-panel doors, and each door has 2 sides, each panel has 4 sides, so thats like 288 little side edges that needed to be painted.  I gave myself a blister.   First time I ever got a blister from painting.  Yessir, this was extreme painting.

 A also added the frosting on the sidelites around the door and added the hall light and unit number you can see in the first photo.

Now, for my secret project.  Fanette left one week ago.  I wanted to see how fast I could get the kitchen in to surprise her.   But if I only worked on the kitchen all day, then it would look like I was getting nothing done.   So I'd spend 60% of the day working on other rooms and 40% of the day working on the kitchen.  Unfortunately, when I said I was dazed and got nothing done, that was the truth.  I wasn't secretly working on the kitchen - I really didn't do much on any room of the house for those 2 days. 

So heres the kitchen. 

Not everything is bolted down yet.  The countertops are just resting in there.   I would have installed the sink, but it turns out its too big for our cabinet.  :-(   I fixed the one new closet door (the way I put it up the old hinges didn't work on the right side door, so I needed to modify it with new hinge)s.  Then I took the spice rack for the door and mounted it on the wall.  There is still a TON left to do on this kitchen.   The cabinets are bolted in place - not an easy task as the floor is really not level.  A lot of shimming was involved.  The cabinets along the back wall are a full 1cm higher than the cabinet which is next to the stove.  All in all, they're all level and they all match up.   I almost mounted the microwave, but the overhead cabinet we planned to use it with is way too tall, which means it would sit pretty much 1 foot above the stove top.   I put it in place and realized how awkward it would be.  So either we scrap the overhead microwave idea or we put it up and build some sort of shelf above it.   If you look at one of the photos you can see where it would have gone.   The countertop is how high the stove top would be.  I have installed an outlet for it to work off of, so its all ready to go up.   I was pretty proud of my drywalling - Dr Dryanwall tought me well.  I got the back wall up, had it inspected and then mudded it up and painted it.   Then set to building the box for the window.   I actually made a real nice window ledge which fit perfectly with the old molding, but I had to destroy it when the countertops I bought were an inch higher than the ones we had used upstairs (which I had used when trying to decide how high to make the ledge).   Anyway, in the photos below, the flooring is just laid there for effect and some of the trims are tacked in place for the photo as well.  Also, the countertop is a 2-person job so I'll need to wait for Ryan or Dad to get that done.   Right now it just sits there.  I've used some wood from the cabinet I bought to make some trim for the short cabinet, and I've also bought some wood and stain to make a shelf for that area as well.  Several of the cabinets were damaged when we bought them so I spent some time fixing up the ones which were broken as well