Finally getting somewhere!

We just had a painter come in and mud and texture our walls, plus prime and paint in our stairwell. It no longer smells like cigarette smoke hallelujah!!!! My job now is to prime and paint the walls and trim, then scrub the floors so we can get our living room back...

We are getting redwood for our wainscoting and our ceiling!!! I am so stinking excited because I thought we were going to have to get pine. It is beautiful, rosy reds with white mixed in.

So here is the before pic... Somebody put this siding next to the fireplace, and somebody else covered this cedar with hideous wallpaper. I scraped and peeled and scraped some more to get the paper and adhesive off... (don't mind the stove, we like to do our cooking in the middle of the living room. :)

NOW, the painter ripped off the siding, cut drywall to fit flush with the cedar, and mudded and taped the whole thing.

Ready for primer and paint!!! I am so excited. :) The paint I have chosen is called Withered Moss from Lowes, and I love it!! You can see the swatch I painted in the picture between the windows. I am so ready to not live in a construction zone anymore!!!

Floor acid stained and sealed

 This was the most exciting part for me I think! I was just so ready to have a beautiful, unique and fully functioning kitchen! I was also very curious to see how it would turn out.

!

First step was to put grout in the bigger grooves.

 This is the first coat of acid stain. Marlon had to do several coats to cover all the spots.

Still wet!

                              And this is what it looked like when it was all dry!! How cool!

 A family friend and his son came 2 days later to seal the floor after it was dry. They used a fancy sealer and sprayed it on with a pump sprayer. It was VERY smelly... but dissipated mostly by the end  of the first day. 

Sealer going on, what a difference!!! It brought out all the cool textures and colors of the stain.

         And done! How beautiful is that??? We are LOVING it. It turned out so wonderful.

Concrete kitchen floors poured!

 We decided to do acid stained concrete floors in our . SO, the floors were poured and then we had to wait a month to acid stain it. So I had a whole kitchen back for a month!!

                                     They put tar paper down to protect the underlayment.

 Mixin up the magic!!! Marlon Stephenson and crew of Stephenson Concrete did the work.

                    

                    They let it cure for a day, and came back the next day to cut grooves in.
Marlon had to put some epoxy in the cracks because the floor was not stable enough. It worked like a charm! Now we wait for a month to finish it up.

Granite countertops installed

Wong's Best Floors came the next day after cabinets. They were quick, and efficient. They did a fabulous job!

                                           Our BEAUTIFUL farmhouse sink!!! I love it!!!!

And granite done!!!

Cabinets are here!!!

We did our homework before buying cabinets. We got bids from about 10 different places. I had my heart set on cream, distressed cabinets. OF COURSE those are the most expensive kind!! The CHEAPEST we found was $7000 for cabinets alone.

We finally found this gem of a place in Portland, OR called Wong's Best Floors. The cheapest for the best quality. They also did our granite counters, and the cabinets and counters INSTALLED was less than $6000. WOW, we were impressed.
Their website is http://wongsbestfloors.com/ if you are interested, we highly recommend them.
I did not get my cream cabinets :( far from it, but Chocolate Maple ones instead. They are really nice, just not cream. I like them, they are very classy.

                                        Blake and Daddy very excited to watch the process!!

                            Please take note of the wallpaper loveliness in the back ground :)

All along this far wall was my kitchen for 5 weeks! The fridge was in front of our sliding glass door. We ate a lot of Burgerville and thai food, cold sandwiches etc. I used lots and lots of paper plates, cups and plastic silverware.

Et, VOILA!!! Yay!!!!! Talk about a complete change! So much room. Kevin refused to move so he
 is in the pic too. Counters were installed the next day!

Prepping for cabinets

So, if anyone even mentions the word wallpaper to me again... they might get hurt!. Just sayin'! :) I have scraped and steamed and peeled about 4 big garbage bags full so far and that is just in the kitchen/dining and living areas!! I still have a couple bathrooms and bedrooms to go.

                      Ripping up the flooring!!! Not sad to see this stuff go, that is for sure!

 The tools of my trade!!! For 3 months they have never been far from my hand. I have been using a mixture of ammonia, fabric softener and water in a spray bottle to spray on and then scrape off. That has seemed to work the best. I also bought a steamer, but it just makes a mess and makes the room hot. None of it has come off very easy.

Down to bare plywood. It was VERY STINKY in our house during this process, for one, the previous owners smoked in the home for 10 years (ICKY!!), and for two, ripping up all this stuff 30 to 40 years old, you can imagine. And then there were the dead mice. Ummm hmmm fun stuff.

After ripping and scraping off all the wallpaper I primed the walls and the ceiling with Kilz primer.
READY FOR MY CABINETS!!!