Oops!

After re-scheduling and waiting and going around and around with the appliance people from IKEA, we finally got the repair technician out.  And guess what - there was nothing wrong with the vent hood!  oops -- we actually had a bad connection elsewhere, and the full voltage was not getting to the hood.  How embarrassing - and it cost us 78 dollars to have the guy point out that we needed to check out electrical connections or replace the breaker.  Luckily, it wasn't the breaker, just a bad connection in the last light that we tied the hood into.

It looks pretty awesome, and it even works, too!  LOL !  We also had the GE repair person out - the  convection settings weren't working properly for us -- he instructed us to run the self-clean feature twice - we did it once, and it's worked great ever since.  We just need to keep an eye on it so we get it taken care of completely while it remains under warranty.  He did tell Dale that there was another person who was having a similar problem, and the 2xcleaning did the trick. we'll keep on top of that.

In other news, we've finally moved on to patching up the drywall.  We spent the weekend piecing it all togher, and Dale did two sessions of filling, so now it's ready to get a nice smooth top coat, then we can paint.  Here are some shots of various problem areas:

Those are all 'before' shots -- they all have some fill done.  I also painted the walls with a coat of the wall color, but I'm not happy with it -- too minty.  I want more of a sage green, so I need to go and get another gallon.  Not much color in this room with all the tile and cabinets, but I want something that projects some warmth.

In the meantime, I'm going to have to figure out what to do with our entry now that the pocket door is gone. We've got a big blank wall that we aren't used to!  I am looking at various ideas for built-ins, some type of mudroom approach.  Here are a couple of favorites on  my pinterest board:

 

Love the bench, hooks and shelves.  Not sure if we have enough space to make the shelves deep enough to hold baskets, and besides, we have a ton of stuff for the shelves, so this is my front runner.

I'm thinking a cabinet centered on the wall might look just as nice - build it in, but let it look like a freestanding piece.  I like the one above for that, with the arched top and the crown molding.

Finally- this one has no cubbies, but a nice shelf on top to place objects or framed paintings.  So now, I just need to figure out what I want!

Side Trip!

Our kitchen is in total disarray, but we took off to go to a conference in Fort Worth, Texas! I had a number of presentations to deliver, and was particularly excited to get together with my grad school friends.

 

my friends Roy and Moxie - Justin took the picture.

That was the highlight - alas, I wasn't very impressed with Fort Worth. We did have good breakfasts at the hotel, however...
  

Texas shaped waffles! Yummy!

One thing that we did enjoy was driving to Dallas and visiting the 6th floor Museum at the Texas School Book Depository -- a museum that details the assassination of John F. Kennedy.  It was an interesting visit.

So naturally I came back to being behind on my grading -- which I am still busy catching up with.  And then Dale pulled a muscle in his back at work, so he wasn't able to do any of the final crawling around under the house so we can finish that.  Instead, we focused on cleaning up the junk pile and getting our trash organized.  Not the most glamorous of duties, but a necessary thing.

In the meantime, we've been looking at ideas online for our beam, and I believe we are going to make a slight arch across the space, and build up the edges into some faux columns.  Something like this from Remodel-aholic:

 This is their 3-D model image - we really like the way they built a lot of character into a space that had none beforehand!  That's a similar challenge that we face - nothing remarkable about the bare space, and we like character.  So we're approaching how to adapt this idea into our space. 

In the meantime, we also went out and ordered our stove - we love the look:

And we are finalizing our plan for kitchen cabinets.  A trip to IKEA to talk with the kitchen planners and clear up some questions about particular cabinets.  We have to order in the next month so we can get 20% off during their annual kitchen sale. Score!

Hopefully, the next post will have some updates on our progress ---