Trim around the island

Got up early and cut the molding along the floor on both the island and the base cabinets along the wall --

I do still have some minor caulking to do here and there, but now the island looks like a piece of furniture instead of a bunch of boxes nailed together.  Now the floor is really bothering me, I think I am going to lightly stain those oak boards so they blend in a little better - I wasn't going to do anything with them because we want to sand down the rest of the floor and refinish it all, and will be staining a little darker -- but it looks so crappy right now, so I'm going to do something with them --

The dishwasher surround took a bit of managing, but it makes the whole area look so much better --

Still up in the air about the white section -- We don't actually ever change any of the settings, so we might just paint over the whole thing and then just have a picture for reference in case I ever do decide to change any of them.

So we have a whole other list of projects, and this weekend is a 3-day weekend.  So we decided to get started on another project: working on the greenhouse window.  First thing we did was remove the old crappy sliding window.  Which was held in by 3 screws.  That popped right out, and we wanted to enlarge the opening a little, so we cut down 4" and reinstalled a new base plate.  We rebuilt the sides and went outside to cut the stucco away.

We stapled plastic over the opening while he was cutting the stucco so we didn't get the house full of dust.  After rebuilding the opening, it was surprising to see how big the hole looked -- considering it was barely taller, it looks so much larger without the slider mechanism breaking it up.

The window itself we actually got free on Craigslist -- I had been looking for one that was similar in size to our window - we didn't really want to alter the size much since we have a stove to one side and a refrigerator on the other, and so when this one was listed, I jumped on it.  It was a different style than what I had been seeing - this one was attached on the wall outsisde the window -- which allows us not to alter the opening to fit it.  It's taller than the opening, which is fine, and it fits just right across.

Here it is looking all filthy and gross, like it's been sitting in our garage for the past couple of months:

It had a piece of broken granite in the base when we picked it up, and it was missing a shelf.  The lady who gave it to us actually broke it between the time we called her about it and when we arrived to pick it up - she felt really bad, but it's a 10 dollar fix, so no problem.  I went over the seams with silicon to be sure it stays water tight.






I had this window pinned to my Pinterest board for the past year or two:


I liked the outside mount, so this one fits well with what I like.  Ours is not so elegant, but this one here cost about 3000 dollars, so for the price, we're doing fine.







We did get it mostly installed today, but the sun went down before we got it all finished off -- so I didn't get any pictures.  In the morning, we have some more details to get to, and I'll get finish pictures then.  I wasn't going to add the inside trim just yet since we still have to tile the wall, but I might go ahead and at least tack it up so I can get the full effect.  We let the cats out of the bedroom (they were locked up while there was a large opening all afternoon), and as soon as they came out, they jumped up in the window to check it out.  I'm looking forward to filling our little greenhouse window with succulents!

Well....look here

OK, it's been quite awhile since I posted last.  It's not that we haven't been doing anything -- really, we have! -- but there have been some other factors.  I mentioned that Dale had pulled a muscle, well -- it turns out he may have herniated disks.  So...that has slowed us down a LOT of course, he's been getting all kinds of various therapies and treatments for that.  And in the meantime, my daughter Leslie had her baby!  Our first grandchild!  So I had to rush out of town for that, of course!

isn't he adorable!?  of course he is -- Parker Jameson Reed, born on April 16 (his due date, his mother is VERY organized!). 

So I had to rush out and be there right away ... but because the IKEA sale ended on April 28, I knew I'd be out of town and so before I left, we ran off to IKEA and ordered our cabinets.  I told Dale he could go do it, but he wasn't about to fall for that one.  So they were ordered, and delivered while I was gone.  When I got back, this is what I was greeted by:

189 boxes. This view actually looks pretty good.  And the reason it looks so good is because Dale cleaned out the garage so there would be plenty of room to put everything. 

We spent some time this afternoon putting some of the cabinets together.  We're going to finish up tomorrow with the cabinet boxes, then I'll take some more pictures.  It's pretty overwhelming, but working a bit at a time, we're getting through them.


We did manage to save 20%, nearly $1000, so that made the last minute trip to IKEA worth it.


The other thing that happened while I was gone was that we had some really windy days, and we lost a couple of big branches off our lemon tree.  Our lemon tree is already rather sad looking, and it has a LOT of fruit on it, so the windy days were a little more than it could handle.  We have a couple of baskets of lemons to give away --

 OK - one last picture of our adorable grandson: