Kitchen Reno: Let There Be Light

You know, a light at the end of the tunnel. Or, under-cabinet lighting. Whatever.

Either way, things are seemingly starting to come together. Don't get me wrong--we are still not even close to being finished, but we're getting there. Slowly, but surely. You might remember that I hoped to be completely done by the end of March.

HA.

Haha.

HAHAHAHAHAHA.

Oh well, that's just the way it goes, right? House projects take three times as long and cost twice as much as you anticipate. Or so I'm told. I don't really like to keep track of such things. :) But since I've at least been documenting timing along the way, the missed "deadline" is difficult to ignore.

Let's move on to some photos and talk about progress made from last week, huh?

A lot of the progress this week was electrical. Our electrician spent a few evenings and a good chunk of Sunday afternoon at our house, wiring outlets, the under-cabinet lights, adding switches, and more. It's nice to finally get all of those stray wires connected to things!

Michael and I also hung the rest of the upper cabinets. What a pain in the ass that process is. But it's done, and we're hopeful that they're all in the right position and won't need to be moved again anytime soon!

Ignore the messes in the cabinets, we're just starting to try to get our lives semi-organized again! But check out that pendant light above the sink. We installed that on Sunday night. That light fixture was something we ripped down way back in August, but didn't put anything new in its place... until now. It feels so amazing to have it up there and looking so nice!

I look at this pic and hear angels singing. Why? Because THE MICROWAVE IS BACK UP OHMYGOD. If you look back at my previous kitchen renovation posts, the over-the-range microwave has been living on the countertop (taking up an ungodly amount of space) for the past several weeks. In order to open and/or close the door, we had to keep tilting the microwave backwards--it was just ridiculous, really. We re-installed it in its rightful place on Sunday afternoon and it was easily one of the most satisfying tasks we've completed so far. Strange, but true.

Because I finally got the second coat of paint on all of the cabinet frames, we were able to put things back in the cabinets. And hey, we put the basement door back on the hinges! Victories.

Then, because my dad was coming into town (he's here!), we CLEANED. Imagine that.

We are about thisclose to being able to start spray painting some cabinet doors, people. I.am.psyched.

Here are how things look with the pendant light and a few of the under-cabinet lights lit up. I'll have to try to take some more pics one of these evenings to better depict the ambiance. :)

What's up next? Well, we're actually going to try to give ourselves a little bit of a break this week while my dad is here. Turn down the pressure to get things done. Relax a little more. We want to tackle some smaller projects if we can, but overall, we're going to try to take things easier than we have been. As much as we want to get things D-O-N-E, it's probably good to cut ourselves a little slack.

More to come.