Renovation - Kitchen 30%

I've been working on some of the cabinet face trim and started cranking out doors and shelves... even though not all the cabinets are in place. I figure if I get the base cabinets in it would help me take care of some other details and then I could order my countertop which has a two week lead time and I'm throwing a party in 2-1/2 weeks! Yikes!!! So slowly but surely I'm trying to keep my head in the endless construction phase even though things keep popping up one day after another drawing my attention further from making any progress.


But this Sunday I finally got to spend more than an hour on it... 11 hours to be precise. I patched the ceiling, taped it out and threw some mud on it. After sanding and repeating the mud it didn't look totally horrible. The ceiling was in bad shape to begin and after removing the bulkhead and the ceiling light fixtures (surprisingly they were helping to hold my ceiling flat against the rafters) the ceiling sagged. It didn't help that my ceiling is 1" of plaster and has been trying to hold itself up to my rafters for 46 years either. So I threw a few screws at it and pulled it tighter to the rafters. I then got a premade textured paint and rolled it on in small segments evening it out with the previous segments. Surprisingly it is a very forgiving material and actually hid a lot of the defects of my ceiling. The paint is still wet and patchy in the pic below.



After I let it dry I began to install my low voltage monorail track lighting. It didn't work at first. I used my volt meter to look at the voltage running through my wires. 120V going into the transformer?... check. 12V comming out of the transformer?... negative! Actually it read something like 1V so yea not quite enough to power my (5) 20watt halogens. So I had it replaced and it worked like a charm. Voila! Let there be light!!! Not too shabby I must say.



I got word back from Lowes regarding my countertop design... they are not very flexible so I had to scratch my super awesome details and ordered it straight up... I'll make some modifications when it gets here (grin). I also had the wonderful surprise of finding out that the past 2 people quoted me incorrectly and it was actually $5 more per linear foot. Luckily my kitchen is quite small still.

Next steps are to hang my finished doors, install the shelving, paint under the uppers and install a couple undercabinet lights.