The Continual Kitchen Saga...

This weekend was our first chilly weekend with pretty darn cold nights. On Friday night Mike decided to camp out in the backyard with the boys. I opted out because..well the house was alot warmer! We made a fire in our fire ring, roasted marshmallows, and the boys settled in their sleeping bags about 9pm. At 3am I heard the back door open and got up to see that Mike has with both boys. He said he was too cold and the boys were just too wiggly to get any sleep :)

(I just have to add here that I absolutely love our dreamy backyard. The fact that we are 2 miles from downtown and still have this great yard with another 30 acres of green space behind it is so great! After 10 years of renting it is truly a blessing to have such a great place.)



The next morning we dropped the boys off to Mike's sister who kept them for the day so we could continue our kitchen remodel Odyssey. It is quite an odyssey at that! Because of the budget constraints we can't just run out and buy everything needed to get it done. I look carefully for good deals, Mike occasionally dumpster dives at construction sites for materials, or we build things instead of buying them. Really as much as it is a budget issue its also just who Mike and I are. We have always had ingenuity and like to do projects on our own and take on the challenge. Anyhow, the kitchen is coming along. We found the wall color paint (the color is a secret to you all for now :). I thought we'd be spending the full amount for the paint because I was very specific but we ended up finding exactly what I wanted for $1 on the oops table. So far we have spent $41 of our $500 budget and have all the paint we need to paint the walls, cabinets, and floor, we have the hardwood flooring, a new door, an island, and hardware for the doors. All for $41!!! We still have crown molding to get as well as, nails to install the hardwood, a new light fixture, task lighting under the cabinets, a butcher block top for our kitchen island, tile back splash, and a couple of other things here and there.
I hope we can have it all done by Christmas. Our biggest challenge is going to be installing the hardwood and tiling the back splash. Anyone wanna come and help?
Today is a day for cleaning and catching up from a whirlwind weekend. Lots of laundry and piles of stuff on counter tops to sort through!