Upper Cabinets Part 1

 **Yes, our blog is still under construction.  I won't bore you with the details, but Wix (the platform we've been hosting our blog on) has been melting down and not allowing me to upload blogs so we started using Blogger but it's missing the "email notification" feature that Wix had, so we are trying out some workarounds.  Until then, we are trying to make due, sorry for the workarounds!**

Anyway, back to the good stuff.  Last week we took the week off from blogging, not because we weren't working on the house (let's be real, we're ALWAYS working on the house), but because the work isn't really exciting.  Yes, the CHANGES are exciting, but the process is all tiny details, small fixes, and layers and layers of paint.  But, Scott has finally deemed the kitchen ceiling finished! Let's take a walk down memory lane to see the transformation, shall we?

Here was the ceiling with the soffit (bulkhead? I still don't know).  Originally the ceiling had plastic panels creating a dome covering the fluorescent lights, but several were broken, and most were discolored, so we took them down right away, exposing the (ahem..) gorgeous lights underneath:

In the last two photos you can see how low the soffits came down compared to the vaulted ceiling (only 9 ft) in the dining room. 

Several weeks ago we tore out the soffits, leaving us with this:

Then came the patched drywall:

Followed by the new drywall over the whole ceiling:

And finally, lots and lots of filling, sanding, priming, and painting:

No, the kitchen still isn't clean, ha! But look at that smooth ceiling! Don't mind the temporary light, the new one is on back order until mid-March so it'll do for now. 

We still have plans to do a coffered ceiling but the price of wood right now is a pretty extreme and the coffer is a "nice to have", so we are focusing on the "need to haves" like upper cabinets.  My "pantry" has been a couple of laundry baskets in the guest room for many weeks now.  

While Scott Worked on the ceiling I cut, routed, sanded, primed, and painted the trim for around the window opening in the kitchen. Scott helped by using the nail gun to put the trim pieces together as that's far from my favorite part.  

Look at the transformation just on this one wall in our kitchen:

The top photo is now (ignore the mess!). This was a solid wall that once actually had the fridge on it, but we moved the fridge across the kitchen, giving space for more cabinets/counters and the awesome bar-top opening into the front room. 

After the trim was up, filled, caulked, and painted we worked on solving a bit of our pantry problem by starting to build the upper cabinets.

Scott had drawn up some beautiful plans that highlighted some differences between the uppers and the lowers we built before, specifically the need for an extra "rabbet" that will hold the back panel of the cabinet, which you can see in the plans, second drawing on the right side of the first photo:

Here's what the rabbet looked like in real life:

This is a sideways picture of the bottom of the cabinet.  The "L" shape on the left side actually creates a lip that will hold the back panel of the cabinet.  Just trust me, it's very "finished" looking in person.  It's gorgeous!

Speaking of gorgeous, here's a photo of the two cabinet boxes assembled, awaiting their frames and doors:

Sunday we turned our attention not to house projects, but to the boat.  The boat has been in the water since we moved into this house, which is hard on a boat unless it's had the bottom painted (ours has not).  It is getting serviced this week so for the first time in over a year Padre and Scott pulled the boat out of the water.  It's difficult to tell what you're looking at, but the entire bottom of the boat is covered in muscles and barnacles, hundreds of thousands of them:

Padre and Scott power washed and scraped but are no where close to removing them all, this will be a long project, for sure.  I used a shovel and scooped about 3 gallons of muscles off the ground and dumped them back into the canal (likely they'll be fish food, but it's better than them just dying on the driveway).

The good news about having the boat out is that we'll get it serviced, and now we KNOW what's waiting for us under the water line. Part of our concern was just the unknown of how bad it might be.  It's not great, but the boat will survive to sail another day. 

In between the boat cleaning this week we are hoping to get the upper cabinets done so we have somewhere to store our food that isn't in a laundry basket on the floor when a friend comes to visit us in two weeks! Fingers crossed!