This Week's Food Waste
None
We're in Day 28 of our remodel and the eating out continues. Consequently, when you don't eat at home much or go to the grocery store much, it's pretty easy to not waste your food. I'm looking forward to eating at home again with the potential of more food waste. :)
This Week's True Food Confessions
The end of our construction is in sight. I hope. The counter tops are scheduled to be installed next week and after that, the sink and other appliances can be hooked up. Then the the move back in can begin and that should be interesting. I'd like to believe that I cull stuff from my kitchen fairly often and don't have a lot of extra things. However, we lost a couple of cabinets during this process. We'll see if I can make it all fit.
In the meantime, we continue to eat/live in the basement with a microwave and no prep space. This was the week of popcorn, apples, and peanut butter sandwiches. That was our go-to when we couldn't figure out what we were going to eat. The special night was when had some pretty good chicken soup from the freezer. However, the majority of the time we ate out for dinner and had our favorites of Chinese, pizza, and Subway. Luckily these provided good leftovers.
Until next time...
Wow, it's taken a loooong time to get to that stage! Not quite sure how it could be but we have those identical cabinet doors in our kitchen, so now I'm imagining what our kitchen and dining room would look like with that nice flooring. At the moment we've got the original floorboards sanded, which means it gets a bit chilly in the winter. We're locked in one of those marital stalemates where I refuse to have carpet because I know it would get yucky in 5 minutes and hubby insists that good looking wood flooring would be too expensive. So eanwhile I'll just drool over your flooring instead...
ReplyDeleteWe lived in a rental with carpeting in the kitchen -- oh what a mess! Imagine eggs broken on the floor (and they do break on carpeting), or an oil jug dripping. It was so hard to keep clean. I had to rent a steam cleaner every 6 months, just to keep the kitchen floor clean. To warm the floor under feet, throw rugs that can be laundered is a better bet, or those sponge-y mats that can be wiped off would also be good.
DeleteI've seen some really nice-looking painted wood floors, too, if new flooring is out of the budget. You just paint the existing flooring, then add colorful throw rugs.
When just looking at putting the same cabinets back, it seems like it shouldn't be taking so long. They've been doing a lot stuff like demolition, painting, new trim, new window, leveling of the floors, new floor laid in some areas and refinishing floors in other areas, new cabinet lighting, new vents,new overhead lighting, new cabinet trim, and who knows what else. I do know that the workers (2-3) were here at 7:30 am every morning and worked hard doing quality work.
DeleteHave you priced out the floors? I know the last time we put flooring down and could only have vinyl because of the uneveness of the subfloor, good vinyl was more expensive than hardwood.
Good luck. We've been thinking about redoing the floors and getting new counter tops for a few years now. We don't exactly agree on what needs to be done either.
Yea! On the home stretch! You've had a nice break from daily meal prep, so coming back to it may actually be pleasant! A little break now and then is a good thing!
ReplyDeleteI'm wondering if that will be the case. I'll be so happy to have a kitchen back, that I might actually like cooking. We'll see.
DeleteFun reading! I can relate to everyone's comments. We are on the home stretch of our kitchen but I think it's going to start to drag. Most of the kitchen is installed (hallelujah!) but our fridge is still by our front door (classy, I know!) and probably won't be moved till after we paint the kitchen which won't be till after Thanksgiving. However, we have our sink hooked up (not having that has been the hardest thing to deal with), cabinetry in, countertops, etc., and I've started putting stuff in cupboards. I completely feel for you, Live and Learn, with eating in the basement. It gets old quickly.
ReplyDeleteWe had carpeting in our kitchen when we first moved. The people who lived here before us must have fried food constantly--we couldn't get that nasty stuff clean. When my son was a toddler crawling around in shorts, his legs would get dirty--that was all it took to convince my husband to get new flooring (we have vinyl and I love it--the look of tile but not hard or cold).
Hang in there! I love hearing your updates.
Wow, your work is going really fast. I'm amazed. I wasn't sure about having wood floors in the kitchen and was going to go with some kind of tile or vinyl, but others convinced me that wood floors would be a good thing. We have rather small rooms that make the space rather chopped up. Having the same floor throughout is supposed to make it flow better and seem bigger. Also, I talked with several people that have wood floors in their kitchen that are happy with them. So far, I like the look of them, we'll see if they will wear as well as they're supposed to.
DeleteI am curious about how your work is going also, Kris. Do you have any pictures?
I think because we weren't doing major changes to the electrical system and no changes to plumbing, they have been able to speed through this. Between the holiday coming up and needing to get odds and ends done, we won't be done till sometime in December. Truthfully I would love hardwood floors, but that wasn't in the budget a few years ago when we did our kitchen floor and we already had dark wood cabinets in the kitchen and I didn't want our kitchen to seem more cavelike. I have gone with antique white cupboards with a glaze and wood floors would really set it off, but alas, it isn't to be. So now I'm trying to pick out a wall color which adds enough contrast to the cabinets to set them off and warm up the space a little--it's tricky to not go too light or too dark--basically I've narrowed it down to shades of khaki. My house is smallish and the living room/dining area/kitchen flow into each other so the colors have to flow for all 3 areas. Especially since I don't want to repaint the living room (a very soft buttercup yellow--but my sofa/chair are in khaki tones so I think khaki walls in the kitchen and dining area will work). Is that more info than you wanted to know?? :) I don't typically share pictures online--I'm a little freaky about privacy--but thanks for asking.
DeleteAre you getting weary of all the decision-making?
I'm totally weary of the decision making. I'm not sure that I like all of the decisions we've made so far, but I'm holding out until the counter tops are in and we live with the whole thing for a while. Some people have a vision in their head of what the whole thing will look like when it's done. I don't. I just know after it's done if I like it or not. Not always the best way to operate. However, I do know that I like it better than what was there before. My husband is thrilled with the under cabinet lighting and I am happy with the range hood that now vents outside.
DeleteYou did not give me too much information. Too bad that we don't live closer (or maybe we do live close) so we could share the decision making with each other.
You have the Grand Rapids video as one of your posts--we live north of there but I work in Grand Rapids, so when I discovered that you posted on it (I just started reading your blog recently) I got a kick out of it.
DeleteI did a LOT of looking through magazines/online to get ideas for our kitchen. I like light--because we are so close to Lake Michigan, we get a lot of lake effect clouds/rain/snow here and I find I need to combat the gloominess. I like the lightness of white kitchens and the agelessness of them so I knew that's what I wanted. Our cabinets are glazed to make them look a little more antiqued and I thought they would be darker, so that really threw me off when they were installed (we had to downscale our cabinetry choices to stay within budget--I think my original choice was darker). Now I'm at the opposite end of what I was before we got them--I need to warm up our kitchen instead of brighten it up. I'm debating on different khaki wall shades. :) It's the little things that have thrown me--who knew that a pendant light over the sink would be stressful? But I suddenly came to the realization that if I do a window treatment there I would need something that blended in instead of clashing ...
I'm sure you'll be happy with the decisions you have made! It's been nice reading your blog through this whole process and to know I'm not alone in construction-mania!
When I see some of the choices I have made, I am really happy. However, with others, I'm not so sure. This project has grown from a couple of structural things into something much bigger, so we didn't do a lot of looking and thinking about what we wanted. However, the end is in sight, so I think we just need to live with things a while to see how we really like it. Mostly now, I questioning some of the paint colors. None of it's bad, but just doesn't blend from one room to another like I think it should. However, they installed the countertops this morning, and they look great.
DeleteHappy Thanksgiving and good luck with it all.
It looks gorgeous! Really!
ReplyDeleteI've always liked wood on any kind, so I like it too.
DeleteWow, it's looking really good :) Good luck for the home stretch!
ReplyDeleteThank goodness Thanksgiving dinner (this Thursday) is not scheduled at my house.
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