Picking up the Pace

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone! Sorry for not sending an update in a while. With the holidays, having time off work and the kitchen cabinets arriving the day after Christmas we've been in turbo mode to get things ready. We've had 3 inspections in the last couple weeks and it's starting to feel like things are really moving along.

We finished up the electrical and all the other odds and ends and called for an inspection on Wednesday the 19th. This was the BIG inspection that checks all the framing, electrical, plumbing, gas and HVAC. We had one main issue come up in the inspection: in a few places, the guy who did our waste and vent lines for us took the 2" cast iron vent pipe through the 2x4 framing in a load-bearing wall. Having a hole this large significantly lowers the bearing capacity of the stud and the inspector called it out. Fortunately, this didn't hold us up. The inspector said that he could verify that the problem had been resolved when he came out for our next inspection.

We scheduled the insulation inspection for Christmas eve which gave us the weekend to get the insulation installed as well as have the plumber fix the issue with the vent pipes. I had some good help that weekend. Stacie's brother was in town for Christmas and he helped me get all the insulation installed. It was pretty miserable doing the ceiling insulation; working above your head with little fiberglass particles constantly raining down on you. My grandpa and dad were also around and they were a huge help in making a dump run and restocking us with firewood. Anyway, we got everything done and passed the insulation inspection and we were getting closer to being ready for the kitchen cabinets.

The rest of Christmas eve and Christmas day we spent with family at my parents and grand-parents houses. It was a good time with family and quite a joy watching the girls open their presents.

Then it was back to work the next day with a lot of help from my grandpa. We first needed to move the washer and dryer to the garage and take out the wall between the laundry room and the new kitchen. This didn't take too long since we had already prepared space for it in the garage and we weren't actually hooking anything up. Then we needed to get the drywall over to the kitchen. This involved getting it from the new bedroom where it was stacked, out the window and around the house to the new kitchen. We were just getting ready to start hanging drywall when the kitchen cabinets arrived. Obviously, we weren't quite ready, so we had them stacked on the patio. We had a drywall inspection for the kitchen scheduled for Friday so we could hopefully start putting the cabinets up after that. My grandpa and I spent the rest of the day getting all the ceiling pieces of drywall up, which were the hardest.

Thursday and Friday morning was spent adding blocking between the studs in the kitchen to attach the cabinets to and then finishing getting all the walls covered with drywall. The inspection went well and we spent the rest of the day getting the kitchen drywall taped up. This had to be done before cabinets could be installed and my grandpa was coming again the next day to help start hanging them.

Saturday we started hanging kitchen cabinets! Boy were we glad for the blocking - it would have been a pain to locate each stud and mount the screws directly in them. We got all of the wall cabinets up that day. The first few went pretty slowly as we figured everything out, but by the end of the day we were moving along really well.

Monday we needed to get the laundry hooked up again so we could have some clean clothes for 2008. We got that taken care of only to find out that the dryer wasn't heating up. I rechecked all the connections and everything seemed to be hooked up and working so I figured it must be an internal issue. By the time I figured out how to get the machine apart so I could see if it everything inside appeared to be working properly, it was working properly. Go figure.

Tuesday was spent installing the base cabinets. I didn't get them all in, but the kitchen is definitely starting to take shape. When you stand in the middle of it you can really see what it's going to be like - and it's going to be night and day compared to what we have now!

Sorry this update has been so long, but we've made a lot of progress and I needed to use a lot of words so I could fit a lot of really cool pictures! Thanks for all your help, support and interest.