Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Kitchen Island

I would like to start off this blog by telling you, "My husband is absolutely and wonderfully amazing!!!" No, I am not just figuring this out, I just wanted to reiterate that fact. Labor Day weekend. We had planned to spend the weekend camping, but due to a lack of pre-planning (I know, can you believe I just said that) all the campgrounds we looked into were full. Therefore we decided to spend a quiet relaxing weekend at home. Boy could things have gone any different. We have been talking about getting new cupboards for our kitchen since we moved in. I especially wanted an island. The kitchen is quite larger than our last one, but it had a huge open space. So I found an old table in the basement and it has been my faux island. After some discussion, we decided to redo the kitchen in phases. Phase number one: The kitchen island. The island will be a main counter with a raised breakfast bar. It will also have a dishwasher in it. I had hoped that it would be ready by time the baby arrived. We himmed and hahhed about ordering everything that by time we did, we didn't think it would get here in time. Well, Friday evening after dinner, Brian decided to call the Home Depot to see if our order had arrived. To his surprise it had showed up that very day. I went off to teach my water aerobics class, Brian and the kids headed to the Home Depot (1/2 hour away in the next town). If you are following now you see why I was super wrong about a quiet relaxing weekend. What is it with us doing projects on holiday weekends? A fence on 4th of July, now this? Saturday morning, to appease his wife and kids, Brian put off starting the project for some canoeing. We had been wanting to go for a long time. So we canoed, the kids swam and we had a picnic lunch. Now - home to work! He spent the afternoon/evening lining up where the island would go, building its wall, installing two outlets and the beginning of the dishwasher drain system. Sunday morning was spent mudding the wall and wiring the junction box in the basement. Then Brian got a friend from down the street to help with the plumbing. The friend showed up at noon and after a long, hard, grueling day (he went home at midnight), they had the plumbing all finished. This included setting up the hot water to the dishwasher and running a drain from it to the sewer system. It sounds really easy, but they had to fight rafters and all sorts of other little hang ups. Not to mention the required beer breaks. Monday morning Brian sanded the wall. It was almost perfect, but he ended up having to put another layer of mud on it. We waited and waited for that to dry. Finally he couldn't take it any longer (watching mud dry is like watching a pot boil, it doesn't work) and we all went out for a walk. Once home, he sanded it down again and then we got to paint it. Next came installing the cupboard and the accent piece next to the dishwasher. Then we attached the counter top. Except for lots of measuring all of that went super easy. So when he went onto the dishwasher something had to go wrong. He hooked up the drain, electricity and then the water and we turned the water on. Oops, we had a leak. Understandably so, it was 10:30 at night and he was a bit tired, he forgot to use his Teflon tape. Once he put the tape on the leak was gone. Yeah!!! After a really busy weekend the island, with dishwasher, is complete. This morning, I had my work cut out for me. There was sheet rock dust all over the main floor of the house. I have been cleaning like a mad woman, but at least I got to run a load of dishes in my new dishwasher!

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