Kitchen

Our first project was the kitchen (such a simple word, but every time I type it it takes me three tries to get the capital K out and the "c" in there...not sure why). Anyway. The original appliances were probably 100 years older than the home (built in 1990). Also, by the sticky consistency of slime spread over each of them, I'm pretty sure previous owners used them as fly traps. 

Likewise, the green linoleum wanted badly for replacement. 


So we bought new appliance. And we bought new linoleum. Who knew installing these comforts would really take four days?! Of course, we wouldn't pay someone to do such simple tasks! :)


So, the oven was first. Eating from a microwave for 2 weeks isn't as fun as I thought it would be. So I set to work installing the oven. Weirdly enough the old on had been hard-wired into the wall (so there was no outlet back there, just the chord from the wall attaching right into the old stove). The guys who sold us the new stove said we HAD to get a 4-prong chord and outlet, 'cause it was way safer. But, come to find out, the wiring installed in 1990, only provided three wires for hooking up a stove: two hots and a neutral. 

No ground...so that had us a little worried. Would our house burn down? Would the new stove require more electricity than the old and would that trip the breaker all the time? Or cause who knows what other problems?


So, while we were pondering this dilemma, I thought it would be a great idea to get the new floor in before Jaron started school and before we got the appliances in...since we were stuck at that point anyway. After a bit of debate, I won. :)


We hurked the dishwasher to the dump pile and the new refrigerator (which was much simpler to install) into the living room. Did you know you can just plug those things in anywhere? Ours has now been stationed and functioning there in the living room since Thursday. 


Open floor. Now all we had to do was install the new linoleum. Easy, right? It's just a sticker.


FALSE: 3 hours measuring floor and creating a one-piece, 14' x 19' pattern, 1 hour meticulously cutting along said pattern on new linoleum, 5 hours scraping old linoleum off plywood, 3 hours sanding old glue off ply wood (best ab workout ever!), 1 hour sweeping sweeping sweeping sawdust, 30 min. patching gouges in the plywood (caused by scraping old linoleum), 2 hour dry time. Sweep again. ah!

making our pattern

scraping glue off plywood

more scraping

Then, finally, we had to go to Lowes AGAIN to get just the right trowels for spreading the new glue. Then we had to trim the new floor to make it fit exactly. And ultimately we actually did lay the glue. It was much more tricky that I thought to roll up half the floor for gluing, due to lots of little extra cut outs for the pantry, dishwasher, stove, and garage walk-way. We only tore it in a few places.  :S

But, by 11:00 p.m. on Saturday we had forced out the last air-bubble from underneath our brand-new, hard-earned Kitchen floor!

now back to those appliances...