#Stanley90sreno week 4 update: partial kitchen demo, painting trim and doors, and installing stuff

#Stanley90sreno week 4 update: partial kitchen demo, painting trim and doors, and installing stuff

• 11.08.2016

Hoooo boy, things are moving at the #stanley90sreno. Lots of little things, it feels like. At first we did huge stuff, like rip out all the carpet and then texture and paint all the walls, and now we've got several more medium-scale projects going on!

Our goals for the weekend were (completed items crossed out, some things 1/2 done):

• Prime all of the window and door trim (1/2)
• Paint all of the doors and trim (1/2)
• DEEP clean kitchen (1/2)
• Remove extraneous cabinets
• Get out bed, couch, table, kitchen boxes (1/2)
• Put up curtain rods (1/2)
• Hook up washer and dryer (turned out this involved going into the crawlspace to see where the dryer vent was venting!) (1/2)
• Wash windows
• Trim expanded closet shelves
• Install switch plates
• Remove/replace kitchen fluorescent light (what the heck is under there? I want to knooowwww)
• Install replacement light globes
• Pull family room, office, and hall staples 
• Clean and paint family room, office, and hall floors 
• Move in entertainment center stuff

Turns out painting the door/window trim is pretty time-consuming and only my mom and I can do it, so I only spent a few hours (and my mom spent a couple) doing this. I did paint a lot of doors, though. (You may have seen them in my IG stories! And I will be painting more this week!) But, what's done is looking gooooooood. (This is after only one coat!)

Also, we have three rooms of doors (and still a bunch leaned against a wall, with no room to paint them.)

We also started doing some kitchen demo, a side effect of the cleaning, really... there's more mystery in the kitchen than we were hoping for including a dishwasher leak (water under there though the DW hasn't been used in months... scary).

And, as you can see, broken/breaking tiles, a super disgusting wall behind the old range, and multiple layers of floors.

We did remove the old upper cabinets we won't be refinishing--it made the kitchen feel so much more open!

We also put the new appliances into the kitchen and hauled out the old ones. We're obviously not ready to install the new ones, but needed to free up some space in the garage.

We also brought the dining table in!! We don't want to bring in too much stuff while we wait for our flooring to arrive, but we need a surface to use while the kitchen is in disarray.

Also, I still need to get light bulbs for our awesome dining room light fixture so I can put the globes on...

Another big accomplishment, and step toward moving in, was putting up the curtain rods. I know it sounds minor, but we want some privacy before we start living there and I really wanted to get that slightly annoying task done.

However, I bought these plain black ones for a modern look and they only use one screw at each side bracket and were SO easy to install!! And we installed them so high we used the header stud and didn't need to worry about stud-finding or using drywall screws. Also a massive relief. Plus they were very affordable so I ordered like 8 of the same kind! (I also ordered a couple packs of these clips but have yet to install them.)

Big relief to get most of those done! (I can't find most of the curtains we own, or sheets, though, so not all of the windows are covered yet, haha!)

Husband also scraped and removed more staples and painted the floors in the family room and office so we can put a few more things in there (like the couch! Just moved it in Monday night!). He has been working so hard at that. I hate it but he's gotten really into it. He sweeps, vacuums with the shop vac, WASHES on his hands and knees with a big yellow sponge, then paints with a junky roller and extra paint. Then the floors are usable enough for us to maybe live on them while we wait for our laminate. So grateful.

We had thought about moving in after last weekend, but the furnace is still not working, dryer vent is still a little scary, and doors are still being painted (and of course we have very few kitchen amenities) so we decided we'd still be much more comfortable staying at my parents' house for another week :/. BUT we're feeling good! Making progress and learning so much with every little challenge.

Still having fun and loving our house!

But a little tired and overwhelmed.

Phew. Still lots of good stuff to do. Like I said I'll be sharing more IG stories this week as I finish and hang the doors (I cannot wait to see them with the new hardware!!). Also, I'm in shopping mode so I've been searching for rugs, bathroom vanities, even beds! Stay tuned!