Weekend of Labor Part 2: Walls Schmalls

When the last post was done, the Homestead looked like this.

That was all Saturday work. We took it easy-ish on Sunday and sat around a bit, then boyfriend went to work on mowing the yard (which is more like an enormous field) and I knocked out a story for work. 

The mower kept breaking and eventually he gave up, but not without finding this guy.

I said it looked like something out of Alice in Wonderland, boyfriend laughed, but his sister agreed. 

We're pretty confident it's a silk moth and nothing to worry about, but I haven't seen him since. 

I think we actually cooked that night and watched one of the Redbox movies or what I call the "train show" on Netflix. It's "Hell on Wheels" and it's actually pretty good though I was very unhappy with the ending of the last episode available on Netflix. 

We bailed on running Monday morning, but got lots of errands done. We finally got some "for now" curtains for the bedroom. Before we just had old blankets and sheets hanging from the curtain rails. I was excited to find my favorite shampoo brand on sale at buy one get one half price, so I bought four. 

I watched a girly movie that boyfriend watched part of with me. "The Five Year Engagement" was funny, but kind of long. Though we joked that when we get around to getting married, maybe we should plan it like they finally do in the end. 

Then, it was on to work.

This was the kitchen when we started. The plan was to basically knock out that wall you see so we could make a big open counter and then shorten the cabinets on top and mirror them on their backside. 

We took down the cabinets and discovered how much the previous homeowners liked to match their paint color to the sinks/tubs/etc. It would be more impressive if their color schemes weren't kind of awful, or at least nothing I want to keep.

That's right. It's yellow. And so is the kitchen sink. 

I did a lot of sawing the sheetrock or whatever the heck that stuff was between the dropped down ceiling that I want to keep and the wall we were kicking out. Oh my gosh it was hard. I got to punch some wall pieces out to and that was fun until it started to hurt. Guess I need to do more pushups.

We had to pull the stove out and disconnect a bunch of stuff. And also discover that the stove top vent had insulation in it, making it a giant fire hazard, but we're getting rid of that anyway. I've got my sights set on a very cool, very expensive oven I found at Home Depot. I'm saving up for that and a copper farm sink that might end up being this one from Signature Hardware. 

As we took everything apart, we decided we don't want to put the cabinets back so we're reworking the plan to just have a big open counter with bar seating on the other side. We'll probably keep one corner cabinet where the exterior wall is to allow for a bit of structure and we can make it shelving space on both sides. We're pretty sure we're going with the rustic beam idea for both of the soon to be nonexistent walls to keep some structure and ensure support to the walls, but also to go with the rustic-ish style we're moving toward. 

Not sure yet what material we'll use for the countertops or what I want to do with the cabinets we still have, but that's the fun part. 

Here's what the kitchen looks like now. Except that boyfriend did put the stove back yesterday to make dinner and I got excited about making stovetop popcorn. Because obviously, that's important stuff.