A Weekend in Review

Hello my friends! How was your weekend? I hope you all had a most wonderful one! First and foremost, thank you again for your sweet & thoughtful comments in my last post regarding my dad. Your kind words mean more to me than you'll ever know, and they are always so greatly appreciated! :) These past few weeks have been a roller coaster of a ride, but we are all hanging in there. Thank you all for your continued support!

Well I had both a relaxing & an eventful weekend. Kind of contradictory, I know. But I did manage to work on some projects, and then enjoy the other half of the weekend spending some good quality time with my family. On Saturday, I decided that it was finally time to work on painting the kitchen cabinets white. Actually, I should say "prepping," because we haven't exactly painted them quite yet!

{we took down the cabinet doors in the above photo to sand, in case you're wondering why they're missing}
If you will recall, our modest sized kitchen has maple colored cabinets, black granite counter tops and an L-shaped breakfast bar that I one day {not anytime soon} hope to remove, and then add a size appropriate island. But since the only thing we can afford at this point in terms of redoing the kitchen, is to repaint the cabinets white - that is what our next project will be. :)

{the drapes above are from the previous owners, & I only plan to change it after this project is completed}
If this is your first time visiting my blog, I have decided to post all of my "before" photos in "black & white" instead of color, since I tend to work on projects in "sections" as I post, and I thought it would be too anti-climatic to post the "befores" in color. That way, when I am ready to reveal it later, I can do so in "color!" :)

By the way, excuse the fact the that all the doors to the upper cabinets have been removed. I forgot to take the "before" shots, so I ended up taking the pics after we removed the doors! I'm going to work on the top cabinets first because there are more bottom drawers and cabinets than the top {not shown yet in the above pics}, so I figured it would be less overwhelming for me to work on it in sections.

We are also having some hideous kitchen plumbing problems! I'm only going to post that one picture above to spare you the disgusting details. Needless to say, our kitchen sink is out of commission and I have been washing dishes in my hallway bathroom! Ugh, so not fun!!! I think we are going to need a plumber to come in & fix this issue since my hubby put a 12 ft drain auger to see if he could clear the pipes, but to no avail! We really don't want to have to pay a plumber to come in, so we shall see what my hubby can do to try & fix this issue, as I'm not sure how long I can last without a kitchen sink!

While my hubby worked on fixing the plumbing issue, I started on the cabinet prep. Here I am using a hand held sanding block to smooth out the larger surface areas. Then I tore out pieces of sanding paper to work on the grooves of the cabinets by hand. And pay no mind to the patchy areas throughout the grass in the background. Our fixer upper is a constant work in progress, which also includes both our front and backyards! :) Then it started to rain, so I put everything away and worked on the rest of it on Sunday.

This air compressor came in handy when installing our baseboards, when it was used with a nail gun...

...and then it also came in handy when I used the tip of the compressor to remove the fine dust particles within the grooves. Then I dusted it with a lightly damp rag, and then went over the cabinet pieces again with an electric circular sander, using extra fine sand paper!

You are probably wondering why I'm not just "lightly sanding" our cabinets. Well, I am going all out with the prep because the cabinets were very glossy & grainy to begin with, and I really wanted to scuff up the surface so that the primer & paint will be less likely to peel. I also wanted to "smooth" out the surface of the cabinets to remove most of the graininess. I know it won't be "perfect," but I feel that if I prep the cabinets really well, then the "painting part" will be more of a breeze. Then I used a tack cloth to finally remove the rest of the fine dust particles. The next step now is to prime these, hopefully I can get that done this week, as I still need to sand the upper cabinets in the actual kitchen.

Now on a completely different note, last Friday night my eldest son attended his first High School Homecoming Formal! It was such an exciting time for him and I am lucky that he seems to make new friends pretty easy - especially since the move to a new school, which I know can be stressful for many kids.

The guys: can you guess which one of the above teenagers is mine? :) There were 10 couples that rode in a limo en route to the Formal, and I can't believe 20 kids fit in here - but they all did!

So the next morning, my son chats with me during breakfast and tells me that all of his friends thought I was his sister! Well, I surely wasn't expecting that - so that made my day considering I had been feeling rather tired & drained out lately! :)

So that is pretty much my weekend in review. How did you all spend your weekend? Was it also eventful, or did you manage to sit back & relax? Until next time, enjoy your new week!

XO's,
Jessie

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