Moving Right Along

The kitchen remodeling project is moving right along.

We worked until 10:30 p.m. Monday to finish reassembling the cabinets, installing hardware and paining the ceiling and walls. Tonight, we only worked for a few hours--putting addition coats of the wall color on and more hardware. We should be able to wrap up this portion of the project tomorrow night and start putting all our food and dishes back. WHOO HOO!

It will be great to be able to cook again. We are so sick of fast food from the weekend. Ugh.

I'll post new photos tomorrow. Right now my digital camera batteries are dead.

It's funny: I think we subconsciously picked colors that are a tribute to Hawaii for the kitchen. The walls are the color of the sunset; the cabinets represent the sand; the floor and countertop look like lava rock. What can I say? We're obsessed.

Kitchen Update

We spent Saturday doing prepwork in the kitchen for painting. There was a lot to do, so it was long day.

First, we had to remove all the cabinet doors and drawers (including all the hardware) and clean out all the stuff stored inside them. Then we had to fill all the old hardware holes with wood putty and spackle to prepare them for new hardware. (Our hardware was so old that it is no longer a standard size, so we need to drill new holes.)

As I mentioned, our handyman removed all the wood paneling, fake brick and wallpaper then drywalled to make smooth walls. Well, he wasn't able to sand everything down before he left last week--the mud wasn't completely dry--so we had two walls to finish sanding before we could prime. We also had to remove random nails and hooks, the ceiling fan, door bell, etc. and fill those misc. holes.

While Brandon was doing that, I scraped the existing cabinets where the paint was flaking off and wiped out all the excess dirt. After that and the sanding was done, the kitchen was filled with paint chips and drywall dust, so we had to thoroughly sweep everything before we could put up a coat of primer.

We got almost everything primed last night, but finally threw in the towl around 9:30 p.m. I've included a few photos of all of our cabinet doors, now ready for primer, and the almost-entirely-primed kitchen. I got a little too into painting, can you tell?

Busy, Busy Bee

Life has been a bit of a whirlwind for the past few weeks--both at work and home--so this might be a long post.


When I got back from my conference in Iowa (which was great, by the way), I was thrown right back into a cluster of short deadlines at work. Before I left, I began working with a local video production company to produce a 15-minute video for the UC Cancer Hall of Fame event we hosted on May 9.



The doctor leading the event had asked me to work on the project at the last minute and, although I knew it would be intense, I told him I'd do it. So, aside from day-to-day media activities I couldn't ignore, I exclusively dedicated myself to this project for about two weeks and let the other stuff pile up. That meant when I got back from Iowa, I not only had to work several nights to get the video editing and production wrapped up, I had just a few days to finish about five stories due for our newsletter, among other things.


In the midst of all of this, I was also wrapping up a complicated schedule of interviews and facility tours for a reporter at the Columbus Dispatch who was interested in learning more about the joint cancer program at UC. This is a new--but complicated, somewhat sensitive--initiative at UC. Basically, UC, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center (where our pediatric faculty practice) and University Hospital (our teaching hospital) have committed $60 million to recruit the physicians and researchers we need to boost our cancer program up to a level where we could apply for NCI designation. It's a big task.


On the home front, we're smack dab in the middle of our kitchen remodeling project. The walls are pretty much wrapped up. We will be painting the walls and cabinets this weekend.















We have a lot of prep work to do first, though, including patching the old hardware holes and installing new hardware. I'm including a few photos, including one of our two new cabinets.


Please note that our fridge and dishwasher are in the dining room right now...ugh. I'll post more photos as we go.


We also had a new tree planted last week. We love it! It's a Canadian Red Cherry, which has tiny white flowers in the spring then turns red in early summer.

Our yard is coming together nicely. Brandon is keeping the grass trim and nice, and I spent at least three hours planting my little city garden and plethora of annuals Wednesday night.

Eat your heart out, Bess. We're going to win the garden contest this year!





Last weekend we hosted our moms in Cincinnati for a belated Mother's Day celebration, which was great. It was a beautiful, sunny day and we always enjoy hanging out with our moms. We had a tasty (though slow) lunch at Hyde Park Tavern, then visited the butterfly exhibit at Krohn Conservatory. The day was topped off with homemade berry cobbler and ice cream. YUM.

Still in Iowa

I'm still conferencing in Iowa.

After the day's sessions and social activities, I went outside to the swamp behind the hotel (it's bizarre) and saw two adorable families of baby geese. It was so fun to watch their parents herd them along the edge of the water hunting bugs, then scurry across the water when the other geese approached. It made me think of when I used to sit for hours out in backyard playing with kittens at our house. One summer we had four pregnant female cats how up at our house. As upsetting as it was that the cats weren't spayed, Becca and I enjoyed a summer full of fuzzy little kittens and, fortunately, we found homes for nearly all of them.

I'll be glad to get back to Ohio tomorrow. I miss my little family (which consists mostly of animals), a regular workout routine and balanced meals.

Update

It's been a while since I've updated this, so here's what has been happening:

1) Last weekend, we went to visit Ben, Julie and their new little guy, Jacob, who was born in mid January. They seem to be adjusting well--except Ben still thinks he has the time to brew wine in his garage, mow and mulch his acre-lot, among other things. It was great to catch up with them, and meet Jacob finally. That kid is adorable, though still in a very needy phase.

It's overwhelming to watch new parents. Babies are so incredibly helpless and needy that it seems quite daunting to me. I also don't like the idea of being a mobile milk machine, but I suppose that comes with the "mother" title. :)

2) We've starting remodeling the kitchen! Our handyman came out this past week and stripped all the wallpaper, wood paneling and faux brick off the walls. (WHOO HOO!) He plans to come back this week finish patching the walls so we can start painting. He's also putting in a ceramic floor, installing a new ceiling fan and dimmer switch and a few other things. We'll be doing all the painting and hardware.

Our countertop has been ordered, but unfortunately will not be installed until June 2. We choose to go with a durable--but more affordable--composite material called Simplicity. Our color is hazelnut tweed.

We also cut down the small tree in our backyard that died and had the stump ground out. It will be replaced with a large Red Canandian Cherry tree the week of May 17.

Last night, I caught up with Sara. She's about to tie the knot (June 21) so we talked wedding stuff, which is always fun, and I saw where she'll be living soon. (Steve's house.) Today I had a nice lunch with dad.

Now Brandon is in St. Louis visiting Paul and I'm in Iowa City for a communication conference. I hate traveling without Brandon. It sounds corny, but feel like something isn't quite right when he's not there. It makes me think about what it would be like without him in my life. I'm a pretty independent person, but frankly the idea of Brandon NOT being next to me for the rest of my life makes me sick. I guess that's what happens when you love someone as much as I love him. It fills you up and makes your soul--and existence-feel more complete.

I just wanted a movie called Feast of Love that explored this idea. If you haven't seen it, it's worth a watch.