Betwixt Sanding & Painting

Still chugging away in my little kitchen makeover.  I've not got very far yet, but the work involved to get this far has made me muscle sore.  I thought I'd share my progress, such as it is, so far.  This is what the cupboards looked like at the beginning ...

A set of dated oak cupboards, some of which have lost a good deal of finish from wear and tear.  We toyed around with lots of ideas for this (for far too many years).  I'm tired of waiting for a change, however, and have just accepted there will be no new cupboards forthcoming at this time.  I decided I might as well just paint them and give the kitchen a fresh look.  Below is the facing wall of cupboards:

I've since removed all the cupboard doors and made a map of the doors and labelled them all.  My husband was impressed.  Some of the doors are just slightly different in size I noticed, so why bother fussing with all that later.  Marking them as to their original position will take out the guess work later ... you know, when I'm zonked and fed up with the entire ordeal and just want them screwed back in place!

Thankfully, with my daughter back in university (and she promised she wouldn't be back for three weeks!), we've been able to utilize her room as a storage locker.  I keep the door closed so the pooch doesn't go in and "investigate" (ie. sniff and lick!) my wooden cutting boards etc. 

My daughter's room now looks like this ...

She would kill me if she knew how we use her room in her absence!

... and my kitchen looks like this ...

Yes, I know, the spice cupboard will be emptied prior to painting ;)

All the framework has been sanded, screw holes filled and sanded again, and everything washed clean inside and out!  The sanding and washing were the worst parts, and my shoulder took a beating yesterday in my splurge to get past this point and onto painting.

The doors are stacked and waiting for someone? ... yeah, probably me ... to sand them all down in preparation for the painting.  I wanted to get the framework finished first, and then we can move some of the dishes and food back into the cupboards.  Hopefully I can sand the doors outside to save us from any more super-fine dust.  Even though it snowed yesterday, there'll hopefully still be a few more chances of good weather this weekend.  

While all this is going on, I see my Christmas cactus is blooming profusely, in the other side of the kitchen.  I just love the cactus against the now blue kitchen walls.  It just shows up so well!

It really needs to have its own table to sit on so that the branches can droop down gracefully and they wouldn't get broken off.  It loses the effect sitting on top of the breadbox.  The poor thing is shifted all around the kitchen when we need to use the table or whatever it is it's sitting on at the moment. Something more to think about after my current projects are finished in the kitchen.

Surprisingly, in between bouts of sanding, wiping up more dust, and hunting for dishes in the storage locker, I've also worked on a small cowl in the evenings.  My daughter requested a thick cowl to wear to "keep me warm while waiting for the bus".  Last year's deep freeze has made believers of university students to things like scarves, hats and mitts!  I found some pure Shetland chunky wool in Mom's stash, and combined a cable pattern, altered it to knit in the round and came up with this:

She had shown me one that one of her roommates had, and I fashioned it to be the same style.  It should be super warm, but I'm a little worried that she may not like the itchy pure wool.  It seemed soft enough when I felt the ball of yarn, but when I knit it up and put it on, it seemed scratchy even to me (and I love pure wool scarves). I knit a double layer so that it can be worn folded over ... extra warmth!!  The section that's folded down the inside is just 4 x 4 ribbing.  I've named it the "Polar Vortex Cowl" and one day I might even write up a pattern.  But for now, all you're going to see is this photo.

Oh yes!  And this is the kitchen window (below) where we can see my neighbour ;)  We were surprised one day when they covered their gazebo with this huge ugly brown tarp for winter.  I don't understand it, as it completely covers their kitchen sliding door onto the deck, and also the sliding door from their bedroom window ... two rooms now blocked with no view!  As ugly as it is, it does offer a huge amount of privacy for us ... and the dancer.  And now we can only imagine the dance routines that happen inside that gazebo ... ha ha!

That's it for me for today.  I'll hopefully get the primer coat on those frames this afternoon.  I have to visit my dad tomorrow as I've been away from him for three weeks! I took two weekends "off" to spend time with my own little family (and always feel guilty one way or the other).  Last time I visited, Dad slept his way through my entire time with him, and I felt quite defeated.  I seriously wondered if the staff has been sedating him again (something we were not aware was happening when he first arrived there). Things with Dad's nursing home are not quite as rosy as was made out in the beginning.  That could be a whole other post in itself, and maybe one day I'll write it.  It's a difficult topic for me to write about as I feel it ends up being a black moody post full of complaints and dark thoughts.  

Anyway, time is ticking as I keep coming back to write a little more on this post.  Time to hit "publish" and share with you all :)

Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

Wendy