The guys came and installed the Corian countertops and they look amazing. I have to do some touch up on the paint where they scratched it up while putting in the new counters, but not a big deal. Tomorrow the plumbing will be put in and then the kitchen is officially done (except for some can lighting that I plan on putting in and painting the ceiling).

I’ve been working overtime along with the building manager, Dave, to get our new kitchen into place. The first step was to remove the entry closet. I’ve always thought it was much too large in relation to its relative utility. The decision was made to remove the closet to increase counter space and add a pantry.

Next up we removed the most worthless wall ever created in the entire world. I’m not even sure what its purpose was, but you can see we still need to move the electrical switches over to the wall next to the door. That should be taken care of tomorrow evening along with a few new outlets.

After removing the wall we still needed to lower the counter top, which will allow us to put a huge counter top as well as drastically open up the kitchen and living room. We plan on extending the counter top into the living room area to provide a small bar area for eating and entertaining the few guests who come over.

Finally, we did the floor. Dave got me started with a few of my more difficult cuts and a mini tutorial he’d learnt from Thermalchem’s blog on epoxy, and then headed out and left me to my own devices. Before I could get started Brad invited me out to lunch in Madison Park. Once back from lunch I fired up the table saw and started cutting off my fingers – er – putting in the rest of the floor. There are some minor blemishes in the floor that I need to ask Dave about, but overall I think the floor turned out great.

The last two weekends Lauren and I have spent hours upon hours working on the condo. We’ve been painting trim, painting rooms, upgrading switches, outlets and heaters and, on occasion, totally screwing things up. Below are a few of the recent projects with some tasty before and after shots. The first is the one I’m probably proudest of. I ripped out the old and nasty baseboard heater and upgraded it to an wall unit. The second is a before and after shot of our balcony. I started with 20 inch square deck material that I bought from Ikea and, basically, cut it to fit our balcony and then nailed it all together with boards underneath.

By no means is this all that we’ve done the last two weekends. Here is the laundry list of things we have done in the last few weekeneds.

• Painted the guest bedroom “mocha brown”.
• Painted four new interior door slabs only to realize that I had measured two of the doors wrong and I couldn’t hang the other two doors because I was neither equipped with the knowledge or the right tools for the job.
• Put new trim in the guest bedroom.
• Put new switches and outlets in the guest bedroom, our bedroom and the bathroom.
• Painted the window sills in both bedrooms.
• Replaced the baseboard electric heater in the guest bedroom.
• Put in a faux deck on our balcony.
• Painted over the nasty yellow in the living room with a clay color.

This coming week our contractor is coming to put in all new interior doors, which will need to be painted and trimmed. After that is done we plan on painting and putting new closet doors up in both of the bedrooms.

At that point we will have hit a wall. The other projects from that point forward will need to be handled by professionals. We plan on gutting the kitchen and the bathroom and then, the final touch, putting in all new carpet.

We moved into our new condo about two weeks ago. Yesterday, Lauren attempted to wash the first load of dishes in the dish washer. I say attempted because the dishes came out looking the same way they went in. So, big surprise, today was spent at Home Depot looking at new appliances for the condo.

The condo’s stove is roughly the same age as I am and, as already stated, the dish washer is broken. The fridge is in pretty good shape, but you might as well go the whole nine yards and get everything upgraded. I’m pretty excided that the new fridge has an ice maker built in. Guess I’ll be calling Dad for pointers on installing a water hose from the sink to the fridge.

To the left is a picture of the living room in the new place. Click on it to see a few pictures of the new place. The new place is much larger than our old place and we’re settling in nicely. This week I go to replace all of the outlets and switches in the new place. A few weeks from now I’ll be putting in all new trim as well.

Once we sell our old place we’ll be looking to upgrade our kitchen. After that comes the bathroom and carpet. Once all of that is done we’ll be pretty happy with the place. The kitchen is a complete catastrophe and the linoleum has to go ASAP. Can’t wait!