floor is nearly done!

You have to pass it on when you have met the best!

     Our painter was by far the most skilled, most polite, most thorough painter I have ever seen.  Now this is coming from a gal (me) who is married to an ex-professional painter who had his own painting company for 5 years (til the bottom dropped out in the early 80's economy).  I was the painter's helper on many occasions so we have both seen good painting.
      But, we're older now and we can afford to hire the work done, so we did.  Both my husband and I stood with our mouth gaping as we watched a real pro paint our entire upstairs.  The prep work was the most impressive.  He moved furniture, taped off and cleaned until I was embarrassed.  He said, "I tell people I'm really just a glorified cleaner!"   Then he painted PERFECTLY - no runs, no drips in a few hours.  I thought we were done but NO -- He sands his primer, re-cleans, sands the first coats, re-cleans and then put on the final paint coat.  Now our job wasn't just an easy one color situation.   We love white, flat paint ceilings (it hides any errors from the sheet rockers).  So he had to cut around the entire ceiling with the wall color and I thought my husband was going to cry at the perfection of his cut line - and the ceiling looks flawless: smooth as a babies bottom!
   So here is the shameless plug for a talented painter:  Cody of "Cottonwood Craftsman" out of Salt Lake City, Utah.  If you are interested in him, send a comment and I'll give you his phone number!

quick kitchen update:

Sheetrock!  It's all mudded and sanded and ready for paint to start tomorrow!  Doesn't the room look incredibly small without anything in it!  I sure hope it finishes off easily - this is getting old!

Small but Significant Progress Towards the French Bistro Kitchen

So...  we have all the electrics done.  A lot of wires had to be moved when we removed the soffits!  And of course plugs were moved and wires fished through walls and such.  That's all done!  The plumber has OK'd everything so all he has to do is re-hook up when the cabinets are placed in.
  The drywaller is coming tomorrow to start putting the room back together.  When he has re-sheetrocked and mudded, then we can paint.
   When painting is done then we can lay the floor tiles (my beautiful black and white checkerboard squares).

The cabinets will be done before Feb. 14th.  They are red oak (a lighter color) in the kitchen but the dining room will have one wall with large drawers in a red cherrywood color underneath a counter (a white Corian countertop like the kitchen) and then my beautiful Early Federal Hutch (with double S shaped glass in front - picture to the left) can sit on top of the Corian counter and ontop of the similarly stained drawers underneath.   This color will give the dining area a slightly different look.  Remember, the dining area will have the ox-blood red chairs with bistro tables. 

The other end of this room is a work room/library also with red oak cabinets. So the contrast of the redder cherry or mahogany color in between the lighter oak will break the room up nicely, yet tie them together.


Included pictures are a sneak peak of my JennAir range, and the hood (we had to hang it to get the hole made for the vent outside).  The hood came immediately back down for the dry-waller tomorrow!