Home Improvements Update

There was a little Weekend Warrior action in my kitchen over the past couple of weekends. A couple weeks ago my Uncle Steve cut and installed the molding on the tops of my cabinets. I was suppose to help, but he certainly didn't need it. In fact, I had bought extra because I was sure that if I did it there would be mistakes. Not my Uncle Steve... he calculated each cut and it all installed perfectly. Thank you Uncle Steve! Also a big thank you to my Aunt Jill for coming along and bringing lunch!

This past weekend I spiced up the back splash with some tile. It's amazing how a little texture, pattern and color spiff up the place. My trusty tiling coworker and neighbor, Tom, helped me out with this one. It's the first time both of us tiled "on the point" so we had to do quite a bit more thinking and lots of cuts. I'm glad we went that route though--because it definitely adds more interest. Tom had to endure quite a bit of "nit picking" but he was a trooper and let me be boss "e". Thank you Tom! I'm sure I would STILL be doing this project if it weren't for your help.

We had a rough start with some mechanical problems and I had to do some drywall repair after taking off the previous Silestone partial back splash. I can attest to the durability and strength of Silestone. It took quite a few hammer wacks to get it to break. So my good intentions of starting to tile on Saturday morning turned into late Saturday afternoon. Tom and I had to stick a tile on the wall just to feel like we accomplished something. Sunday we cruised and got the whole back wall and some of the side wall done. We finished it up on Monday and this morning I grouted it and put most of the outlet cover back on.

Not including our time, both the cabinet moldings and the tile were about $700 for materials. After I take all the molding back my Uncle Steve didn't use it will be about $650. So for not alot of money, I'm really happy with the result.

Next up... cork flooring in my spare bedroom to hide the disappointing contracted out cement acid stain. NO Thank You's are going out to Syntec Concrete Coatings for that. The only thing they did was reaffirm that I can usually complete my own home improvements and do a better job. Cork was my plan B and learning more about it--I think it should have been my plan A (By the way eD--I bought the material from Floorshop.com which I learned about from your blog).

AND after cork flooring... I suppose I better start on the spare bathroom that has been gutted. I've been using it as a closet for all my tools.