Day 59 April 14

It’s Sunday so guess what? That’s right, church followed by hardware store run. It just wouldn’t be a Sunday without the two. This trip to Home Depot was a big one though because we finally purchased our counter top!! I think we finally made the decision because the day before I asked David how long it would take for the counter tops to come in and he said probably 3 weeks and I almost cried. We are sooooo close and fatigue is starting to set in so any extra time was making me feel sad. So we buckled down and just picked one! Last big purchase…CHECK! Man that felt good. We were told we would receive a call later in the week to schedule an appointment for someone to come out and make a template.

For your viewing pleasure :o) 

When we came home it was cabinet time again, and David was determined for it to be the last. We brought the single 18” base cabinet into the mudroom to meet up with the larger cabinet David had built yesterday. They were leveled, attached to each other, then attached to the wall. To make sure we had space for the doors of the base cabinet and pantry to open freely, we had a space that needed filled on the left side. There would also need to be a filler on the right side to make up for empty space that the cabinet didn’t take up. David snapped his fingers and POOF! There were fillers! Ha! David wishes it was that easy. He actually did a great job using our supplies from the store to create a seamless transition of the cabinets.

Now for the pantry cabinets. We had two 24” cabinets that were 12” deep, and then two 18” cabinets that were about 30” deep. The 24” would be perfect and require no modifications, but then there were the 18”. They were custom built to fill the space on our angled wall, but for our design we needed to cut them to 12” deep to align with the other cabinets. We measured, cut, rebuilt, and then brought it inside to a surprise. The cabinet was about 6” taller than the other ones. We’re idiots. Didn’t even think of it. DUH! Fatigue brain is setting in. What’s funny is that I even said while we were carrying it in, “man, this one is smaller but feels heavier.” As we were setting it into place David was talking about it being made of a better quality wood or something like that, and then we looked up. Haha! It was actually pretty humorous. We talked about cutting off the top and jerry rigging a door, or keeping it as is, or moving it around, but in the end we figured something out. As I was taking off the doors to get it ready to be secured to the last cabinet, I stepped back and realized, “hey, that doesn’t look half bad”. I was a little hesitant at first how the top jutted up, but when you take off the doors and make it just shelves, it made for a nice accent piece, I guess that’s what you could call it :o). We got the last cabinet in and we were pretty excited, it looked really nice! Especially in my head when I’m picturing the shelves filled with cookbooks and cake pedestals. Now there are a few more details to be ironed out. First, the one cabinet never had the two top doors, well it did at one time but were removed and we’ve never found them. With the middle cabinet being open I would prefer a symmetrical look for the other two cabinets. So we’ve started an internet search for two oak doors. Second, since we’re keeping the middle cabinet open we need to add a couple of strips of finished wood to give the front of the pantry a more refined and polished look.

With the cabinets in, now we just had to decide on what we’re going to do with the counter top. Originally I was thinking a wood cutting board look when we were going to paint the cabinets white, but when I opted out of painting them it would just be too much wood. So then we were thinking of continuing our kitchen counter top into the mudroom, but considering it will mainly be used for storage space and wouldn’t really be a place for cutting or extreme hot and cold, we couldn’t justify the high cost of a nice material. So when we figured we could go cheap, laminate it is! We were going to go with one of those pre-made standard sizes you can find off the shelves, but with our weird spots that jut out we’re thinking we’ll need to have a template made. So close, so close, so close! Another productive weekend on record.