Kitchen Progress

LD had a little too much fun with the sledge hammer.  Our interesting mosaic backsplash, which people either loved or were puzzled by, is now history.  We still need to relocate the switch for the garbage disposal, and replace all the drywall before they can make a template for the countertops.  

Ordering the kitchen countertops really motivated us to complete work on the kitchen cabinet stripping and sanding.  We managed to get all of the cabinets in the kitchen island stripped and sanded yesterday.  LD and I finally got the stripping down to a science.  Well, LD got it down to a science.  It turned out that I was using a lot more stripper than I had too.  LD set me straight, and taught me that less is better.  Who knew?  

Early this morning we started cleaning a sticky mystery substance (we think it is old molasses or maple syrup) that was spilled who knows how long ago.  It was all over the sides of two cabinets and throughout the drawer glides.  The mystery substance corroded some of the drawer glides, which we thought about replacing, but we discovered that we could remove most of the rust with the Dremel grinder attachment.  

While removing the old handles, we stripped several screws.  We could have bought new screws, but we never really cared about the handles because they are actually small-we kept scraping our nails on the wood everytime.  So we drove around looking looking for new cabinet handles.  After finding the handles, we decided to spend a couple hours at the movies to see the new Star Trek movie (which is pretty good by the way).   

You know, it is very difficult to put anything on the newly stripped/sanded cabinets.  After all that work we are afraid of not achieving the vision we have in our heads.  We thought we could stain them today.  Unfortunately, we are still experimenting with the right application technique (penetration time, wood conditioner vs no conditioner, etc).  Can we achieve the right color with the stain that we currently have?  

So we are finally working on warp speed (sorry couldn't resist, just came back from watching Star Trek).