Well, what do you think? 🙂
More kitchen photos
6
Well, what do you think? 🙂
Tag Archives: kitchen
Fun with my kitchen
While Rand is off gallivanting about the UK, my mom and dad came up to Buffalo to help do some work in our kitchen. Our main goal? To get rid of this:
I hate wallpaper. I curse the man who invented wallpaper. And this? Barf. It looks it should have been in someone’s guest bathroom in 1986.
Here are a few other “before” pix of the kitchen:
This light was hanging above the kitchen table. Not really my style. I think the pink/blue flower motif was supposed to match the wallpaper. And I’m not entirely sure the bulb was supposed to be hanging down like that.
This is not to demonstrate what a mess the countertop was, but to give somewhat of an idea of the rose counters, white cabinets, and ugly, ugly wallpaper combo. Oh, and you can see a wee bit of the blue valance above the kitchen window, too.
Just a close-up of the cabinets.
The last person who lived here was obsessed with white. I really want to replace this white sink…and while the faucet looks pretty, it is not at all practical. Because it’s so high up, every time you use the sink, water splashes *everywhere*.
While I was at work on Friday, my parents began stripping wallpaper. My dad made a trip to the hardware store, where he learned that there is special primer for painting over wallpaper. Score! No more stripping.
Walls have been primed, and we begin edging.
Pulled out the fridge to paint behind it, and I was amused by the way the molding just stopped six inches short of the corner.
Same area, after paint. This, obviously, is the color I chose. It’s sort of a rosy chocolate color.
We’re finished now, and my parents have headed out. I’ll post some “after” pictures once I put a few finishing touches on, maybe later on today.
Money, money, money
I’m finding myself wanting a lot of things these days, and having trouble deciding what is worth the money and what isn’t.
As I already mentioned, I’m still waffling over this whole gym membership/Wii thing. I know I need to start getting active, and I just don’t know what the best thing (for me) is. I suspect that whatever I choose is going to involve spending some money.
I think we need a new water heater. We cannot take two consecutive showers without running out of hot water, and the tank takes a LONG time to recover. Our home is entirely electric–there is no gas line into the house. I am aware that gas hot water heaters are more efficient than electric ones, but that’s just not an option. I have no way of knowing how old the hot water heater is, but from the little research I’ve done in the past couple of days, it does not appear that what we have is very efficient at all. (It’s a 40-gallon tank with an FHR of 32, and the energy efficiency is terrible.) I really have no idea what it will cost to replace/install a water heater, nor do I have any idea what we need.
While both of our cars are currently running fine, we recognize that we should probably plan ahead for replacing at least one of them.
Our laptops are also both aging. Rand’s seems to be giving him more trouble than mine is giving me.
We’re both finding ourselves mildly strapped for cash since the holidays and our stay in NYC…nothing we can’t handle, of course, but it means this month is probably not the best time to be spending oodles of cash. Tell me that as I’m enviously eying tickets for both Rent and Mamma Mia at Shea’s this month/next month. Not to mention how desperately I want to shop for some new clothes/shoes. And I’m not even going to get into the whole iPhone thing…
And looking around the house? Don’t even get me started. Very soon, I’m going to be posting some pictures of my kitchen…at the very least, we WILL be tearing down wallpaper and painting in the near future. More on that to come.
So yeah, this is what I’ve been spending my weekend thinking about. I shouldn’t complain too much–I know that we’re in a very good position compared to a lot of people right now. (On the other hand, while I’m hopeful, I have no guarantee that I will have a job in September…)
Ah well. I’m off…got to buy groceries and eat dinner before doing some lesson planning this evening. Any advice on the water heater thing would be welcome!