16 Month Update

Does anyone even read this blog anymore? Well, in the last 16 months, we've been raising a baby girl named Cathleya. Somehow, when there's free time, we've paver stoned our driveway and got rid of our hot tub. The basement lost its whales and should be getting a make over this summer. When I find time to upload pictures, I will. Thanks for waiting this long to get any new info. Hopefully the next entry won't tale 16 months to write.

The latest addition to the house...

Took the better part of a year, and Melissa did most of the work, but here she is. :)



Building a family is all part of building a home.

moving on...

enough with the baby stuff. :) for updates on how she is, check melissa's blog. if you're interested in the kitchen,...

we'll show you the prep work!

with cabinetry was torn out, dad made use of the opportunity by fixing the wiring that was originally using the old cabinetry to hide behind. we cut holes into the drywall to hide existing wiring and prepped the area for new appliances.

working with wires

while dad worked with the electricity, i decided to make better use of my time by verifying measurements and making room for the cabinetry by cutting existing baseboards down to accommodate some of the cabinetry supports.

it's always in the hardest place to work in.

so the rest of the prep work was really not worth photographing (and melissa shouldn't be sucking up the paint fumes anyway). it was priming and painting... 4 coats of primer. and 2 coats of paint. the drywall (original drywall mind you) kept sucking up the primer leaving a shadow of the old water spots and stains previously left. this behr stuff is supposed to repel mold and moisture so we're putting it to the test here. anyway, after a week of paining you get this:

purty in't it?

next episode, WE BUILD!

Since you've all been so patient...

... and I don't feel like writing another kitchen entry just yet (I'm obviously more excited about junior), I'll indulge you with more pictures.

First of all... if you mouse over the image below, you'll get a hint of what you've been looking at. The blue circles are cross sections of the legs from the knees on down, and the red are the thighs and buttocks. See it now? Think of it like the baby is sitting on a photocopier. ;)


We know what you're thinking... because I thought it too. But no. You forget that boys gonads don't... drop; i guess is the best term... until a little later. The white areas you see are the formation of "labia." So almost ALL of you were wrong! The ones who guessed twins, one boy one girl, were half right! ;)

So everyone, please say hello to our baby girl!

She looks like she's smiling? doesn't she?

a foot

an enlarged version of said foot

junior's profile

We interrupt this episode of "How to build a kitchen," for...

a survey of sorts...

What's your guess? Boy or Girl?


We'll post the answer on Friday. HAPPY GUESSING! :)

p.s. extra credit: guess the name!

a sledgehammer would have just been irresponsible

DEMOLITION. i wish we could have, but alas, we wanted to keep the drywall (and what we could salvage of the wood) intact. mom and dad came up from murrieta both to see melissa (they had just found out about the little one) and to help us with anything we needed fixed in the house. we didn't tell them we were re-doing the whole kitchen until they got here. HA! they got bamboozled! :)

check out the wall cabinets that my dad's trying to pry off. It took us FOREVER to try to figure out how there were connected to the wall. thus taking almost half a day just to get them out.

just the beginning

the countertop, drawers, and doors were easy enough to take off. there were also 2 modular cabinets that the old owner inserted at the far left of what you see below. it's the ORIGINAL cabinetry that we had trouble taking out. this stuff was nailed right into the subfloor and studs so there was no chance of trying to take this out in one piece. bummer. i wanted to move it downstairs.

nailed to the wall AND covered with a quarter inch layer of plywood.

the plywood (mentioned up top) actually put me in a little bit of a dilemma. at the time i was under the delusion that we'd be able to take the whole unit out in one piece but the valves would definitely get in the way of this objective. there wasn't a good way to cut into the plywood without damaging the drywall or studs behind it. SO... i took to shredding the stuff with a wood chisel and a hammer.

hmmm... remove the hardware... or shred the plywood?" width="414">
looks ugly, but we were able to pull the plywood off without having to turn off the water :)

subfloor? must have been original stuff." height="500" width="375">
after finding out it was pointless to remove the whole unit, we took it apart piece by piece.


ahh... it's gone.

next chapter: prep work

Kitchen in a box... several boxes.

when we last left our heroes they just got news they were pregnant and set a goal to complete various improvements to the hobbit-hole before junior arrives. the melissa was promised a new kitchen as her valentines day present... so begun project 1.

first order of business was window shopping and planning out what was needed and how things were going to be oriented... a task that I conveniently left to the receiver of the new kitchen. we got new Maytag appliances to match the newer refrigerator we already have including: a new stove, since the old one required that we use a match or one of those bbq lighters to ignite the range, a microwave hood/fan, since... well we didn't have one, AND a dishwarsher, because we didn't have one (unless you count me... and that dishwasher is tired of dishwashing).

might have be OK with just new appliances... but why stop there?

since we're the doityourselver types, we went ikea with the new cabinets. hey... it's cheap and everything you need is right there. i know it's pressboard but we don't plan on being here our WHOLE lives. :) with the baby on the way, that's one less room!

how to fit a whole kitchen in the back of your rav 4