more counter talk

Over the past few days we've been working on wrapping up several small projects (well, more like smaller parts of bigger projects).

The guest room walls finally have their second coat of paint, which allowed us to rearrange some furniture - I'll post some pictures in the next few days.

The kitchen cabinets and counters are now fully installed. The drawers and doors that are missing are still waiting for paint and for their hardware to get cleaned up and installed. We used the scraps of the butcher block to make shelves which will get installed to the left of the small cabinet. Although the shelves will get mounted to the two uppers, we'll use some antique corbels underneath for looks - but along with gluing up and waterloxing the shelves we need to strip the corbels, so it may be a while before we get them up.

In front of the sad excuse for a window will go another, larger hutch top. This window was a casement, but as of now has no hardware, has been plastered into the frame, and is both broken and spray-painted a classy brown (faux stained glass look anyone?). Strangely enough, freeing that window from the 70's cabinetry that was mounted on top of it was the first thing we did within hours of closing on the house. Long term kitchen plans (i.e. custom cabinetry) will include restoring this window, and building a twin to the left of the chimney - for now, we cleaned up the worst of it, added proper trim, and will replace the glass before hiding it again behind a free standing hutch top. We're using the hutch top not so much because we need the storage (our kitchen is huge) but because we don't want to break up the set of vintage cabinets. The hole to the right of the stove is awaiting a dishwasher (and for plumbing to be run to said dishwasher), that cabinet is just the freestanding dishwasher cabinet from Ikea (we bought it on clearance, I don't think they carry it any longer). Although we had money set aside for this, the schoolhouse trumps all, so I may be handwashing dishes well into the next decade.

as it stands today

the hutch top that will
go in front of the window

before: the corner in question is to the left

Tomorrow I'll start the waterlox on that last counter, and in two weeks (5 coats + cure time) I'll have countertops - which aside from the island, I haven't had in a year. Exciting!

And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention what happened in Boston today. I lived there for a number of years (I bought and restored my first house there when I was 22, a little Victorian), and it's one of my favorite places on the planet. It's incredibly heartbreaking, and my thoughts go out to everyone affected . . .