timelines are no fun

We have officially reached a terrifying point where we have TEN days left to finish up our work on the house. Reason is, in 11 days we fly back to the northwoods and when we return on July 24 we have one week left of our lease--meaning we need to move asap. Considering we haven't even packed one box yet, we need that week to pack and move. So...10 days. We've done a crazy amount of work in the past month but have a few major things left to do.

Lately, we've been tackling the final chore in the house: the kitchen! We planned on bumping out the old base cabinets about 4" so that they'd be a standard depth and we could install a dishwasher and use our new countertop w/out having to get it specially made. We began this task last weekend, and realized that it was a near impossibility. After a few panic attacks, and the help of some housewarming gifts from family, we decided to make a Home Depot run and buy new base cabinets. So...new base cabinets were purchased on Sunday and picked up in 2 chunks--one chunk on Friday night w/ our Uhaul. We also picked up the floor tile and the new countertop at this time. Saturday we got a call that our other chunk was in, so back to Lewiston.

In between the 2 Lewiston trips, we did a MAJOR chore of cleaning out the garage. The garage had become our dumping ground and had all old drapes, carpeting, padding, etc etc from the house. The garage also was full of other crap b/c we made a deal with the devil (aka estate sale guy) and for FREE got all of the contents of the garage--which meant good things like rakes and ladders, and gross things like dead mice, 50 year old lawn chemicals, and oodles and oodles and OODLES of junk. We're pretty sure they saved everything, it was pretty insane. Once we started cleaning we just unearthed more and more and more. We started the cleaning on Saturday morning and filled the entire 14 foot Uhaul. We got to the dump around 3pm and it felt really really good to get rid of all that crap. It was an incredibly filthy job though, and also exhausting. We had to get the truck weighed before and after in order to pay, and turns out we had THREE-THOUSAND POUNDS of garbage. So, in the span of a morning and afternoon, Jeff and I moved 3000 lbs of crap twice. We were so so so tired after that it was crazy. We got back to the house and gave the remaining stuff in the garage a good clenaing and now have a very lovely garage. For some really unusual reason we didn't take before and after pics, but do have some pics from the landfill which are kind of fun:

Notice the front-end loader pushing all of our garbage onto a conveyer belt--pretty slick. Also notice all the dust particles in the air--yuck.


Thumbs up to garbage! This is about 1/4 of the way through.


Jeff's arms after the journey. He is NOT that tan. We both took showers and left huge dirt rings in the tub--pretty nasty.


So, that was Saturday. Today began the day of kitchen. We spent all day getting the base cabinets in. It was pretty tricky getting them level and square as nothing in our house is level or square. But, there they are--they're in.

The beginnings: notice no cabinets.


Cabinets on the move:


And the end result of today. The new dishwasher is just sort of hanging out there, we need to hook all plumbing up still...but it looks cool.



Alrighty then, that's been our life lately. Get up, work, come home, eat, go to house, work, sleep, repeat. Vacation will be lovely.

The current timeline:

Monday: countertops on, sink in (but not plumbed in)
Tuesday: plumbing and garbage disposal
Wednesday: 4th of July, beer, fireworks, hopefully a day off if we're lucky
Thursday: current temp predicted is 101!!! Ack. Plan is to lay the kitchen floor, but we'll see how the heat goes.
Friday: floors
Saturday & Sunday: buff and revarnish living/dining/bedroom floors (we're not redoing them, just lightly sanding and revarnishing)
Monday: electrician comes, puts fan and outlet in bathroom, wires up dishwasher and disposal
Tuesday, Wednesday: probably do all the stuff that didn't actually happen according to schedule.
Thursday: fly to green bay. get ride to UP. sleep deeply.

So yeah, we've been busy. And so it goes.... looking very forward to vacation.