On the real reason my kitchen is always a mess

When the kitchen island looks like this - it's a sure sign that stuff is going on around the house.

Once we forced ourselves to finish laying the upstairs bathroom tile last week we managed to get over our home project slump and find some motivation to finish projects around here again. Having the pool table moved boosted morale even further and for the first time in about six months I feel confident again that we will finish the house.

We're probably only a week or so away from an official unveiling of the completed upstairs bathroom project -- so let's review a few of the changes that we've made so far:

The 18 x 18 charcoal slate-look tile looks so much better than the water-damaged sheet linoleum. Hmm.. That's the sort of thing that goes without saying, I suppose. We also replaced the standard 3" baseboards with a more decorative, taller (5 1/4") type to dress things up a bit (and to hide the signs of abuse to the lower portion of the walls that resulted from trying to cram huge tiles into such a tiny space. Think: dings, dents, and scrapes.) I kept the original solid brass cabinet pulls and at first spray painted them hammered black which was awful. A couple of light coats of metallic silver spray paint later - and they work much better with the color scheme and the cabinet style, I think.

Then there is the new light fixture. We were almost defeated by this light fixture last night. The box clearly stated that installation would take approximately 25 minutes. It may have taken you 25 minutes to install this light fixture. It took us approximately four hours. At least three hours of that time were taken up by poorly written instructions combined with a total lack of experience. An extra 20 minutes were spent fighting with our Gorilla ladder (so named because it can only be moved by a full-grown Gorilla with ease). We also used about 15 minutes of installation time debating through which window we should toss the new light fixture before giving up and going to bed.


Flashback: This is the bathroom months ago. Floor ripped out.. painting in process. Please note the old light fixture. I was feeling silly at first for replacing a perfectly functional light fixture at a time when we're operating on a pretty tight project budget... Until Dave actually removed said fixture. The old insulation was crispy, black and sooty -- yep - at some point it had caught on fire. We find that sort of thing waaaay too much around the upstairs and now feel pretty sure it won't be a waste of time or money to continue to replace all of the upstairs ceiling lights and check the wiring.

Another flashback: To refresh the memory -- here's a snapshot of what we started with up there. I'm actually pretty excited about getting the after shots of this one.

Left to do: install toilet, paint and install doors & hardware, and touch-up.