Better late than never, right?
What? Like you didn’t wear a respirator and protective goggles to all of your 4th of July shindigs.
Sidenote: Is it possible that the guys who prepare and shoot off major fireworks displays do, in fact, wear get-ups like this?
At any rate, the Dude and I did take a break from home improving on the actual 4th, which was super fun. Big thanks to all of our hosts (Jill and Scott, Sam and Laura, Gil and Parky – and Natalie and Will for meeting us for Pig, Round 1) – we had a really great day. We squeezed in as much fun as possible on Sunday because the rest of the weekend was devoted to the Decatur Project. Not that we mind. We are making progress, folks!
But, before I divulge where we now stand in renovationland, a few notes on the last couple of weeks. The name of this post could also be “The Cautionary Tale of Why You Should Never Blog Your Progress Too Soon.”
Two weeks ago, we ripped out our kitchen floor. Not the original linoleum. Nope, the first round of slate that went in. I cried and had to leave the house as it was being torn out. Unfortunately, we got more of a mix of colors of tile than we had anticipated. We also found out the hard way that our kitchen is not a perfect square. It was a horrible, horrible week. We felt so wasteful and so lame for making everyone do everything twice. We also felt broke. Really, really broke. And sad. And confused. Thank goodness we have an amazing contractor who reassured us that everything was going to be alright (which it now is) and that making it right is more important than dwelling on what went wrong (truer words have never been spoken). The new floor is in, it is TIGHT, and it is exactly what I had pictured in my head. Want to see? Here you go:
You love it too? Yay! PS – Wall color is Sherwin Williams Rice Paddy (satin finish). I have a real thing for a green kitchen, what can I say.
Next item: Barkeeper’s Friend. A number of people have told me they ran right out and got some after reading about it on my blog. I love that. (Are you listening, people at Barkeeper’s Friend? You could be my first sponsor!) Full disclaimer: I still love the stuff. I have used it on every piece of hardware in my house and love the results. And, I believe I can credit some of the progress in the bathroom to it. In the interest of being 100% straight with you, though, I will say that when I used it on the bathroom tile and it made the grout lines pristine white again, I think what actually happened is that it cleaned them some and also left a white chalky residue on the grout line. Which means it makes the grout line somewhat cleaner and then covers up the rest. It isn’t a bad fix in some respects. I still say use it – it works really well and better than anything else I tried.
I did up the proverbial ante this weekend and started using a professional grade, toxic-as-hell, bleach-based cleaner, mostly because I started thinking about how germy our tile grout likely was – and I have no idea how well BKF knocks out germs. I used ZEP. It could kill anything (me? the Dude? Maybe, yes), which begins to explain the business-casual hazmat ensemble I am sporting in the pic above. Safety first, so I wore eye goggles, a respirator mask, and plastic gloves. The toxicness is not my favorite thing, but ZEP is a local business and it is still more sustainable to salvage these tiles than to tear them out and start over, right? Right?
Other progress reports:
The dining room is painted – there will be a whole post on this at some point I am sure.
The Dude wore his respirator mask all weekend (his is pink too!) to sand/prep doorways for painting. He is so meticulous it amazes me. He took down a lot of superfluous hardware, patched a lot of holes and cracks, and has been sanding for days. All of our trim is going to look that much better as a result.
WE. HAVE. KITCHEN. CABINETS. They are so gorgeous that they make me want to shout an expletive in the best way possible. I had thought about posting more about them now, but the Dude just yelled from the other room that I have been typing for too long and that I should think about writing two posts, so you’ll have to live with the suspense, I suppose….
Hope everyone had a great 4th!
The Decatur Project 
The paint color looks GORGEOUS with the floor! Love it, Meg! Can’t wait to the see the cabinets.
PS: you probably know this, but, BKF works by “reacting” with the water, so once it dries it is no longer effective. This is difficult to explain via blog comment, remind me next time I see you, I will try to do a better job.
There is something so wonderful about real bleach. Encouraged by seeing a friend use some the other day I bout a bottle at the grocery store. I was furtive, I looked over my shoulder for the sad face of youth accusing in the planet’s decline. but oh the white sheets…
Excuse me.
What I really meant to say was CONGRATULATIONS on all of your achievements. on weathering the floor trauma especially. Glad its over. The new floor looks great and I love your 4th of July get up:) also the garbage knomes you described are very strange and special sounding.
that was me last year on the 4th!! we renovated our house last summer, and so much of what you are describing sounds familiar — the feeling broke, things going wrong, wanting to cry. But now, I love our house. I tried hating it for a while because it was such a pain in the a**, but I can’t help it. I really love it.
Your house is looking beautiful!
Dude, OUR kitchen in our new house is SW Rice Paddy! (We picked out our paint colors.) At first I’d picked something closer to a grass, but after putting it in a bathroom we realized it was too much for a whole kitchen. Love the Rice Paddy! (And LOVE SW – after realizing the two cans we’d bought were not the right color, they replaced them with the Rice Paddy for free!) Now I just can’t wait for our kitchen reno when we’ll get to put in our subway tile.