Check this out!

Sorry it's been a few days; lots happening with the kitchen and poor Mr. R is out with a stomach bug too. But I have a lot of pictures for you, and you'll see we have made a ton of progress over the past few days. We almost have a real kitchen again!

For those of you just dying to know about the outcome of  "Wall or Ceiling 2010", I had them paint it the color of the ceiling, lived with it for a day, and then painted it the color of the wall. I'm glad I did so, and even C agrees that it does look good. In the end, I don't think we could have gone wrong either way, and with the cabinets up it is really barely noticeable anyway!




The first way we had it painted--looked funny to me.



How I repainted it.

 Cabinets were delivered on Friday morning, and it was so exciting to see them in person! The colors are just beautiful, and I must say I love me some full-extension/soft-close drawers and doors. We also have some crazy cool blind corner pullouts, so no more sending Mr. R into the caves to retrieve lost storage lids.


Pull-out trays inside the blind corners.

We did have one little adjustment that entails a cabinet being remade, but it will be fixed on Monday and as of tonight our countertop templating is still on for Thursday morning. Unfortunately our new windows aren't here yet, which may cause a problem in measuring for the stone window sills; hopefully it won't be an issue as the window sizes are not changing.

Sink wall with space for the dishwasher. Drawer fronts on the right will be delivered soon.

Hood is not yet up (waiting for backsplash first). Look at all my lovely drawers!

Oven cabinet and cooktop cabinet. Loving that blue next to the chimney!

The pantry--top has adjustable shelves, the bottom has two rollouts.

This is the cabinet that needs to be replaced---you can see on the right it is too short.

Sorry about the ladders-- this is the fridge enclosure.

Bottom of the snack station; refrigerator/freezer drawers go in the middle. The top half will be delivered soon.

I know some people recommend organizing your new kitchen while you are planning it, so everything has a place and there is a place for everything, but I had trouble visualizing like that. So now that I am finally able to see the cabinets and play around with them, I am trying to decide what should go where. For example, the blue wall cabinets are so huge, we already know that things we rarely use should go on the top shelves of those. (I'm looking for a folding step stool already.) I'm sure figuring out the rest will be trial and error. While there were many things we disliked about how things were arranged in the old kitchen, we did get used to it. So we have a whole new, and hopefully better, learning curve ahead.

Primed and ready!

A big high five today---we are actually slightly ahead of schedule on the painting! C and I thought we would have to tackle the entire job over the weekend, but today the guys were ready to start! I believe we will most likely still have homework (as they used to say on Trading Spaces)---probably trim work, and also work in the laundry room, as it is not as high a priority as the kitchen walls which need to be ready for Monday.

Cabinets were due today, but anyone on the East Coast can tell you it was not a good day for driving or loading/unloading fine cabinetry; we had major rain for most of the day. So Kevin will be here tomorrow morning instead. Appliances were delivered yesterday, but left in boxes so as not to get dirty or have squirrels nesting in them. We are all stunned at the height of the fridge, having never owned a built-in or counter-depth model before. Lucky for the kids they will have their own fridge drawer and won't need assistance to reach their juice boxes. :-)

We are still waiting on our new windows, which need to go in before templating as we are having window sills made; our backsplash (3rd time's the charm?); and the return of the heating crew to finish the radiant heat under the rest of the floor. But everything is really coming together now!

Photos of today's progress:


Looks more like a real room with the walls primed!



The ceiling tilt is not so noticeable when everything is white.



The chimney has been cleaned and prepped for a matte sealant.

Still some work to be done in here!

I'm sure I will have another post tomorrow--maybe a peek at cabinets?

Question: Is this part of the wall or the ceiling?

I know, I know, I said I wouldn't be writing again so soon, but we have a question and we'd like your opinions. C and I bought most of our paint today in preparation for the weekend (forgot the ceiling paint, oops), and when we got home I realized I didn't know what we were doing with the new slant over the sink.

New slanty part.

Close-up.

So is this part of the wall, or part of the ceiling? Do we paint it with the white ceiling paint, or the BM Powell Buff wall color?

I can see arguments for both. It is ceiling because it breaks from the flat sink wall, and also because it will have a pendant hanging from it.

Ceiling, right?

But you could also make a case for wall, because if you follow the ceiling height around the rest of the room, it hits at the TOP of the slanty part, as shown below:

Ah, so it's wall?

I'm so confused!

If we paint the slanty part the color of the ceiling, it will make the sink wall look very short in comparison to the other walls in the room....if we paint it wall color we will retain the feeling of height/tall walls, but it also may be difficult to get a good straight line across the top of the ceiling where slant and ceiling meet. Not that anything in this room is really straight, but we'd want it to look good.

I suppose another possibility is to paint the ceiling the same color as the walls, but I think that would be too dark.

So what do you say--should it be white like the ceiling or Buff like the walls?