Front Yard Do-Over (Again)

August 2008: This is the front yard the day we bought the farmhouse. To the left there is a holly tree, which we immediately removed since: A. I don’t like giant holly trees and B. It had a huge hole in the trunk and would be weak anyway. On the right was an odd little tree that resembled a ginkgo. It was not a ginkgo, but we did end up removing it for some reason or other. Normally, we don’t take down trees at all, but…

March 2009: Where the front garden all began. You can see that we fenced it in and were in the process of doing raised beds. There are lettuces, broccoli, onions, and cabbages planted here. What you may also see is that we did not remove the grass, which turned out to be a VERY BAD decision. I assure you, you will NOT WIN when battling Bermuda grass. Do yourself a favor, save your sanity and START WITH A BLANK SLATE.

May 2009: You can see that the lettuces and broccoli are done. The cabbages, as you might notice, are completely eaten up by cabbageworms. Hurrah. Not. Also note that we had a nice watering system that misted all of the beds. Also note that the grass is growing at a rapid pace.

January 2011: If you read my yearly reflections, you will know that I am always saying to live simply and not take on more than you can handle. Well, here I am, not following my own advice. Even though my front garden was crazy with grass and not well kept, I decided to plow up and landscape even MORE yard! Go me!

August 2012: Three years of battling Bermuda grass has driven us to the breaking point. It has invaded my beds and even grown into some of the wood. We have the tractor in place to remove the raised beds and we ended up burning them. It was a happy/sad day!

Here is the front space that we created back in 2011. I seeded it with a wildflower mix and a poppy mix. See the lovely grapevine on the fence? Something ate its roots not long after this photo was taken and the entire plant collapsed in two days. I still weep for that grapevine. This is early summer, 2013.

These beds were also seeded with wildflowers. You can see my onion patch here, too.

June, 2013: You can see that the grasses have been trying to grow back. Also, note the blackberry bush in the lower left corner. It honestly made the nastiest blackberries I have ever had the displeasure of eating. They had to be dead ripe to get any sugary taste, and even then, it left your mouth with a bitter taste. Gag. It was labeled as Rosborough. Nope, never again. I finally tore it out in 2016.

Shpring has shprung! This is April 2014. I love the wildflowers, but they are just hiding the fact that I don’t really want to deal with the yard at this point. Trust me, there are a ton of grasses in there that are already seeding…

April 2015, from our bedroom window. Love love love me some irises!

A favorite orange variety, given to me by an old schoolmate! I adore this iris and it is very hardy. I divided it this year (2016), so I hope for a LOT more! In the background, you can see oregano, then Lamb’s Ears, and….more irises!

Spring 2015:

Looking awfully grassy out there….No garden beds 😦

June 2016: The Brown-eyed Susans and Indian blanketflowers were absolutely insane this year. True, I had no real gardening beds (other than those right by the house), but I couldn’t tear these out…yet.

September 2016: The breaking point that has built up for eight long years! It’s time to do this dadgum yard RIGHT! One of the major issues was that it was never properly leveled, so you were always walking up or down a slope. After a few hours’ deliberation and some quick sketches, Jason and I decided to do this right so we NEVER HAVE TO RE-DO THIS AGAIN. Time for the “reno”!

First, you take a backhoe:

And you start to work on the leveling. It is really impossible to tell here, but that little scrape-out is about 3 foot tall or so! And then…

You raze that sucker and get it as flat as a pancake! Notice, almost no weeds…Praise the Lord!

We left this cornerpost because it supports a big climbing rose I have. The apple tree is actually going to be removed as sadly, it is too blighted to keep. Darn it.

And, welcome to our desert garden!

Now, for this shot, I had to get in the bucket of the backhoe and Jason lifted me up. Did I mention that I HATE heights! Whew. The asparagus bed to the far right was removed and we put it along the newly created arch next to the driveway. I call this garden the “Salad Bowl” because of its shape!

Here you can see that bowl-shape I was talking about. And here we have laid out our beds to run east to west. I can see everything from my front porch! Woohoo!

All my cute little beds…

To keep me from losing my mind, we gathered all the pine straw we could to cover up the sand. I wish you could have seen how much came in through my front door in that first week…yuck. I hate a sandy floor! And you can also see the four ornamental beds I have created in the very front of my house. We used logs from our woods to make the edging. It’s still a work in progress, but I did relocate almost all of my roses to the beds on the left, and then a lot of irises to the bed on the right. The crepe myrtle coming up in the bed was a volunteer. We have more baby crepe myrtles than anyone I’ve ever seen. We have relocated many to the chicken coop and some more to the front yard. This particular one is a nice pink color. I have no clue where it came from!

Sanity has been restored! Here we are in October 2016! It’s pretty amazing because so much has already grown up in the two weeks since I took this picture.The roses have really started filling out, and I planted tons of bulbs and some daylilies.

I hope you enjoyed the tour through time! If you take away anything, just remember that Bermuda grass is the devil and you’d better rip all that hot mess out before you get to planting! And yes, it goes deep underground. Had we done that to begin with, I’d have a really lovely eight year old garden now. Oh well! Live and learn!!!

Until next time!

Buffy

Good morning, dah-links! Just out of curiosity, how old is your oldest chicken?

This is Buffy, the Buff Orpington. Very original name, I know. We bought her with a group of 25 other Buffies in 2009 when we raised them for a friend. So, she is now 7.5 years old. Now I know many people butcher old hens, but you have to realize that Buffy isn’t a hen. At least, SHE doesn’t think so. As a young pullet, she hated to be with the flock. Wherever the flock was, Buffy was not. She stayed as far away from everyone as she possibly could.

One morning, before we had good chicken fences, I heard a knock at the front door. I peered out of the door window. No one was there. Another tiny knock. Again, no one could be seen. Suddenly, at the window, there appeared a little golden chicken head and she knocked on the glass. Of course, we had to let her in at that point. Here was a hen who knew what she wanted in life.

Several times at dusk, when I went to close up the coop, Buffy was missing. I always dreaded the thought of finding handfuls of golden feathers and Buffy bits scattered on the lawn. But no, there she was, roosting in a woodpile. Or on a truck. Or in our shop. Buffy is not one for conventionality.

In March of 2015, she decided she wanted to become a mother. Never before had she wanted to set eggs or even become broody. Mind you, this was at 6 years of age, which is ancient for a chicken. I agreed to let her hatch a single egg to help her achieve her motherhood goal. And a single egg she did hatch! Of course, it turned out to be a rooster (it always is a rooster…), but he did turn out to be gorgeous and she loved mothering him very much. After that, she has yet to become broody again. I guess a single child was all Buffy ever wanted.

Year 8 revisited

October 18, 2016 marks our eighth year of living on the farm. I can hardly believe it. I can hardly believe that I’ve been writing this blog for seven years now. I often wonder if anyone reads it anymore; of course I don’t do it for fame or fortune, but I do hope it gets a little bit of foot traffic!

So, every year, I try to write about things that we’ve learned over the previous twelve months. Usually, I find that it’s the same thing: Keep good fences. Plant what you eat. Live simply. Learn to laugh at your mistakes. 2016 wasn’t much different, and I’m not sure what I will have to add other than telling you that we are seriously cutting down on debt this year. I know I’ve said it in the past, but we really have gotten much more focused in becoming debt-free. One thing that I have fallen in love with is the so-called “No Spend” months. These are months that I choose (almost always a five week month for us since we are paid weekly) and they consist of no-frill spending and only about $100 on groceries. It takes pre-planning and dedication, but at the end of these months, we have found that we are saving an entire paycheck plus some. This extra goes to our debts. Maybe one day I’ll write more about it, but in the meantime, you can get some ideas here. It truly is quite simple, but again, especially in the food department, it does require pre-planning, and meal planning is a lifesaver here.

So, let’s recap the last twelve months with some pictures! Every year, we try to make it to Arkansas. If you have never been, there is a reason it’s known as the Natural State. It is absolutely gorgeous. Miles and miles of countryside to see. Caves, hot springs, mountains, rivers, lakes…Arkansas has it all. We usually go in spring or fall for the best weather, but be forewarned, these seasons also can be very volatile. Tornadoes and flash flooding are not rare occurrences here, so if you do go, be sure to check the weather forecast!

Once place we went last October was Blanchard Springs. The springs themselves are beautiful, but it is also home to the Blanchard Springs caves. I had never been to a cave before. The beauty of it literally brought tears to our eyes!

The river that runs through it all…absolutely breathtaking:

But meanwhile, back on the farm: We caught a hawk! Okay, not true, he caught HIMSELF in our fence while trying to get a chicken. I found him wedged between the chicken wire and the 4 x 4 fencing. Honestly, I thought he was dead. After some very careful manipulation with gloves and a towel, we extracted the little jerk from the fence (he is responsible for all hawk-related chicken deaths over the past year) and we found that he had injured a wing. So, off to the rehabber he went. Although not much larger than a pigeon, this Sharp-shinned hawk ate up about 15 of our birds. They overwinter here. In fact, we’ve already had a hawk attack by one again this fall, so I’m assuming his mate or offspring made it back.

In November, we had the most adorable baby chicks born. Like, EVER. The especially ‘poofy’ one is “Yin”. And yes, we also had a “Yang”. We still have both, although sadly, their beautiful brother died the following spring.

Every year, we go to the Homestead Heritage Fair in Waco. This is an absolute MUST if you haven’t been. I really can’t say enough good things about it! Due to torrential rain, they opened it for another weekend. Typically, it’s the weekend immediately following Thanksgiving. We brought home these baby Ameraucana chicks to add to our flock. I am happy to say that we have all but one a year later. They lay beautiful blue eggs.

February 2016: Because every chicken needs a bonnet:

And Fran needs a bonnet, too:

March: It was a banner year for frogs and toads. We had so many pollywogs at the pond, it was black along the edges. Unfortunately, we also had an equal number of bullfrogs born here. I have no clue what will happen to the other frogs now that we have about 900 million huge bullfrogs.

March also means baby bunnies. Here comes Peter Cottontail!

The lazy flock of Silkies:

I told you the bullfrogs are huge!

Spring also brings out the snakes. This is a copperhead that we relocated. Yes, they are venomous.

This summer brought the most insane number of Indian Blanket flowers I’ve ever seen. These all came up on their own without being reseeded:

And naturally, flowers bring butterflies. We have SO MANY this year!

Summer also brings mulberries! Delicious!

Summer also brings us…TOMATOES!

Because we had two ‘rainy’ years, the crepe myrtles and all things that flower were absolutely stunning this year! I have never seen them bloom like this before.

The front yard in June:

To catch a snake:

And toads. Toads everywhere!!!

Beautiful summer skies of July. We had some very dry months (including this October…ugh), and then some crazy wet ones! That’s East Texas for ya.

Creating a ‘classics’ shelf in my mini-library, complete with a Brussels Griffon look-a-like a la Hobby Lobby:

Ribbon snakes on the farm!

Life is good for this eleven year old Mastiff:

And this eight year old Brussels Griffon:

Well folks, that about wraps up the last year! I’ll post again about the major yard renovation, but it’s time for me to refresh my (very cold) coffee. I hope you enjoyed the farm visit with us!

Stay golden…

Texas: Hotter’n a pot of collards

It’s no secret that in Texas, if you want the weather to change, just wait two minutes. Honestly, it’s a real mixed bag around here. You can walk out in shorts and a tank top that morning, and come back a few hours later in need of a pair of woolen underwear, four layers of clothing, and a full-body zip-up sleeping bag with arm and legholes. But that’s just fall.

In the summer, it is hot. Like…deathly hot. Like…walk into a steaming hot blanket kind of hot. You will hear us say all of the time, “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.” Well, I am here to tell you that it’s both, and it’s horrible. And hint, hint, it gets worse the older you get. I have learned that I need to be inside from about 10:30am until just before sunset. If I can’t do that (and let’s face it, I can’t), then when I AM outside, I’m hugging the treeline to stay in the shadows. It is on days like today that I dream of moving to Colorado, Oregon, Alaska, Maine….pretty much anywhere where my shoes aren’t melting on the pavement and where snow is not a rarity.

Fortunately, there are only a few months that are pretty gross, and our winters are mild. Starting mid-July through September, however, I am ready to live in an igloo and hunt caribou. Or whatever igloo-dwelling people do. I don’t care. I no longer wonder why people take mid-day naps around here and siestas in Mexico. It’s because it is too hot to even manage a decent conversation without wanting to kill or seriously hurt someone. You want to see mayhem? Go check out a line of people waiting for ANYTHING in Texas come July. It ain’t pretty.

BUT, at least earlier this year, we got rain. A ton of rain. Enough to scare you kind of rain. And with a lot of rain, you get a lot of wildflowers. And this year, the crepe myrtle were so beautiful, they literally brought tears to my eyes…I swear I saw a double rainbow and white doves and the American flag in the background as I was taking photos. Really.

So please feel free to live vicariously through my happy photos during the month of May and June. Sadly, everything in my front yard now looks like it has been hit with a blowtorch.

Lipstick & Gizzards

We were watching Jerry Clower one night, and the late and great Mississippi-bred comedian was talking about times when people in the South got together. Oh, there are pea-shellins, corn-huskins, and taffy-pullins, sure. But no one really gets excited about chicken-pluckins. Here’s why:

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times: Broiler chickens are nasty.

I love animals, but broilers AKA meat birds AKA Cornish crosses are just….gross. They can hardly help it, I know, because they were bred to make one thing: chicken nuggets. (Well, other things, too, but “nuggets” is just a funny word.) They eat and then they poop. Continuously. And then they laid in said poop. If you are familiar with chicken poop, it’s obviously gross, but there is no poop like broiler poop. Imagine Old Faithful. Need I say more? Yes, it really is THAT bad. Please see above photo for reference.

Anyway, last fall, my dear friend Big Rig and her husband, PeeDee, brought over a passel of meat birds to send to chicken Jesus in the sky. Big Rig was to the point where so many of us find ourselves with farming: either the chickens had to go or she was moving to a new place where you never had to move a chicken tractor much less see a chicken ever again.

So, because we have chicken processing equipment, they came to our farm and we got everything set up. Now, Big Rig and I haven’t ever done a ‘chicken-pluckin’ together, so this was a whole new experience. You have your cages full of ‘pre-nugget’ AKA live chickens, your ‘killing cones’, a giant pot of boiling water, and then a processing table. Obviously, chickens go in the cones first and that’s where it’s “off with their heads”. But anyway.

Big Rig volunteered to put the first chicken in a cone. They go upside down and their little heads stick out of the bottom of the cone, and their feet out of the top. Ideally, they don’t wriggle around too much, but, this isn’t always the case. As Big Rig went to put the wildly thrashing nugget with legs in the first cone, something terrible happened. Remember the visual of Old Faithful? Yes friends, at the very moment chicken was going IN, something else was coming OUT in a steady stream RIGHT ACROSS BIG RIG’S MOUTH. As I looked up, there was a weird strangling noise and she was wildly gesticulating with her hands, eyes as wide as a turkey platter. Her lips were so pursed, I thought that maybe she had lost them permanently. With arms flailing and loudly throat-screaming, “MMMMMMMGGGGGGGDDDDDKKKKKKKKMMMMMM”, I grabbed a roll of paper towels and threw it at her. PeeDee and Jason had a horrified look on their faces which quickly dissolved into a fit of doubled-over laughter.

It was a day to remember, that’s for sure.

Revenge of the Nuggets.

Then, as if I didn’t get enough of fecal-laced lip balm, when my friend Dubyacee called and said she would have about twenty more nuggets to process, I immediately said, “Yes! Bring them over!” At least I had given myself 6 months to recover.

This day went without any face-painting incidents, but I did learn that I never want to skin a chicken ever again. It was a long, gross, wet, and feathery day, but in the end we had twenty or so little birds in the coolers. The only issue was, I hadn’t bought enough ice. When you are butchering birds, you really need to live next door to an ice factory. I don’t care how much ice you buy, it isn’t enough. You will always, ALWAYS be short by 2 or 3 bags.

So, I got in our truck and drove down to the little general store down the street. Before I got out, I took a look at myself. My mud boots were soaking wet and covered in things we won’t discuss, but that did include feathers. My freebie t-shirt and shorts were sprayed with who-even-knows what. My hair was sweaty and in a tall bun that looked like I had slept in it for two days, not to mention looking like I had grabbed a hold of a bare electrical wire in my sleep. Make-up free, I was the perfect advertisement of how NOT to go out in public. I grabbed my purse and fumbled around in my side pocket. Grabbing my candy red lipstick, I smeared it across my lips. Because, I may be a grubby old chicken processor, but I’ll be danged if I’m going out without my lipstick.

Lipstick & gizzards. Welcome to my life.

So I have this friend named Rachel…and the dog lived.

Today didn’t start out so hot. I didn’t get a chance to get rid of the hawk that’s been plaguing my chicken yard for the past week, despite getting up when it’s still dark outside. I am NOT a morning person. I have been getting up early for two days now with no success. Then my dog faked me out with an untimely death scare. Francesca Buttons isn’t just any dog. She is like our third furry child who pees on the rugs and loves to eat dirt. So basically, a tiny furry toddler. She has a smooshy monkey face and the happiest personality. Here is a photo: She’s the most awesome dog we’ve ever had, and two days ago she started having a sniffly nose, and I didn’t think much about it since she was otherwise fine. Fast forward to this morning, and when I picked her up, she was sneezing so much, she had doggie snot from her nose to her shoulder. Of course, it’s a Saturday and no veterinary offices are open with exception to the emergency clinic, so with a snotty and sneezing dog in one arm and a phone in the other I frantically call Jason to tell him Fran may have contracted something fatal and horrible and I was at fault.

As I drove through town, I was trying to come up with the correct verbiage on how to break Fran’s imminent death to my children (who, of course, are not at home) and simultaneously come up with a proper dog eulogy and burial procedure. (Would it be odd to invite friends? Are they still cloning dogs? Are people who stuff their dog really all that strange?)

I call my friend Rachel while trying not to choke on my words to see if she can bring some wood shavings to my house since I am on the way with a rapidly declining dog to the town 30 minutes away, and I need those shavings because the stupid hawk won’t leave my stupid chickens alone and now everyone has to stay in their way-too-small chicken houses and my poor chickens will be swimming in their own nasty poo thanks to the dumb hawk and I couldn’t make it to the dumb feed store because my dog is dying in a laundry basket in the back seat of my car.

Rachel says, “Sure.”

As we are leaving town, I notice Fran got quiet. I look in the back seat and she looks back at me as if to say, “What? May I help you?” No sneezing, no lolling tongue, no panicking. As I got to thinking about it, I remembered her only having a runny nose out of one nostril. Hmm.

My rusty brain gears get to squealing and then I thought: Maybe she has something shoved up her nostril? Maybe it isn’t the Parvotemperfluenzatella virus? As we are at the final red light just before turning into the clinic, Fran goes into a violent sneezing fit and I turn around. I see an eighth-inch long piece of green protruding from said nostril. OH. MY. GEEZY.

We pull into the emergency clinic parking lot (a 40 minute trip), and I rip open Fran’s door and extract a good one and a half inch long piece of grass from her nose hole. Sigh. SIGH. And, double sigh.

Maybe my dog is as frugal as I am; either way, she saved me an $80 visit by sneezing out a piece of Bahia in the parking lot. I tell this story to tell you: It ain’t been a great morning for me. It was definitely a “Boo-Yay” kind of day, but I hate the stress rollercoaster. I hate it a lot. And mornings aren’t my thing, and neither is this cold yucky weather.

Enter my friend Rachel.

Rachel is my funny, thoughtful, list-wielding, introverted friend who never forgets anything. She is the person responsible for me wearing skirts and cardigans. Yes, so I totally stole her wardrobe ideas

. She loves Anthropologie, good wine, and delicious food. She loves books, musicals, coffee, chickens, and gardens. She can’t stand inefficiency (Pickle, pickle, bun, bun—-inside joke there), large crowds (especially festivals), or people who steal her hand soap.

Actually, the first time I met Rachel, she DID forget something, and that was to order some chinchilla food for me(she worked at a feed store). I think that was the only thing she has forgotten in the ten years I have known her.

Anyway.

So with all that mess going on today, I was feeling low. Just snake-belly low.

Then she brought me an estate sale find. A vintage Neiman Marcus coffee mug covered in……mushrooms. I love mushrooms and I love owls. I now have mugs with both! It is strikingly similar to my other favorite mug: Bonus points for the inside of the mug being a perfect shade of a mushroom cap or perhaps a nice mushroom bisque.

Now today has become a “Boo-Yay-Yay” kind of day thanks to an extracted piece of grass and a dear friend who knows me all-too-well!

Much love to my friend who thinks about me at yard sales and brought a little bit of sunshine to me on this cold and dreary day!

For another post about a shared adoration of owls, mushrooms, and snails, head on over to Rachel’s blog post she wrote last month.

See you later, friends! I’m off to make some nice hot coffee in my ‘shroom mug….and hopefully tomorrow will be a lot more boring.

“What’s the Big IKEA?” or “Stockholm Syndrome” Part One

Hello, my name is Amanda, and I have an IKEA addiction.

I have been consumed by the desire to decorate my house in Swedish simplicity ever since the first time I walked into one of these stores. They are a minimalist’s dream come true. Need form + function? Need endless organizational ideas? Do you wish to make the most of the space you have? Need easy to clean surfaces, intelligent design, and durable materials? Then IKEA is the place for YOU!

Almost two years ago, we decided to renovate our kitchen. It was a typical American 1950s home-built design; too many cabinets, a lot of wasted space, and annoyingly low upper cabinets that blocked your view when you walked into the room. The work surfaces had been re-done in tile, which I hate as a weirdo clean-freak. A full third of the kitchen’s flat workspace was unusable since the low cabinets rendered them useless (unless you LIKE to hit your head on cabinetry and take out your eye with a knob).

We started looking at DIY cabinetry options at your typical box stores like Home Depot and Lowe’s. It was a no-go. The construction was disappointing and the hardware was pretty crappy and weak, easy to wiggle, and had a cheap feel. If we were going to re-do the kitchen, we were at least committed to doing it the right way and spending a bit more if necessary to get quality hardware and construction. Still, we can’t afford custom cabinets, so whatever we bought had to be DIY. Enter IKEA: The DIY Kingdom with Scandinavian Flair.

First off, IKEA uses Blum hardware, and it ROCKS. This means that when pulled out or opened, drawers and cabinet doors have a nice, solid feel. Door and drawer ‘dampers’ mean no more slammed drawers/doors! Self-closing drawers mean that you push them back and they close on their own! The hinges allow for a nice and wide opening for your doors, and they are high quality and solid. Ah, and the hardware allows for up and down adjustment for the drawer facings, so you can tweak them to look just right! So, there’s Round One. Ding ding!

Round Two: Construction of said cabinets is well thought out, and materials are definitely higher quality than the box stores. The drawer and door facings are very heavy and tolerate a lot of abuse. I think we’ve all had that melamine furniture that chips on the edges at the slightest whack. Annoying. Not so with these; instead of side seams, these facings are fully wrapped with a thick coating, so much less likely to chip. I DID manage to chip a tiny bit off of one of them, but it was after accidentally really whacking the crap out of the top of a door by dropping a glass lid. Winner! Ding ding ding!

Round Three: Price. Pricing is honestly comparable to both Lowe’s/HD, especially when confronted with the fact they are much higher quality. Do I remember the price breakdown of all of our cabinets? No. But I do remember it was very close to what was offered at the box stores. Per square inch, the biggest cost is going to be your facings. The ‘base’ of the cabinet is quite inexpensive, really. The facings are where you spend the money, because that’s what will take the majority of the abuse besides the hardware, which is not a problem here. Our base cabinetry was in the AKURUM family, and I believe that is being phased out in 2015 with the SEKTION system.

Here is a quote from IKEA website: “SEKTION will build on the great innovations that the AKURUM system has such as soft close drawers and doors, a wall mounted rail system for easier installation, and a 25 year limited warranty. However, SEKTION is a more modular system which will offer new opportunities to use the interior space inside each cabinet. Plus, it will offer a new system for integrated lighting. You’ll be able to see the new SEKTION kitchen system in your local IKEA store on February 2, 2015.”

You can bet your buttons that I will be going in and looking at the new kitchens in a month, just to see! But anyway, back to our kitchen. Here are some before photos:

2012-09-01_16-19-56_145 — And so it begins. Day One.

2012-09-01_16-29-03_939 — We get by with a little help from our friends….

2012-09-01_16-21-17_537 — Lovely ceiling to countertop cabinets…not.

So the decision was made to free up some countertop by ripping out some of the upper cabinets, which we weren’t really using anyway. Then came Phase Two. Here are some before pics of the kitchen. Note the tile floors (HATE them), tile countertops (ditto), and obviously, I was in a red mood when I picked my paint!

At that point, we had already removed the dishwasher (ugh, never again), and of course, ripped out that big cabinet. As usual, we had dishes to be put up! Note the distance between the cooking range and the lower drawers. Lots of wasted space there, for sure. Also, the cabinet beside the drawers was a total space waster as you could only access the back by crawling on the floor and burrowing into the cabinetry. Keep this in mind! Now:

Buh-bye you darn space-hogging sticky-outie cabinet! Every time I opened the refrigerator door, no one could pass through the kitchen since the door cleared the cabinet by about 2 millimeters. YE SHALL NOT PASS. And then:

Away with ye, Cold Tile Floor of Bone-chilling Propensity! Frozen feet no more! (I love that we got to rip it out with a shovel…) The progression continues:

Goodbye, cabinets! The cabinetry on the other side of the room was left in place, as it was still functional and didn’t pose any issues, except for the lower cabinets by the fridge. Those were torn out, too. Now for some “prime time”:

IMG_20130716_214518_081 — Priming the walls, not really sure what I was doing? All the old flooring has been ripped out now.

Now for some paint! All ceiling and walls were painted a lovely WHITE to make the most of the light since this is an interior room that needed brightening up! Color is Westhighland White by Sherwin-Williams (SW 7566).

Note the plastic underlayment in preparation for the laminate flooring:

Making laminate angels….see the homemade laminate flooring tool Jason made? It helps to pop in those flooring pieces. Yeah, you could BUY one but why should you when you live with Bob Vila? This pic just goes to show that EVERYONE in the house was excited to get rid of the tile!

Now for the fun part; planning the kitchen out fully and shopping at IKEA. I had already plotted out the entire thing by using IKEA’s free kitchen planner tool. It’s online and it worked like a dream! There was not an inch in this new kitchen that wasn’t thought out! Now time for shopping. I will do another post on HOW to shop for your home at IKEA. Yes, it can either be an absolute hellish nightmare or a good time…it all depends if you know how to do it!

Everything at IKEA is based on the flat pack, so you can get it home easily. It also costs less to ship and transport for the company since they can get a LOT more in a smaller area. So the big box is my apron front sink. For obvious reasons, it’s the biggest box here. Everything else you are looking at is cabinetry and flooring (from Lowe’s). People make fun of IKEA’s assembly directions (there are no words, just images), but I found that they were simple to follow. Yes, I did some things backwards because I was not paying attention, but it was easily remedied. So here comes the AKURUM lower cabinets. Remember that wasted space by the drawers I told you to make a note of? Well, the RATIONELL cabinet insert takes care of that! It swings out and FULLY EXTENDS so you can now reach those pots/pans in the far back reaches of your cabinet. No more crawling on the floor with a flashlight. Woohoo!

Now the cabinets are in and it’s time to put in the kitchen island and freestanding counter we bought:

And now for the backsplash! We chose the faux tin from Lowe’s. It’s actually plastic and easy to cut and put up. I think we used Liquid Nails to put it into place…whatever was recommended was what we chose. The faucet was also courtesy of Lowe’s. It has the extendable faucet head, which I ADORE.

Time for granite. We went with granite since it is a really durable and nice material. Plus, we are amateur rockhounds who appreciate a good chunk of crystal…this is particular granite is called “Lennon”. It has HUGE chunks of crystal (I assume it’s quartz?) and I swear I have a nice big garnet in mine, too. Jason and I both immediately were drawn to it for its splashy look. A huge shout out to Berry Marble and Granite of Tyler, TX and more specifically: Jennifer and Casey! It came out to perfection.

So the drawer set above was able to be widened, thanks to IKEA’s wide range of cabinet widths. I gained 3 more inches in countertop space here. Yes! And now the backsplash, granite, range hood (IKEA’s LUFTIG (Whirlpool)), and lighting is IN:

Ahhhhh….now a big deep sigh of contentment! I waited a few weeks to add any of the wall storage to see where I wanted what. Then we put up some FINTORP wall storage rails to contain our coffee mugs:

I also put up a FINTORP rail by the range to hold the white basket containing our cooking oils. And now friends…my fingers are bleeding and my eyes are hurting from writing this three hour blog! I hope you enjoyed the metamorphosis of our kitchen. Functionality was restored to this tiny space, and more changes have happened since these photos were taken, but I’ll have to finish up in another post.

Adjo!!!! (Swedish for ‘goodbye’)