There's always snuggle time for Ash

Even with all of the renovations, David still has time to snuggle with Ash at night. This picture just sums up how unbelievably adorable we think our dog is. 

With the cabinets in place, it starts to feel like a kitchen!

This is a very exciting post for us because we finally have a good sense of what our kitchen will look like. This is because..... we have cabinets! Harvie spent the weekend with us and he and David worked like crazy to get the walls painted and the cabinets in place. They had a hard time making them level, but in the end got everything correctly in place using a variety of trimming, shimming, and stiffening techniques. Because our house is so old, the "level" cabinets don't line up with the ceiling - its all topsy turvey! What I say to that is that our house is filled with unique character. 

Here is a picture of Harvie working on cabinets one and two. The one on his left goes over a small set of drawers, and the one on his right goes over the fridge. 

One finished wall of cabinets. Here, the one on the far left goes above the stove/microwave combo.

Our peninsula! The center cabinet, next to the dishwasher, will house the sink. You can see to the left in this photo the above shown wall of cabinets with the fridge, set of drawers, and stove in place.

Here is the pantry cupboard that is inside our "pantry," now re=purposed as a laundry room. Because of the cabinet configuration we probably will use this for food storage even though its in the laundry area, though if we could make it work I see this as being a good place to store linens and other household items. 

These cabinets are nestled in on the left hand side of the chimney, and will probably be where we store our dishes and less commonly used items. Oh, because its so obvious here - please ignore the gaudy hardware on these cabinets. We have a trip planned to Home Depot to pick out more modern handles. 

Here is a good panoramic view capturing most of the kitchen. The gates are up in the doorways to keep the doggies safe from the construction zone. 

Another panoramic view, from the other angle. The empty space to the right of the boxed in chimney will eventually house another upper cabinet.

We have an appointment on Wednesday for making templates for our granite counter tops. We went to a granite shop (Stone Surfaces in Burlington, MA - very friendly and knowledgeable staff and their showroom is conveniently in the same spot as their warehouse!) today to pick out our granite. We had been last week and had a couple of "colors" in mind, but went back today with a paint sample, a tile, and a cabinet drawer. We were shocked to find that the ones we had liked previously didn't match at all! We ended up choosing a granite called Ivory Gold which provided the contrast we were looking for. As you can see in this picture, the walls are a very similar tone to the tile floor. We chose these colors so that they would not look awkward or harsh with the color of our cabinets, but seeing it all pulled together we decided we wanted the counter top to stand out a bit more. We will also pick our bar stools and light fixtures with contrast in mind as well.

The full kitchen album has been updated here: https://plus.google.com/photos/111337432367013111703/albums/5846031753827674593?authkey=CJXUo6L4muCRIQ

Our kitchen has walls!!

David and Grandpa John spent Wednesday and Thursday of last week picking up drywall from Lowes (happened to be more convenient than Home Depot this time), passing the drywall through the kitchen window (with the very important added utility of my own impressive muscle power), and installing the drywall. David then spent Friday night finishing the spackling, and he and his dad were ready to go with painting, clean up, and cabinets on the weekend. Here are some pictures of the finished job!