Cabinets and stuff

The cabinets were delivered earlier in the week and are now all installed. This is the desk area in the kitchen:

The kitchen is looking great:

Another kitchen view from a different angle:

Here's a detail shot of the crown and rope-style molding that will be installed at the top of the kitchen cabinets:

One corner of the laundry room:

The countertop in the laundry room will be covered in 6" field tiles, including a matching backsplash, with a nice wood edge. We didn't want to spend more money for granite for this room, but I am sure the tile will look great.

Also in the picture above, the open area under the counter will be left that way as a convienent place to store clothes hampers. The corner cabinet looks a bit awkward, but has two rotating shelves ("Lazy Susans") to make it easier to use the space.

If you look carefully at some of the pictures above, you can see that all of the cabinets have been installed on top of 2" spacers. This is done in order is to raise the countertops to a more "adult friendly" height (i.e., you don't have to bend over quite so far). All of the base cabinets on the first floor (except the kitchen desk) have been done this way.

The hardwood guys have finished nailing down the raw wood and will be starting the finish process on Monday. So far we are thrilled with how the floors are looking (plus the house has a nice "oak-ey" smell to it right now):

The floors look even and flat from a standing viewpoint, but if you get down close you can see that there is a lot of work left to really produce that super-smooth finish that everyone associates with hardwood floors. This picture of my office was taken at floor level:

The finishing process involves sanding, filling, more sanding, cleaning, varnishing, and at some point near the end, a buffing job to really put the shine on things. Hopefully I can get some pictures of these things as they're happening.