It’s been a few more days and we’ve made some significant progress since the last post. Day 5 ended looking almost a step backwards from Day 4, but the next few days were crazy… crazy good. We made giant progress; finished installing the upper cabinets, lower cabinets, refrigerator, and more!

Here’s where we were at the end of Day 5:

End of Day 5.

Day 6:

Day 6 was another slow day after a slow Day 5. It felt like progress was slowing down, but it had to be done. Day 6 consisted of a lot of waiting for paint to dry, waiting for joint compound to dry – mostly just a lot of waiting, and it wasn’t fun since we wanted to do work but couldn’t.

Painting the ceiling.

We did our best to do small jobs that didn’t involve waiting, but by the end of the day, it didn’t look like much happened other than a little more paint on the walls.

End of Day 6.

Day 7:

Here’s where we really started making progress! We were so tired by the end of the day, but it was well worth it. First thing in the morning, we put up all the upper cabinets, since we had finished the night before with a coat of paint so it would be dry in time for the morning. They didn’t go up super fast, but we had them up in about a total of 3 hours. After that, we began trying to put up the microwave. Unfortunately, before we had time to finish, I had to leave for a little while, so Ashley did some more painting while I was out.

Installing upper cabinets.

When I got back, we got the microwave up pretty quick, and we then put all the doors back on the upper cabinets. We then did some miscellaneous things that needed to be done, like vacuuming, cleaning, etc. Afterwards, we felt ambitious and crazy, so we decided to move the refrigerator from the downstairs bedroom into the kitchen. We laid a ton of cardboard down on the floors so we wouldn’t damage the flooring we just put down! We went a few inches by a few inches, but finally made it all the way into the kitchen, and moved the fridge into place.

By the end of Day 7, we had very close to a fully functioning kitchen.

End of Day 7.

Day 8:

Did I mention the granite people emailed us a day after they templated for granite, and said they could install Saturday? Well, they did. So most of Day 8 was very exciting for us, as we got to sit back and watch our countertops get installed. It instantly made the kitchen so much closer to completion. The granite guys took until about 1 PM to finish installing the granite, so we did some small things afterwards. Ashley put on a second coat of paint in the dining room, while I put in the toe kick for all the cabinets and fixed the alignment for some of the doors.

End of Day 8.

End of Day 8.

Overall, we expected to have a little more trim in, but at the same time, we didn’t expect to have granite in already. Tomorrow we’ll work on the backsplash and trim, and then it’s back to work in the real world, while doing small parts at night.