Where are the before and after photos?

So, I'd say the remodel is 98% done. What's left?

We need our kitchen table, which won't arrive until September 24th.

And, we need that pesky missing backsplash, which is supposedly coming any day now.

And then, and only then, you'll get the before and after pictures.

In the meantime, here's a picture of me and Moo, who incidentally, is now a happy camper. I think she hated having people romp through her house making messes more than we did.

My arms and legs look tan. Possibly because Moorea is so white.

Carpet angels

We got our carpet. The moment I’d been dreading. And it turned out to be not so dreadful. So I did what any sane person does – carpet angels.

That's an outlet by my hand, if you wondered. It's now covered by
a couch, but may one day allow a lamp to be plugged in.

Moorea wasn’t so sure about the carpet – nor was she sure about the couches getting moved back in. No carpet angels for her. And frankly, she’s probably plotting where to pee (or vomit) first.

We're going to get a new front door (stained to match the cabinets).
We're also looking forward to not parking on our lawn anymore.

In other exciting news, we finally found a kitchen table and chairs. It’s a miracle! But, as with most miracle (I’m not sure about the miracle thing), there’s a catch: the chairs will be ready Thursday. The table – not until September 20^th. But at this point, we don’t really care. We can sit at the chairs and pretend.

So what’s left?

·         The bedrooms will get new carpet on Wednesday

·         Move furniture around, clean, clean and some more cleaning

·         The remaining five (or so) sheets of backsplash will come in about two weeks

·         That’s it!!!

We are going to make our first dinner in our new kitchen tonight. Sometimes it felt like this day would never get here. And Jason requested that we have spicy chicken pasta, which, for the loyal followers, you’ll note was the last meal we made in the old kitchen, some 60 days ago.

Our final tally on our poor eating habits:

Dinners eaten at home since remodel began: 11

Dinners eaten out since remodel began: 45

The punch list

Somehow, someway, we've made it to the "punch list" stage. This is where my type A personality comes out in full force and I get to put a piece of blue tape on anything that I want fixed. We bought four rolls of tape. (Just kidding. No I'm not.)

Today, the electrician is finishing up - hanging our new kitchen light over our non-existant kitchen table. He's also hanging 1 of 3 pendant lights, since the other two haven't shown up yet (even though we ordered them at the same time). Well, to be fair to Amazon.com, we did get two boxes, but one of them was empty.

Then on Saturday and Wednesday (breaking it up into two days for my sanity) carpet comes. And after that, we are DONE!!

(Except for the missing backsplash, which you know, 2-ish weeks left waiting on that).

Blog posts will probably start to become few and far between. There will definitely be a before and after post. And then a first dinner cooked in the new kitchen post. And that's probably it. Don't be too sad.

Dinners eaten at home since remodel began: 11

Dinners eaten out since remodel began: 42

A little short

I guess we didn’t order enough backsplash. The good news is that it will only take 3 weeks to get here. That’s good news because they could have discontinued making it. We’re choosing to be glass half-full people today.



Whoops.

Oh, and we ate at home last night.

Dinners eaten at home since remodel began: 11

Dinners eaten out since remodel began: 39

And the hits just keep coming

So, all of the granite is in. I wish I had taken a picture of the installers. When I got home Friday afternoon, I was greeted with a lot of “dude! No way!” and “this is some gnarly granite”. Or something like that. I hightailed it to the bedroom and hid until they left.

The granite is beautiful. And is going to be a bitch to keep clean. I just know it. I hope I learn to love tolerate fingerprints.

I left a box on the counter for no good reason other than
 I am amazing at staging photographs. Also, the floor is covered with paper.
Do not be alarmed and think we chose brown paper for our floor.



Our backsplash. It's growing on me. Also, another box!



We also got our cabinet door hardware and that’s where things took another turn for the worse. First, after I put the fear of god into our contractor about making sure all holes drilled were straight, he still drilled two of them wrong. And he had to order new drawers to replace those two. Sigh. But if that’s all it was going to be, I can deal – he was making it right at no cost to us, so all’s well that ends well, right?

Wrong. On Saturday, Jason decided to put the pulls in and what did we discover? That they are all off about 1/16^th of an inch. Which doesn’t sound like a lot, but just take a look at what it looks like:

Yes, the cabinets still need to be adjusted, but i assure you,
that won't change how bad the pulls are.

So, where to from here? Hard to say. Our contractor was camping for a long weekend, so we’ll talk to him about it tomorrow. Jason seems to think that he can cheat the holes a little bit to fix this. But I don’t want wobbly handles if the holes are too big. And boy do I hope we don’t have to get new doors.

Also – in my most dreaded news: carpet comes Thursday. Yes, dreaded. Because we have to move everything out of our house. And it’s going to be 90 degrees. Anyone want to come and help?! Don’t all fight over the opportunity!

(Oh yeah, and since this blog is supposed to have a food component: I ate McDonalds twice this weekend, and had dinner at the movie theater. All healthy choices).

Dinners eaten at home since remodel began: 10

Dinners eaten out since remodel began: 39

Our first setback

We reached our first setback. Which isn’t bad considering we are 6+ weeks into the process.

You may remember in my last post which was oh so long ago (I have a little bird that sits across from me and chirps at me about updating the blog), I indicated that Thursday was going to be a big day.

Was. Going. To. Be.

The granite installers messed up the template, so we don’t have granite in half the kitchen. And we can’t install the backsplash until we install the granite. And the correctly cut granite isn’t showing up until maybe Tuesday. It’s hard to pin these guys down. I live and die by schedules at my job. They do not have the same sense of urgency.

We did get the granite for the island and the desk and I believe the island slab weighed 800 pounds! It took four dudes to move it in. I love it. It’s so shiny and perfect. I just wish the rest of it had been done right.

Dinners eaten at home since remodel began: 10

Dinners eaten out since remodel began: 35

The end is near?

This week is going to be a productive one; not only is all of the floor tile in place (it does need to be grouted still, but minor detail), but the countertops and backsplash are going to be installed. I have been most excited for the backsplash, so Thursday can’t get here soon enough. We also finally ordered our pendant lights for above the bar – after carefully reviewing about 3,247 options. However, we still need a kitchen table, chairs and a light for above the table. If you see anything that is pub height, dark mahogany, let me know. For the light, I have no idea what we are looking for. Let me know about that, too.

Another quality (aka blurry) picture. Do not be worried - the floor needs to be mopped.
And Jason is futzing with something.

  

In other news, can you believe it’s been 42 days since this started? And in that time, we’ve only eaten at home 10 nights. That’s honestly a little better than I thought we’d do, but our waistlines are definitely reflective of our choices.

Luckily for us, the Moran’s took pity on us and invited us over for dinner last night. I told Corey he could make whatever he wanted, but then he texted me the menu and in my head I was like “blech. Guess I’ll go hungry tonight” but I responded with “see you at 7!”. The reality was the I LOVED all of the food. We will definitely be making this in our new kitchen, in hopefully less than three weeks!



Two appearances in one blog post for Jason!



  

Dinners eaten at home since remodel began: 10

Dinners eaten out since remodel began: 32

Progress update

Last night was pretty exciting – I got home and one of our appliances had been installed. Granted, it was the microwave, but baby steps, people. This was some big progress for us.

The new office area; we have an actual office, but it's really small so
we decided to build a workspace in our kitchen. And to also hold booze.

All of our cabinets are now installed, and tiling starts today – it’s supposed to be a two-day process so we should have even more exciting pictures to share on Monday.

The main kitchen area. I am totally on board with the skylight.
It makes everything so much brighter.

After the tiling is done, the granite installers will show up. After they are done, the backsplash goes in. Then the carpet. Then we are done! (I’m sure there are 50 more steps, but it’s probably better if I just focus on the big picture, rather than the small things we still have to do, like order handles/pulls, find pendant lights, find a kitchen table and chairs, find a chandelier for over our dining room table…)

Oh, I had a quesadilla for dinner at the farmers market. I did not take a picture. Again.



Most of the kitchen. And a few of the 900 lights.



Dinners eaten at home since remodel began: 10

Dinners eaten out since remodel began: 28

Don't even bother reading this one

Ate some Eggos (blueberry) last night for dinner. Washed it down with a glass (plastic red cup) of milk. Then had a handful of fritos to round out the meal. I didn't take a picture. I'm sure you can visualize exactly what it looked like.

Tiling starts tomorrow - very exciting. And all of the cabinets will be hung, so I'll post a picture of that - also very exciting.

 

Dinners eaten at home since remodel began: 10

Dinners eaten out since remodel began: 27

How many hands of blackjack do you have to win to pay for a kitchen remodel?

We’ll never know, because we didn’t win.

Sorry for the blog hiatus. We went to Vegas to celebrate ME. And frankly, the timing couldn’t have been better. When we left our house on Friday afternoon, there was an inch of dust (from the dry wall mud being sanded) on EVERYTHING. The particles floating around in the air stung your eyes, and we were virtually prisoners in our bedroom.

And then we came home on Monday. And guess what we had? Cabinets!

We were so nervous to come home and see the cabinets, especially after our contractor texted us a picture and they looked like shit. The good news is that we love them and the lesson is to never trust a crappy cell phone picture.

Before we get to the food, here’s the rest of the remodel update: appliances get delivered today. They will sit in the garage and hopefully stay in pristine condition until we need to move them in – probably about two weeks. The granite template dudes come today and then our actual slabs will show up in one week. At some point this week, the tile guy will start laying the tile. While we haven’t been told an “end date”, I would guess August 15^th based on where we’re at.

Now, on to the food.

Did you know restaurants in Vegas are almost always dark (i.e. mood lighting)? This made for difficult picture taking, as I didn’t have a flash on my phone, and probably it would have been annoying to see the flash in the restaurants. But here’s the picture of my favorite meal (it was course 2 of 4 – more on that below):

Friday night: Holstein’s in the Cosmopolitan. An “upscale” burger bar. I had a mini trio of Italian sliders and glass of prosecco to keep the class factor high.

Saturday night: Diego’s at MGM. A somewhat authentic Mexican restaurant. Jason had goat. He does not recommend goat. I had shrimp tacos. They were tasty. We got a pitcher of frida margaritas, and depending on who you asked, there was either a lot of tequila or no tequila at all.

Sunday night (my actual birthday): Sirio at Aria. This was my special birthday pick and I ordered the four course tasting menu. Although, to call it tasting was really misleading. There was so much food.

Course one: veal carpacchio

Course two: tagliolini with prawns and a pink vodka sauce

Course three: rack of lamb

Course four: some special birthday dessert. I don’t think it was very good, but I couldn’t tell you what it was.

Highly, highly recommend Sirio if you’re in Vegas. But bring your winnings…our dinner cost more than the amazing shoes I wore that night. Which is to say, it cost a lot.

Dinners eaten at home since remodel began: 9

Dinners eaten out since remodel began: 27

I like-a the Italian food-a

(You have to imagine reading the post title with an Italian accent)

Oh. My. God. You guys – we ate at home two nights in a row! That almost never happened even when we had a kitchen.

Those are Italian sandwiches. With a side of Fritos, because what goes better with Italian food than Fritos? And what makes these sandwiches Italian you might ask? Well, there’s olive oil, salami, provolone, oregano and red onion. Jason adds tomato to his, but blech, not on mine. The only way to make it more Italian would be to use capocolla and mozzarella, but you know, not my style. Also, we only eat these in the summer, and in our backyard, which is very similar to Italy. Do the math. It’s Italian.

A note to my loyal readers: I won’t be posting again until Tuesday the 31^st. I am not allowed to tell you why. But there are going to be some amazing dinner shots, so it will be worth the wait. Also, the cabinets should be in by then, so I'll post pictures of that too.

Dinners eaten at home since remodel began: 9

Dinners eaten out since remodel began: 22

A few words on lunch

Because I was so bored with what I ate for dinner last night (Eggos – but it was at home!), I didn’t take a picture. Go and look at the “Breakfast for Dinner” post, but swap out French toast for Eggos and there you have it.

However, I do feel bad that I didn’t post a picture yesterday (I probably lost a lot of readers) so to make sure it didn’t happen two days in a row, I took a picture of my lunch.

I’ve eaten this every day for the last 8 days and I am sick of it. Also, hungry.

Dinners eaten at home since remodel began: 8

Dinners eaten out since remodel began: 22

Busy Bee

I'm a busy bee (worky-worky) so no picture of last night's dinner (it was Herfy's).

We finally got our window in. The drywall guy's truck broke down so he didn't come yesterday. We ordered paint.

And that sums up Monday.

Dinners eaten at home since remodel began: 7

Dinners eaten out since remodel began: 22

Mud-a-palooza

Lots of exciting things happened this weekend, starting with me not getting to sleep in on Saturday because the drywall guys showed up to do some mudding. I’ve been told there needs to be three to four more “mudding sessions” (I just made that phrase up) and then we can paint.

Speaking of paint, you can see our top four choices to the left of the fireplace. I think we picked one. We seem to change our mind a lot and the only way we’ll stop changing it is when the paint gets ordered, which is hopefully today.

On the food front, lots of variety (for me). Friday night we ate at Hop Jacks, a little burger joint by our house. I won’t tell you what we really call it because it would probably make my mom embarrassed and reading it isn’t as funny as saying it.

On Saturday, we saw the Dark Knight Rises and ate at iPic. My grilled cheese had bacon crumbled in it and was cheestastic. The movie was great – highly recommend it if you’re into that sort of movie. If you count Dear John as a good movie, then you probably wouldn’t like this one.

Finally, on Sunday, I had lamb kebobs (baaaaahhhhh – don’t eat me, Lisa). I LOVE lamb. I bet that’s surprising, but rack of lamb and lamb chops are two of my favorite things. No mint jelly!

Dinners eaten at home since remodel began: 7

Dinners eaten out since remodel began: 21

Yawn

Is it bad when you get bored with your own blog?

Because that's where I'm at today.

I'm also over having my house torn apart. I'm over walking through plastic barriers. I'm over everything taking 15 minutes longer than necessary because of all of the hoops we have to jump through in our house. And, I'm over workers not changing out the toilet paper roll when it's empty (or for that matter, pooping at my house.)

To break up the monotony of the week, we went with our besties the Gossett's to go see Bob Saget film his TV special. I wish I had a cute picture of us, but someone (*cough*Natalie*cough*) wasn't feeling like she wanted her picture taken (she was a little Sewing with Nancy after her dental procedure) so, I have nothing to show you.

After the show, we had the worst dinner ever.

I ate 1/4 of the sandwhich, none of the fries, and none of the mango salsa. But I did eat a lot of chips and salsa (we were at a Mexican joint).

And, that my friends, is another boring update. zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Dinners eaten at home since remodel began: 6

Dinners eaten out since remodel began: 19

The plan

Because I got so many comments saying either “Lisa, you don’t need to lose weight!” or “Lisa, tell us about your amazing diet plan!”, I guess I need to oblige and fill you in.

For breakfast: 250 calories. Usually an English muffin with peanut butter.

For lunch: 350 calories. The Starbucks protein pack (cheese, roll, hardboiled egg, 10 grapes, 3 apple slices and almond butter). It sounds like a lot. It is not.

Afternoon snack: 300 calories. Usually veggies and dip or cheese and crackers.

Dinner: whatever I want, trying to keep under 1,000 calories. Believe it or not, a Quarter Pounder with cheese and fries is only 900 calories.

Dessert: not allowed!

Total calories per day: 1,900

But then! Then I go workout, and try to burn at least 500 calories. The goal would be to have my total calorie intake, minus what I burn, be under 1500 calories a day. According to my “plan” that would allow me to lose 1 to 3 pounds a week. We shall see.  I only weighed myself for the first time last night. It was a sad night. And then I ate this:



Game of Thrones is on the TV, but you can't see that. 
A perfect show to watch while eating dinner.



But don’t worry, I didn’t eat it all. I was too full from my breakfast, lunch and snack. Yeah right. But I really was full. Maybe my stomach is shrinking already?

Oh, and here’s a progress picture to keep the hard-core remodel readers happy. That’s our contractor, who I am sure would love to know that I took this and then put it out for my millions of followers to see. He’s putting the self-leveler over the radiant heating elements. You can also see that insulation has now been put up in the kitchen. Next up: dry wall!



Much self control needed to not put my handprints in the goo.



Dinners eaten at home since remodel began: 6

Dinners eaten out since remodel began: 18

I'm Fiona Apple?

Did you know I’m on a diet? I know, you can barely tell with the things I’ve been eating. But I have to be in a swimsuit for an extended period of time soon, so I’m trying to lose a few pounds. And last night, I became Fiona Apple…not in the so skinny all you see are gleaming clavicles and hip bones (which is the actual goal), but in the bad, bad girl way.

My intention was to come home, go running and then have a sensible dinner. While not technically my fault (it’s a long story but it comes down to blaming Jason), here’s what I had for dinner last night:



Ignore Jason's hand which is messing up my picture.



You can just hear me getting fatter, can’t you? (movie reference #5 Corey!)

Dinners eaten at home since remodel began: 6

Dinners eaten out since remodel began: 17

Corn? I don't remember eating corn

The grill got put to work last night, not only grilling our steak, but also our corn on the cob. As previously mentioned, I don’t like many vegetables (unless they are raw – like raw carrots or cauliflower) but corn on the cob is one of my favorites.

We keep it classy by using real steak knives. Plastic everything else.

Boring update, 'cause like I said, nothing happened at the house yesterday. And even if it did, I probably wouldn’t have made the update about it anyway.

Dinners eaten at home since remodel began: 6

Dinners eaten out since remodel began: 16

Closed on Sundays

I have a long list of pet peeves in my life, but one that’s pretty high up on the list is when restaurants are closed on Sundays.

This isn’t the 1950s. The days of Sunday family dinner are long gone. I mean, they probably still happen, but not as religiously as they used to. At least not in my family and that’s the only one that I’m polling.

I really wanted katsu for dinner. I’m not sure why. I called to place my order and no one answered. It was 6:15, so I convinced myself the line was really long and they were too busy to answer. So I drove up there. And guess what? CLOSED! Now mind you, this particular teriyaki restaurant had been open last Sunday and the Sunday prior to that, and so on and so forth, but for some reason, decided that they are now closed on Sundays.

So, I had to have McDonalds. Because I was ready to eat my arm. And I happened to be dressed in such a way that I couldn’t actually spend very long getting my food without drawing looks (read: I had just gotten out of the shower, and was wearing my pajamas and no bra). Drive thru it is!

Also, for anyone wanting to know about the remodel:

·    No one is coming to work on Monday. I’m not sure why. I’m told this is okay.

·    The electrician should finish up installing the 934 can lights on Tuesday.

·    Our new kitchen window should be installed on Wednesday. I will then sleep better as there won’t be a hole in the front of our house that criminals can easily crawl through.

·    The radiant heating elements and self-leveler (ooh, I sound fancy) are going in on Wednesday.

·    Drywall starts installing on Thursday and should finish early the following week.

·    Cabinets show up on Friday, the 27^th and that’s when the magic (i.e. what I deem noticeable progress) should really kick into gear.

Dinners eaten at home since remodel began: 5

Dinners eaten out since remodel began: 16

Weenies!

We spent Saturday with our friends doing a ropes course that left me tired, hot and a little motion sick. Given that adventure was the theme for the day, we were super adventurous for dinner, and decided to cook hot dogs over the fire pit in our backyard.

I was skeptical, but I also didn’t really want to shower and go out to dinner, so instead, I walked around the grocery store stinking the place up and got hot dog and smore fixings and we enjoyed our fifth dinner cooked at home since we started this remodel.



Appetizing, right?



Dinners eaten at home since remodel began: 5

Dinners eaten out since remodel began: 15

Sitting down at an actual restaurant

While it may be hard to believe, until Friday night, Jason and I had not gone out to a restaurant to eat (unless you count dinner at iPic, but I’m not because I make the rules). Normally, we eat out three to four times a week, with one time being take-out and the others where we actually sit down in a restaurant. Being DINKs means we have this freedom and we love it.

I really wanted dumplings (watch for them to make an appearance on the blog – hopefully soon) but as predicted, Jason vetoed in favor of Sunset Alehouse, his favorite restaurant. Which we surprisingly haven’t eaten at in the last 20+ days.

Betcha can’t guess who ate what…

El Diablo                                               Prawns Diavola

I had the pasta, believe it or not. You’d be forgiven for picking the El Diablo burger, however, I would NEVER order chips instead of fries, so that should have tipped you off. Also, I LOVE garlic bread, so if it comes with garlic bread, I’m probably going to order it.

Dinners eaten at home since remodel began: 4

Dinners eaten out since remodel began: 15

A bright idea (hardy har har)

We had electricians at our house for around 10 hours yesterday. Our original lighting plan called for 10 can lights. Now we have 23. So, just a few more. And that meant it took a little longer than expected (i.e. they are coming back for a 3^rd day, as opposed to the 1 day they were originally were going to need). And it’s probably going to cost just a smidge more.

So while Jason babysat the electricians at the house, I took Moorea to Pine Lake for the Concerts at the Park series.

The magical, floating cheeseburger!

And I had a salad. Just kidding. It’s clearly a cheeseburger. Without any lettuce or tomatoes. So I bet you didn’t fall for the salad thing for even one second. If you recall, I told you there would be a lot of red meat over the course of this blog. And I’ve certainly lived up to that.

Dinners eaten at home since remodel began: 4

Dinners eaten out since remodel began: 14

Oops

I neglected to take a picture of my dinner last night. I could blame the heat, but really, I just didn’t want to drag my phone to the farmers market. And, because it was the famers market, I had Mexican. But not the normal torta…I changed it up and got tacos instead. Me gusta!

As promised yesterday, here are some progress pictures. Had I been about 20 seconds quicker, there would have been one of Jason walking around on the roof, but with his supersonic hearing and cat-like reflexes he got off of the roof before I got the picture taken.



The new fireplace is 26% complete. (Statistics may not be accurate)



The skylight, marked for your convenience, is 100% complete. On the outside at least.

Surprise! I am getting a new kitchen window. This decision was made without me.
I am told I will be happy.

Dinners eaten at home since remodel began: 4

Dinners eaten out since remodel began: 13

Let the repeats begin

Hey! Look what showed up for dinner again! But, it’s only once a week, and so long as I don’t have it again this week, I’m in the clear. Also, I’d like to point out that I went for a 4-mile run before I ate this. So while the calorie intake still exceeds the expenditures, it’s not as grossly unbalanced as you would think.



Maybe I should cut out the tartar sauce to save some calories?



In remodel news, I might have some pictures to post tomorrow. The skylight went in. Backer board went down on the floor. The electrician and plumber have come and gone. These are all signs of progress, but they aren’t very exciting. I’ll be excited when the cabinets go in. Which isn’t for 16 more days.

Dinners eaten at home since remodel began: 4

Dinners eaten out since remodel began: 12

Dinner for one

Last night, I was home alone (insert Macaulay Culkin hands-on-face scream). No Jason. No Moorea. Just me, a house filled with tools, dry wall, screws, and plastic barriers blowing in the wind (as the windows were open). It felt a little bit like I was in a deserted mental hospital. Probably because I watched an episode of True Blood where they were actually in a deserted mental hospital.

So back to being home alone. It’s nothing new for me, and I’ve become proficient at making the laziest dinners possible when there’s only one person to “cook” for. Usually, it’s grilled cheese and tomato soup. But since I don’t have a stove top, I can’t make grilled cheese (quiet you naysayers who suggest that I use the toaster oven!). Also, it was too hot to cook (read: I can find almost any excuse not to cook).

And that brings us to dinner:

I like how I made the rice krispies ginormous. In reality, it was a small bowl.

I tried to cover all major food groups, although fruits and veggies are noticeably absent. Maybe tomorrow.

Dinners eaten at home since remodel began: 4

Dinners eaten out since remodel began: 11