The Project: Week 16 - What's Cooking?

I can't believe that we have spent 16 weeks working on this project house. But, looking back through the posts shows me just how much progress we have made. What a difference! This week the kitchen was finally finished - OMG, we have a really, truly working kitchen! We can cook! We can clean! We can store food and cooking tools! Now we just have to finish the bath and get the barn ready for the boys... And finally, we can move!
This week we:

• finished tiling the kitchen backsplash, sealed the tile, grouted the tile and put a second coat of sealer on it. Wouldn't you know I was 6 tiles short. I had to run to the tile place to finish the project.
• continued to work on tiling the shower and the front of the bath. Again, I'm short on my tile. I need to run to the store again tomorrow!
• turned on the water heater - oh, how nice to finally have warm water for hand washing!
• had the offending granite slab replaced
• played host to the cabinet installation guys, one more time, while they finished the bathroom cabinet installation and did the final bit of work in the kitchen (toe kicks, installation of the microwave, and a few other minor things - like attaching the dishwasher so it won't spill all of my good china some day in the future when I load it up and pull the drawer out to load just one more thing (phew...how's that for a run -on sentence - my English teacher would kill me!)
• swept and vacuumed the basement and cleaned out most of the junk that was left by previous tenants
• sprayed for thistles (I should have been listing that on each of the previous week's lists... thistles have run rampant in the yard. Our 'lawn' is fence-to-fence thistle. The gardens are carpeted in thistle. That is one prolific plant!)
• secured dog fencing on the paddock fence to keep Tucker out of the paddock and pastures beyond.
• painted 240 feet of baseboard.
• tried to buy some knobs for the cabinets. I need 35 in the kitchen and 11 in the bathroom. (It seems that most knobs begin at about $5.... found one I liked for almost $10. Hate to think of spending that much!) We went by a large home goods and decorator store. We could not get anyone to wait on us. As this has been a recurring problem at this particular store I wrote an email to management stating the facts. Would you believe, I got a call in the morning? The manager was very interested in my stories. He said the staff WILL here about this at their weekly staff meeting. And, by the way, would I come back and shop if he sent me a $50 gift card?! I was amazed at the reaction to my email. I hope that in the long run it makes a difference - I do like the merchandise in the store. As I told him, with the slow economy I am beginning to like that certain stores bend over backward to help the customer and to make sure the customer is pleased - his store is not one of these! Maybe things will change!

Here are some before and after photos of the kitchen: