Kitchen: Almost done!

I spent the 4th of July 3-day weekend and the following week doing 2 coats of polyurethane on the cabinets, doors and drawers. It really shouldn't have taken that long but it was so disgustingly hot here that I could only work on it for about an hour early each morning before it was too hot and the poly was drying as I was brushing it on. (There also may or may not have been an incident where I accidentally knocked over an entire can of oil-based poly onto the kitchen floor but I don't want to talk about that - I still haven't quite recovered from that horrifying fiasco.) Refinishing cabinets is pretty tedious work and I know this sounds ridiculous but the day I finished that last coat of poly was one of the best days of my life!

I found this picture I took right after the cabinet doors were sanded - this is my workshop dungeon where I spent countless hours working on those doors and drawers:



(Embarrassing sidenote: we have never parked in our garage - its been a state of chaos ever since we moved in. Maybe this fall/winter we'll get a handle on it. Maybe.)

After letting the poly cure for a couple days we put the doors and drawers back.



It was so nice to have the cabinet contents hidden behind closed doors again. We also loved having our silverware back in its drawer after using this system for over a month:



Although it was convenient having everything out on the counter, I am rather clumsy so I was always worried I would break one of the glasses.

Here's a closeup shot before hardware:



And after:



We used simple knobs on the doors, and cup pulls on the drawers. I love them - they are like jewelry for the kitchen! We also replaced all the hinges - the original ones were brass so we switched to satin nickel to match the knobs and pulls.

Even though we still had to tile the backsplash I couldn't resist putting everything back on the counters so we could have our kitchen back to normal for a while.



I think I need to bring in some more color - I love the black and white but it could probably do with a little pizazz.

Last weekend we finished installing the backsplash tile. It was our first tiling job ever and we were really nervous. At first there was a little trial and error (okay a LOT of trial and error) but after that we picked up the pace. Here's a sneak peak of one area (still needs to be grouted):



Still to do:
*Grout the tile (hopefully today)
*Get plywood for under stove - right now it sits about 1/2 an inch lower than the counters and we want to bring it up to the countertop height
*Touch up paint around the sides of the backsplash
*Bring in some more color

Veggie Garden Part 2

Finally about 2 weeks later the sunflowers started poking through the soil! We were so excited because a couple of my friends planted sunflower seeds and nothing came up.





This baby bell pepper was so cute. (Fast forward a couple months and the pepper started rotting while it was growing so we didn't get to eat it - oh well.)



Then disaster struck! Its usually pretty warm and dry in May but this year we got a ton of rain and the squash plants didn't like it. Bit by bit they started looking like this:



They were actually getting smaller instead of bigger. A few died but finally in June they started to perk up. We still have yet to harvest any squash but some are getting close to being ready. I love summer squash and we buy some at the farmers' market every week but I cant wait to eat the ones from our own garden.



The tomato plants didn't seem to mind the rain at all and grew like crazy. We now have a tomato jungle!





Once they start getting fruit the hardest part is waiting for them to ripen. Tomatoes are one of my favorite things to eat but I am very particular about them - they have to be juicy and flavorful and you just cant find good ones in the winter so I usually skip them completely. By the time spring/summer comes around I am dying for them and I find myself checking the green fruit every day looking for signs of ripeness. Josh has also become quite the tomato aficionado so between the 2 of us the tomato plants are closely monitored.





Earlier this month they finally started getting ripe - picking a cherry tomato off the vine and eating it while its still warm from the sun is one of the best things ever!!!





These are the brandywines (an heirloom variety) - they are a little slower than the cherry tomatoes but worth the wait.



We get a plateful of cherry tomatoes every couple of days now.



One of the plants has these teeny tiny tomatoes that taste good but are a pain to pick.



The dogs LOVE tomatoes so we usually just pick a few for them when we're outside.



I made the mistake of showing Zeke where they come from and now he keeps shoving his snout into the bush and picking his own!



The sunflowers are doing well. The back row are giant sunflowers and in front of them are some ornamentals.











Hopefully they are attracting bees and other pollinating insects to our garden!

Well I think that's enough on the subject of our vegetable garden. Happy Gardening!

Veggie Garden Part 1

We started our vegetable garden at the beginning of April and because I am such a slacker I am just getting around to blogging about it now. Better late than never, right?! I am breaking it up into 2 posts because I am wordy and there are a lot of pictures.

We built some raised beds last year and things were going pretty well until about August when suddenly all the plants got crispy and died. We watered them every day but we think that because the beds were quite small the soil just got too hot and dried out by the 100+ degree weather, which killed the plants. So we had to come up with a new plan this year!

We started with this glorious scene:



Our side yard is such a thorn in our side. Its a good sized space but unusable in its current state. We still haven't figured out a plan to get rid of the gravel.

We removed last year's boxes and built two new 6ft x 6ft ones out of cedar. We also decided to remove the gravel under them so they could sit directly on the soil, instead of on top of the gravel like last year. When we started moving the gravel we discovered plastic underneath - talk about a drainage nightmare! Once we cut the plastic out from under the box we realized that the 'soil' was actually orange clay - good thing we weren't planning on planting anything in the ground!



When we priced out buying soil for the raised beds we found that having it delivered from a landscaping yard was MUCH cheaper than going to Lowe's/Home Depot and buying it in bags. After measuring our beds we ordered 3 cubic yards to be delivered to our driveway. We knew it would be a lot but we weren't quite prepared for this:



It took Josh and I about 7 hours taking wheelbarrow loads of dirt to the raised beds. I don't ever want to do something like that again!

Instead of fertilizer we use the compost we make from our fruit & veg scraps and yard waste, and we also wanted to add some earthworms. We bought some from the garden center - there were over 200 worms in that small container!



We planted tomatoes in the front bed and squash, a pepper plant, and sunflowers in the back bed. We put down chicken wire again to prevent neighborhood cats from using the beds as a litter box - how gross would that be?! The upside down tomato cages are protecting the sunflower seeds until they grow into little plants.



Then we just had to wait ...