A Kitchen in a Van

We borrowed our friend Jerry's Honda minivan and headed to IKEA for our kitchen cabinets. Its an amazing store and they are highly organized at turning your rough sketches into a long list of items and then many, many boxes. We loaded the van at about 5:30pm on a day that was about 15 degrees and very windy. Somehow it all managed to fit, including a kitchen sink and a bathroom sink. Then only a 4 hour drive home on I95.

Now all we have to do is assemble it.

Here's what it looked like.

Christmas card staging

We decided to show off our new living room even though at the moment its a workspace -- tool/material storage, cutting and sanding, and other stuff-space. Here's some shots we took of my Mom's famous ceramic Christmas tree in the room.

Yes, we took pictures of ourselves in the room but nixed them all! We're much more attractive in the summer.

Happy Holidays to one and all!

Interior Walls

Tuck along with neighbor Mike completed the last bits of interior framing. Take a look before it all disappears behind drywall/sheetrock. Also the plumbers started roughing-in -- here's the washer/dryer hookup.

Early December

The first drywall went up -- the wall that will be behind the kitchen cabinets, and a couple of bathroom walls behind a shower stall.

More Framing

Construction of the interior walls has gone on throughout November and early December. Here is a shot of the top/ceiling over the bathrooms and hallway. This will give us some storage space above, and also make it easier to install bathroom fans and other stuff. In the rest of the house, the rooms will go up all the way to the slanted roof. That's right, no attic.

IKEA thanksgiving

During Thanskgiving week we headed off to the closest IKEA store -- 4 hours away near Washington DC -- to look at kitchen cabinets and other stuff. Lunch and 4 hours later we left with lots of great ideas and plans, and a shopping bag full of new dishes and flatware! We are now set to return to IKEA during the Christmas break and purchase said kitchen cabinets.

The best news of the week was learning that the Charlotte, NC IKEA store is opening Feb. 18 so hopefully this trip will be the last one to Washington. The Charlotte store is only 2 hours away! We are not alone - IKEA reports that they have over 100,000 customers in NC and SC.