A week or so before we moved into the house, our friend Kendall came over to help Matt cut and install the soapstone countertops. So this weekend Matt sanded and finished them off with a coat of mineral oil.

Ok, mineral oil?! Did you know that it’s a laxative? We went into both Home Depot and Ace looking for mineral oil and they looked at us like we had horns on our heads. Matt wound up picking it up at the grocery store where all the other laxatives are stored. I was extremely grossed out watching him wipe laxative all over our countertops to seal them.

Here are some before and after photos. The mineral oil turns the countertops really dark, but as it evaporates over a few days it lightens up. So currently the countertops are in between these two grays and we’ll see how much lighter they get. I don’t like the look of the really dark countertops, so I’m hoping they continue to lighten a bit.

Before:

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After:

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One side done, one side waiting, and our new kitchen light!

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Matt got a ton done in the kitchen this weekend. I say “Matt” because I was feeling a bit under the weather, and wasn’t good for much of anything other than half-heartedly assembling my in-cabinet organizers from IKEA. So everything you see is thanks to his hard work.

We had a plumber come on Saturday to run pipes for our new sink. He was a ripoff so we didn’t have him complete the necessary plumbing (running pipes for the dishwasher), but Matt should be able to do that. He also took a look at our gas fireplace and assessed that all it needs is one new valve which we should be able to replace ourselves. So I’m hopeful that we’ll have a fully functional fireplace for the holidays!

After Matt finished installing all of the base cabinets, he wanted to move the fridge and dishwasher into place so he could see how much space he would have to built a support structure around the dishwasher to hold up the soapstone. IKEA gave us these chintzy support panels to hold it up, but we’re skeptical, so he will build a wooden frame just to be safe. Then the countertops will go in – probably next weekend.

We also are waiting for our electrician to come and finish the electrical in the kitchen. So until then, all of the appliances have been moved back into the kitchen to get them out of the living room and dining room, so I can start cleaning the house and getting ready for us to move in!

Here’s a sneak peek at what the kitchen will look like without the countertop, backsplash, and painted floor (the three things with color!) It’s really starting to come together!

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The soapstone arrived in a semi truck on Monday. The driver hopped out of the car and immediately said to Matt, “I don’t know how we’re going to do this.” Matt thought he meant “I don’t know how we’re going to move this into your house just the two of us.” But what the guy REALLY meant was, “I don’t even have the right equipment to get this nearly 800 pound monstrosity off the truck.”

So I put on my thinking cap and came up with The Plan. The driver would take the soapstone back to the warehouse 10 minutes away, and hold it there til Wednesday when we could come by with a U-Haul truck. They could then load the soapstone onto our truck with their machine, and we would disassemble the wooden frame and cut up the soapstone right on the truck to make smaller slices that Matt and I could carry into the house. You think I’m good for nothing around here except painting yellow stripes on the walls, don’t you! WELL, THINK AGAIN!

So here is pictorial evidence of how our Wednesday went down.

At ABF to pick up the slabs

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U-Haul pulls through in the clutch

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The nice ABF guy loads up our pallet onto his thinger

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Nearly 800 pounds of awesomeness

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He posed for me on this one

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She’s in!

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Here are the two slabs standing upright in their wooden casing

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They sent some samples so Matt could practice cutting. Very nice gesture.

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At home after disassembling one half of the wooden casing. Taking that apart was actually tougher than cutting and moving the soapstone itself. I left most of this work to Matt and happily stood there holding tools for him.

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Our two slabs!

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Matt putting the diamond blade on the circular saw

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Tape on the bottom of the saw to prevent scratching the soapstone

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The last picture before my camera battery died… right before Matt made the first cut.

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Matt actually only had to make one cut, because the other pieces were light enough for us to lift them. So the remainder of the cutting will happen on Countertop Installation Day, which I believe is fast-approaching! All in all, the whole process was easier than expected, since much of the weight was in the wooden pallet and casing. Once that was removed, it was easy as pie!

But I am taking today off. Ya know… to recuperate.

Today was the fun and exhausting day where we picked up the 759 pounds of soapstone and brought them home to slice up and turn into countertop. But before we get to that…

Last night my friend June came over to help me paint stripes in the breakfast nook. I have yet to erase all of the pencil lines, but I’m already psyched with how it turned out. It’s subtle and calms down the bright yellow that was a bit overwhelming to take in all at once. So thank you, June! And I’m sorry I cut you in half in the picture.

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Also gets me motivated to take down those horrible maroon drapes in the dining room and clean up the breakfast nook window. All in due time, my friends.

My dear parents came out this past weekend to visit us… aka: to be put to work on the house. I was psyched to have my mom teach me how to wallpaper, as she’s kind of the expert on that. Think loud floral wallpaper popular in the 90s – yeah, she rocked that hard. Matt was also excited to have someone just as perfectionistic and detail oriented as himself, my dad, to help him measure and level the cabinets over and over again until they were just right.

Well, they were mostly right. We’re bumping into a few more errors thanks to IKEA, so we will wait a bit longer than we had hoped to finish up the cabinets. But we were very pleased with all that got accomplished this weekend. Enough jabbering, here are some photos of the work we accomplished this weekend, the guys hanging cabinets, and the girls hanging wallpaper. Also, HOW CUTE is the yellow bird wallpaper? Thanks, Caitlin, for the tip-off!

Also, a HUGE THANK YOU to my parents for all their help this weekend. Eight hands made lighter work, for sure.

Installing Cabinets:

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Hanging Wallpaper:

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This room off the kitchen used to house more kitchen cabinets and the refrigerator. We’re going to turn it into the laundry room. We started by laying liner paper which was a PAIN IN THE BUTT. But we were papering directly on plywood, so felt it would make a smooth surface. The next day we started papering the birds, after realizing we wouldn’t have enough to go around the whole room. So wainscoting will go 2/3 of the way up the wall, and will be painted gray with a white chair rail. I’ll also be adding wainscoting to the ceiling and painting it white. The area on the wall that we wallpapered around will have the hanging cabinets that the previous owners had up. I’m just going to paint them white. Then underneath the cabinets will be the washer and dryer. I think it will be nifty when it’s done, though it may take a while. But that’s fine, cause Matt needs time to grow to love the birdcage wallpaper!

We also got the chance to assemble our new table and chairs for the breakfast nook. We only got two chairs, because the table will slide into a corner where Matt is going to build us a built-in bench for more seating and under-seat storage.

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And that pretty much gets you up to date.

I told you a while ago that we found original wood floors in the kitchen under 4 layers of linoleum and a layer of plywood. I believe I also told you how backbreakingly difficult it was pulling up that old floor. And then there was a layer of sticky black asbestos that had to be removed.

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We opted to sand that sticky black stuff straight off. I believe I told you that we were going to hire somebody to come and refinish the floors in here. Well, we realized we’d have one wood floor in the house that looked awesome, and all the other wood floors walkin around looking pretty beat up. So we decided to be brazen and paint the wood floors! GASP!

I’ve seen this all over the place in magazines throughout the years, and I love how it looks, but would never have the guts to do it unless I had some pretty beat up floors. Which I have! We’re going to paint the floors charcoal grey with an oil-based paint and then throw some polyurethane on top for good measure. Then, if we should ever get the hankering to refinish all of the floors in the whole house, we could strip the paint, sand them a bit more and they’d be ready to go.

So yesterday we sanded. Actually, I sanded while Matt played plumber and fixed a number of other things in the house. After four hours I got it down to a level that will be paintable, and got up all of that sticky black linoleum! We’ll wait a few weeks until we’ve installed cabinets and countertops before painting the floors, but they will be MUCH easier to keep clean in the meantime. As you can see in the last picture, we have a place that needs to be filled where the wall we knocked down stood. Matt’s going to salvage some wood that would have been under the stove to fill in that hole.

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“After” pictures hopefully coming soon!