This Lo Life

The cabinets were delivered today! Except, some of the accessories did not arrive. We got all of the cabinets with door on them but little things like end panels, the fridge enclosure and more were missing. I notified OC by Design of the issue and am waiting to hear back on the next steps. Despite the delivery issue, I was relieved to have finally received them. I'm still trying to decide if I'm going to install them myself. I was also expecting more cardboard because I read a lot about needing to find ways to get rid of tons of it. This wasn't the case because only the corners of the cabinets had cardboard wrapped around them with plastic wrap holding everything in place. Rick was also over again, helping me to patch more holes in the walls and ceilings. Rick's taught me so much about drywall, patching and construction. Thanks, Rick! We called it quits around noon and I spent the rest of the day with the family, hanging out at the Aquarium of the Pacific . It was...

We made a huge push this weekend to paint the family room in preparation of the cabinet delivery. I put a call out to friends and family for help painting and we were the blessed with help from Paul, Jenny, and Jennifer. Our goal was to paint as much of the kitchen, dining and family rooms as possible before the cabinets arrived so we wouldn't have to do it later. We were able to paint the ceiling in the kitchen and family rooms and prime the walls in the kitchen, dining and family rooms. It was a massive effort and we were so thankful we had help to do it. It could not have been done without the help from others because by this time, I was spending two nights a week plus much of the weekends over the last three to four weeks trying to get the condo to this point. As a result, I was completely burned out going into this painting weekend. At one point, I just could not get up to go back to work because I was so exhausted. I really needed others to help me, especially Allison who h...

We got new shower valves and shower cartridges with the help from AC Plumbing . (They were recommended by my friend, Rick.) After my bathroom valve changing experience, I decided to have all of the angle stops and shower cartridges replaced in the condo. Having already changed the angle stops in the kids' bathroom, I thought I could do them myself. My plan was to have AC swap the cartridges and while they were doing that, I'd work on the angle stops by myself and ask the plumber for pointers along the way. Eddie, the plumber arrived as scheduled and soon after got to work. I, too, got to work on the angle stops. I asked him a few questions about how to work on the stops and he got me going in the right direction. I had not finished changing out the first angle stop before Eddie was done changing both shower cartridges! He saw me struggling with my project, took pity on me and offered to help me change out all seven stops at no extra charge. So we got to work together and we...

Our kitchen cabinets have arrived at the warehouse and are ready to be delivered. Now, I'm really worried because I'm still considering installing them myself and I've never coordinated the delivery of so much stuff. In anticipation of the cabinet arrival, Joel and I got together to try hanging a few of our old cabinets in our garage. This would be our introduction to cabinet installation. We were able to get two cabinets up successfully, after a bunch of broken screws (about a 40% fail rate) and whole lot of learning. I'm still not sure if I'm going to attempt to install the cabinets after this experience because it's real detailed and somewhat complicated work and I've never done such a project. Does anyone have any resources on how to install frameless cabinets?