kitchen

It took 2.5 months, but the kitchen is finally done and we love it! It’s an old house so we didn’t really know what we would find when we tore it down to the studs. There were some definite structural issues, some very uneven surfaces, and even some bowing of the front of the house. We also discovered that the ceiling was sinking, by 4 inches! Our contractor was amazing and propped it up, but not completely because it would have cracked the walls in Lauren’s room (which is right above the kitchen), which Dave redid a few years ago, as well as crack the tiles in the girls bathroom, also a project that we had done recently.

studs from the wall that was diving the laundry room and kitchen

One the wall between the laundry room and kitchen came down we realized that it was built without proper support, so we had to get a beam put in the ceiling, as well as another vertical beam put in the basement to prop up the floor. Thank God we did this project when we did. I can’t imagine what would have happened if we waited another decade.

Wall down, horrible vinyl floor gone, Sheetrock up

We’re so happy with how it all turned out! We have so much more space now and I live on that Center Island. The kids sit there in the mornings for breakfast, and I can talk with them while getting lunches together. We’ve gathered around it for parties, holidays, get togethers with friends, etc.

We doubled the size of the door between the dining room and kitchen, so you can now see and talk with people in the diving and living room. Before the kitchen was really closed off from the rest of the house (which I have to say was not the worst thing… but this is better).

Dave made the bar backslash out of old wine corks (which we have an abundance of)

We’ve passed the midway point of summer, and even though people are already lamenting the end of summer and talking about back to school, we’ve still got time!! We’ve been fitting as much as possible into our weekends to make them all feel like mini vacations.

A few weeks ago we did a weekend in Rock Hall with the Townsends. We had originally planned on spending the whole weekend on the new boat, but it was ungodly hot, so we stayed at the house and just went out for an afternoon sail/swim. It was a ton of fun, as it always is with that crew.

Bella & Lauren
Lauren
Dave and John doing what they do best
Bella, Sophie & Lauren at our favorite Rock Hall spot – the Harbor Shack
Lauren doing the hard work while I relaxed 😉

The next weekend we took the girls to their first real concert – Jojo Siwa. It was a glitter, rainbow, unicorn explosion and they loved every minute of it. We had bought the tickets for Sophie’s birthday, so she was allowed to bring a friend, so she choose to bring her friend Dior.

This past weekend Dave sailed in a regatta called The Governor’s Cup, which is a 70 mile overnight race from Annapolis to St. Mary’s College. The crew left Annapolis on Walt’s boat at 3pm on Friday and arrived at St. Mary’s at 1:30 on Saturday. They were completely exhausted and totally spent, but had a good time (I think) and ended up placing 2nd in their class! Here’s the crew, with and without kids, and their 2nd place trophy.

And finally, we’ve begun construction on our new kitchen!! We’ve been planning since January and demo finally started last week. Our contractor thinks it will take him a month, so in theory we’ll have a spanking new kitchen by the time school starts. Fingers crossed that actually happens! Here are shots after the first day of demo.