This week at the duplex

What a week! I've never had a more productive Christmas break. I was off the entire week of Christmas, which was lovely. We spent every day but Christmas working at the duplex.
We mudded, primed, textured, and painted our way through the break.

Texturing the walls

The more work we do in the apartment, the more we see what a shoddy job the past owners did when they got the house ready to sell. Apparently it worked, since we didn't notice a lot of the things until we had already bought the house. But it's pretty pathetic when our first-time DIYer drywalling, mudding, and painting looks loads better than what they did. We would have preferred not to paint such a bright white color everywhere, but we didn't want to repaint the entire apartment, and the existing paint was very white.

 

Painted wood paneling

We also had to order all the cabinets, tile, and windows for the apartment last week. Measuring and diagramming the kitchen area to figure out what cabinets we would need took some time and patience. You have to plan around appliances, outlets, plumbing, and quirky structural components. It ain't easy.
After we had already ordered the cabinets, I realized I had accidentally reversed our kitchen's width and length dimensions :( Luckily, it didn't affect things too much. But it caused some temporary aggravation, at least on my end...Brandon is really good at rolling with the punches.
We ordered in lots of unfinished cabinets from Home Depot. We had combined their delivery with our tile and windows, since our little Civic doesn't quite fit the 72" windows, 84" pantry, or even the 24" cabinets. We were told all of our stuff would be delivered on Friday first thing. I planned my work schedule around their delivery, since we really wanted to get the tile down and the cabinets stained as soon as possible. We woke up bright and early on Friday, ready to spend our day staining and tiling on our knees.
Home Depot had other plans for us.
We were already in Springville, waiting for our delivery, when they called to say they wouldn't be able to deliver them until Saturday. They said we'd be the first delivery Saturday--probably around 9. So we woke up early on Saturday and got all ready for our day. We waited. And waited. They delivered our stuff at 2 p.m.

Unfinished cabinets, waiting to be stained

Once we began staining on Saturday evening, we found that three cabinets have some kind of goop on them that prevents the stain from taking. Home Depot is in the doghouse.

We've needed a LOT of tools during this renovation. Brandon's grandpa is one of the smartest people ever, and he has every tool you could imagine, so we've relied on him quite a bit during this process. He's an engineer, and boy, does his brain work like one! He's very detail-oriented, and very thorough in his explanations of how to do things properly. He came over to see the place and help us plan for tiling. He also gave us his very own invention--the CurlyQ--which gets the paint out of paint rollers. Check it out on Amazon. Sa-weet.

Once he left, we disassembled, sanded, dampened, and stained cabinets until midnight. I broke through two pairs of latex gloves unknowingly, which means I came out looking like I killed a horcrux. 

My horcrux fingers and the first coat of stain on the cabinet doors

Today we're doing a second coat of stain. Things are coming along...more slowly than we'd like, but HGTV has taught me that that's just how it goes.
Next projects:
-Coating the stained cabinets
-Installing cabinets and countertops
-Tiling