Waiting for Final Backsplash Tile, Painting Baseboard

While I'm waiting for the rest of the beige tile to come in for the kitchen backsplash, we spent some evenings this week painting base moulding. (Thanks go out to Kenny for helping with that!) I called the trim carpenter to start lining up his return visit to install it. He said that late next week would be the earliest he could plan on.

I had less bas moulding than I remembered. This is probably because we already painted some of it and he installed it already in the bedrooms. I decided to put two coats of paint on the base since it will be prone to scuffing and scraping down next to the floor.

The cabinet company is ordering my office furniture soon. (I thought it was already on order, but that's the way it goes sometimes...) Torrie came out to finalize a few details this week and get a deposit from me. She's not sure if she'll give the job to the same carpenter in Dallas that built my kitchen cabinets because he's been so backlogged with work lately. She may assign it to another wood furniture company they deal with that has started to do more custom work. I'm also looking at getting the dresser to go in my master closet. I need to tell her tomorrow to go ahead and order that piece.

I've been visiting a lot of furniture stores recently to look for a bed with nightstands, a coffee table, an end table, a kitchen table, and possibly an entertainment center/pedestal. Ugh, a lot of decisions in all of that. I plan to visit one more place tomorrow. It's across the river close to my cabinet makers. I'll stop by their shop again to look at their tables and other things.

Tiling the Backsplash

I've worked on the tile backsplash in the kitchen for several days now, totalling about 21 hours. It's a much slower process than I assumed it would be. I guess I should have expected this because of how long it took to tile the floors. But what makes it even slower is that each and every tile needs to be cut. This is due to the pattern I've chosen to use and the cramped, oddly-shaped space between the counter and the cabinets. A space that's also disrupted by the window and the rectangle "frame" desgin that's going above the stove.

I'll have pictures soon. So far, I'm only working on the one wall with the stove. I want to finish that first and then grout it so I can hang the range hood. At this point, I've finsihed under the cabinets from the fridge to the little window. I still have to finish the whole space where the range hood will be.

Touch-up Painting

The tile I ordered for the kitchen backsplash isn't supposed to get here until next weekend. I had planned to have it earlier, and I would have worked on that this weekend. Since I couldn't, I concentrated on touching up walls and ceilings with paint. My mom's cousin also came over to patch up the sheetrock where the plumber had to run the second line. He also did small touch-ups where there were lines or defects in the original sheetrocking job.

My dad worked on the endless job of touching up the crown moulding: filling nail holes with putty, sanding, and painting over them. I touched up the walls of four rooms in the house. That leaves 4 or 5 others to go.

I also hooked up the blu-ray player to the big TV. I wanted to make sure the picture was good both when I looked it up directly to the TV and when I hooked it up via the long HDMI cable I have running over to the media closet. In both cases, it worked great! Good thing, because it would be really difficult to run a new cable now. The foam insulation in the attic makes it very difficult to get to the conduit running down that wall.

I also sealed the grout in the TV room and foyer tile, along with 4 closets that hadn't been sealed yet. With the TV and blu-ray player in place, I got to do this job while Star Trek II played on the big screen! Ahh, life's simple pleasures...