Home for the summer:

It's great fun having our threesome together again at home. They are such individuals, and each a blessing from Heaven. Welcome back Jacob and Jessica!

House exterior/interior:

We started updating our home last year before the kids came back from BYU for summer break. Here is a picture of the front of the house after we relandscaped part of the front yard (right side) and had the exterior restuccoed.

The next project involved painting/colorizing the bedrooms. Jacob's wall is cranberry red:

Jessica's wall is periwinkle:

Sam's wall is Sage:

The spare bedroom/sewing room wall is vesuvian garnet:

And the master bedroom walls are gingerbread suede and totally tan:

A can of paint fell off a chair in our bedroom and spilled on the carpet. Whoops--what a mess!
Looks like we have a great excuse to put in bamboo flooring this summer.

Here are some shots of the livingroom:

Now let's go upstairs to the family room/loft:

Final Kitchen Pictures
I'm sorry for taking so long to post the final pictures of the kitchen. You will probably appreciate the kitchen more knowing the pain and suffering we went through to remodel. Installation of the cabinets took about 3 days. We then had to wait three weeks for others to cut, polish, and install the granite. The granite installers wanted a perfect fit, and they refused to make measurements until after the cabinet installation. They put black dots all over the cabinets, took pictures, and used image processing to make a perfect fit. Here is an overall shot of the finished kitchen:

Celestine reupholstered the kitchen chairs using two cowhides bought at Tandy Leather. You can see some of the leather in the shot above. Here are several other shots of the kitchen from various angles. Here is a shot of the built-in Subzero refrigerator:

Notice the matching dishwasher that is on the left of the sink so that it does not interfere with the larger size Wolf stove. Also, notice the peninsula with maple corbels. Also, there is no broom in this picture since the broom is in the broom closet that is located left of the refridgerator.

Here is a different angle of the sink. We also decided to install a stainless steel pot rack to give us more space in the cupboards. This was Cel's extremely useful idea. She likes knowing what pots are available for cooking.

Here is a shot toward the stove. My friend Rob Sorensen and I installed the Subzero refrigerator, Vent-a-Hood exhaust, and the 48-inch Wolf stove. We had the stainless steel backsplash for the stove custom-made, and I installed it.

Here is a shot of the built-in, matching china hutch:

Notice the LCD TV next to the china hutch (for watching Oprah and other important TV shows during dinner preparations). The china hutch has a granite counter and matching granite backsplash. Taking pictures of big items in a small room is hard. Here is the china hutch from further away:

I also installed all of the cabinet hardware, which are rustic iron. You can see some of the hardware on the hutch. Here is a close-up of the sink with the 8" granite backsplash. We chose a Franke sink with a Grohe faucet called the LadyLux cafe:

On the right of the sink is a trash compactor. The cabinets are a natural rustic maple with a plantation brown glaze. You really need to see the kitchen in person to appreciate the detail, including the halogen lights, the hidden outlets, the full pull-out, blue motion technology drawers, the slide-out pantry, etc. When you come in May, we will give you another tour. In the mean time, Celestine has continued to repaint and update the bedrooms. I will try to post a few pictures in our next post!

The Floor
I started laying the 20" tile at the same time the electrical was being finished. We replaced our outdated florescent lights with ceiling fans and our track lighting with 12V halogen lights. We hid the halogen lights behind the vegas for mood lighting. We installed under-cabinet lighting, all on dimmer switches, and put an electrical outlet in one of the cabinets for a TV as well as an electical outlet in the china cabinet drawer for charging the cell phone.

I started the floor a little late. I had about a week to remove the old tile and lay the new floor. My deadline was based on the cabinet installation date. We also needed to pick up Jessica and Jacob from school, so I really had to hurry. It took me about a day to remove the old tile, but I suffered nerve damage from excess use of a slam bar. I damaged my carpal tunnel nerves in my wrists and lost feeling in the tips of my fingers. I'm happy to report that after about 8 months, the nerves in my wrist have healed, and I now have feeling in my fingers again.

I needed to determine the tile pattern before laying the tile. We laid out 20 tiles in various patterns, took pictures from the entryway, and debated on which pattern to lay. Here are two of the patterns we liked.

Straight staggered brick lay pattern:
Staggered brick lay on a diagonal (the pattern I laid):
We really liked the last pattern. This was a big change from our old pattern but was difficult to lay. For example, to lay the corner I would need about 20 cuts of tile. I borrowed a wet saw from my friend and started laying tile. The tile was 20" and I layed the tile with a 1/8" grout spacing. The grout was chosen to match the dominant color in the tiles.

Notice the dark color of our stairs leading down from the entry way. The stairs are solid douglas fir and originally were stained dark walnut and finished with a urethane. Cel thought that the stairs dated the house and that we should refinish the stairs and restore the wood to the natural finish. The natural color matches the vegas in the kitchen. So while I layed tile, Celestine used a belt sander and orbit sander and completely stripped the stairs and the original stain. She used a polyacralate to finish the stairs. The polyacrylate does not change the natural color of the wood. Here is picture of Celestine sanding stairs:


The dust was horrible and was everywhere. But the finished product was worth it. Here is the stripped stairway:

And here is the finished product:
We also had to redo all of the custom molding. Celestine and I decided to make the molding ourselves. I used a miter saw and cut 1"x4"x8' boards. Celestine stained the boards with a puritan pine stain and put on a polyacrylate finish.

Here is a shot of the curved staircase; notice the custom molding:
Here is a close-up of the molding:
It was difficult to install the molding around the adobe walls. Here is a picture of the floor about three fourths done. I had to keep laying the floor through the night because of our cabinet installation deadline:

I had to cut the last tile carefully. The tile broke as I attempted to set the tile. I was heartbroken, partly because of lack of sleep and partly because I knew something was wrong with the floor. The last tile was near the curved stairway. I suppose the weight of the stairway was enough to cause the monolithic slab to crack, and the floor was uneven, right where I needed to lay the last tile. I cut another tile, added more mastic and tried to set the tile a second time. The tile broke again.

I wanted to cry and didn't know what to do. Celestine called one of my good friends (Charles Dawson) that I worked with in church. He was the 2nd councilor in the YM presidency (he is in the Stake YM presidency now) and I was his Varsity Scout Coach. He came over with a large level, had me remove about 5 tiles, and he started floating the floor. "Floating the floor" involves using stiff mastic to level out the imperfections in the floor. He told me to get some sleep and finish laying the floor in the morning. I really felt Charles sincere brotherly compassion for me and Cel.

The next morning, I started laying the floor and everything worked out, I even set the last tile! By the time I finished the floor, Charles came by again to check out the floor. As he was checking the floor, I tapped on one of the tiles in the middle of the floor and heard a distinct hollow sound. Charles said that the hollow sound meant that the tile needed more mastic. I was heartbroken as we went around the whole floor and found about seven hollow tiles. The Elder's quorum president and member of the stake young men's presidency heard of my dilema and came to my rescue. We busted-out all of the hollow tiles, and I laid new tiles. Here is a picture of me and Sam getting ready to lay new tiles to replace the hollow tiles that did not set properly:

Finally, the floor was finished. After waiting 24 hours, I gouted the tile. Here is a picture of the final floor.
The above picture was taken before the stairs were finished and the molding was installed. As I was laying tile, Celestine painted the kitchen walls. The color is called "baked-clay" and is intended to give the kitchen a Tuscany look.

Demolition
We put most of the kitchen items in the back bedroom and in the garage, as shown in the picture below. What a mess! Here is the garage with some of the old cabinets and countertops. I used the better cabinets to organize the garage.


Here is the initial kitchen demolition:


Here is what the back bedroom looked like:

We had to put the kitchen table and more stuff down in our livingroom. We didn't realize how much "stuff" was in our kitchen. That's Jared and I at the table, studying Physics.

We put our old stove, refrigerator, and microwave on the back patio. After the remodel, we sold the refrigerator, stove, and dishwasher.

Two buckets became our make-shift outdoor kitchen sink:

Here is a picture of me late into the night removing the last of the ugly tiles:


Here is a sketch of one of my major tasks--moving the gas line and the 240V electrical line down near the floor and over about four feet. The move was necessary for the 48" Wolf duel fuel stove. I also had to move the power for the new Vent-a-Hood, which is required for the large industrial-type stove.


One of our biggest challenges surfaced when I removed the wallboard in preparation for the gas line relocation. Notice the cinderblock foundation in the next picture. No wonder the original gas line was located three feet above the kitchen floor. The cinderblock was filled with concrete and is the foundation for the garage.

In the above picture, notice that I cut a channel in the cinderblock with an angle grinder and a cement blade. The dust was terrible. It filled the entire house with a layer of cement dust. Poor Cel spent the entire night cleaning up after me. I felt so bad.

Here is a picture of channels for three new electrical circuits. I needed to put in a separate circuit for the microwave to satisfy building code requirements. We also put in a separate circuit for our trash compacter. A third and final circuit was put in for cabinet lighting.

Since our home has a flat roof, we had to penetrate the roof to get the three additional electrical circuits. Here is the electrical wiring coming out of the roof top:

Front yard landscaping
Cel and I wanted to remove some dead trees from the front yard and re-stucco the house before demolishing the kitchen. Here is a picture of me with some trees I cut down. Notice the stucco patches on the house too.


The hardest part was removing the stumps.


Here is a picture of the finished front, with Jacob at his GED graduation. Jacob had one of the highest scores on his GED in our state. I guess that makes him valedictorian of the high school dropouts!


Here is a corner of the driveway that Celestine planted flowers in:

March 27, 2005
Our blog is going backwards in time. At the request of Mom Hobbs, I will post our kitchen remodel that we did last year as part of our 15-year plan to stay in our current house until I retire. Before we show you the new kitchen, I need to remind you of what the old kitchen looked like and what we did not like about it. I thought it would be a great adventure to remodel the kitchen, and I wanted to make all the cabinets to save money and to learn a new skill. Here is a great shot of our old kitchen:

The old kitchen looked pretty good when it was all cleaned up. Notice the small 12" tile. I actually laid this tile when we first moved into the house on Sept 21, 1997. I had to remove the linoleum in the kitchen and brown sculptured carpeting in the dinning room. We chose the tile with not much thought except that the color was neutral and it was cheap, $0.99/tile. These are not good reasons for choosing tile, since it is a lot of work to put in!

The white walls and appliances made our old kitchen seem cold. We really wanted to warm up the kitchen, with a more Tuscan feel. The dark cabinets also dated the home, built in 1979. After 25 years, the drawers and cabinets were showing their age. Have you ever had the drawer hardware misalign and continually rub against the cabinet face and make a pile of sawdust? Celestine once started to strip the cabinets to update them for Jared and Jenny's reception. She was going to paint them green, realized we would never finish before the reception, and decided just to touch-up the worn cabinets.

Notice the cell phone charging on the counter. One of the things we did not like about our kitchen was the fact that we had to charge the cell phone on the countertop. In addition, the phone on the wall (below the cabinet in the above photo) needed to be plugged into the same receptacle as the cell phone. We wanted more receptacles. We also wanted to hide the cell phone.

One thing I disliked about our kitchen was the vent above the gas range. The vent returned the greasy exhaust into the room. The plants above the oven, as well as the rest of the plants in the kitchen, had a layer of grease coating the leaves, Yuk! We wanted a vent that would remove smells and grease to the outside of the house (not circulated back into the kitchen). Celestine wanted a larger stove with more room in the kitchen to cook.

Check out this picture dated March 22, 2005. Behind the ridiculously good-looking girls and handsome man is our old refrigerator. We had this refrigerator since 1990. The refrigerator stuck out about six inches from the cabinets. We thought a built-in refrigerator would make the kitchen seem larger.


The next picture shows one of our biggest pet peeves--a broom without a broom closet.

See the broom by the light switch. We knocked the broom over at least three times every day. We wanted to turn the storage area on the left-hand-side of the refrigerator into a broom closet. We would need to make up for the loss of our cabinet space by making the cabinets taller.

Well, I studied how to make cabinets. I downloaded free kitchen architect software to design the new kitchen. I found a friend who was willing to let me use his cabinet making tools. I was ready to design, build, and install my own cabinets. After some serious thought, I decided against it because of lack of confidence and/or ability to do the cabinets in a reasonable amount of time. In addition, I really wanted Cel to like the kitchen, so I decided to contract out the cabinets and granite counter tops to people that have done this repeatedly. Who wants cabinets from a one-time cabinetmaker? Next, I will post some of the kitchen demolition--my true skill.