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Hey, ever think you pushed “publish” on your post but didn’t? Oops. Going out one day later than expected, but let’s all pretend it’s Friday once more…
Yeah, yeah, yeah… it’s Friday and not Wednesday, I know. But still – Dueling DIY post comin’ at ya.
While adding the hardware to all of the cabinet doors in the kitchen is a bit slow-moving, I have found time in the week to get to some of the smaller things, such as adding the little foam buttons to all of the cabinet doors (to keep them from scraping the new paint or slamming too harshly onto the cabinet).
Before they were painted, there were old ones stuck on the doors that had to be pried off. I would have preferred to find a set that came in white for the upper cabinets, but these came in each hinge pack as I put the doors back on, so I went with free. :)
I also used some white silicone caulk to see if it would fare better than the latex/silicone product I last tried to get my counters finished up. Let me just say, I hate using silicone caulk. Hate it. The good news here is that the caulk isn’t turning yellow like it did last time… but the bad news is, it’s a lot harder to scrape off of the counter, and annoyingly gooey, so my pace is much slower this time around. The stickiness of the silicone also runs the risk of the white caulk working its way into the grain of the wood, which wasn’t happening with the latex product at all. I can’t use tape on these counters because they are oiled, so I have to think of a new solution or spend hours scraping away at the butcher block to get a clean white line with the silicone. I may try to smear a bit of clear caulk right at the wall’s edge to give me a buffer between the white silicone and the wood (which needs to be white to fill in the visible gap between the tile and counter – clear all over would still look like a gap). We’ll see. Overall, it’s kind of frustrating to be close to finishing up things and to be delayed by something that isn’t supposed to be this hard.
I’m also making progress on getting all the faceplates back onto the outlets. Despite how thin the tile is, the installation still caused the outlets to no longer be flush with the new wall depth. I considered (and even purchased) outlet extenders, but experienced a wiggle problem thanks to a few errors that I made when cutting the holes for each outlet too large (the prongs on either side of the outlet had nothing to sit directly onto). I found an easy solution that I think will be helpful to the next person who makes the same mistake, so I’ll share those steps soon in a separate tutorial. UPDATE: Here’s that post.
Oh, and yeah – the tripod was all the way upstairs, so I improvised a little. Paper towel rolls are quickly becoming one of my most versatile tools. #bloglife
And not that it has anything to actually do with the kitchen exactly, but today is one of those hodgepodge kind of days, so I’m including this little update. While I was at Lowe’s picking up a handful of supplies, I also grabbed a back of mulch and prettied up the mailbox once more. The flowers I planted this spring are starting to grow in nicely thanks to all of this rain and sunshine flip-flopping we’ve had lately, but so are the weeds, so I had to do some flowerbed maintenance before all of my work went to waste.
Mulch makes everything better, doesn’t it? This weekend, Dad will be coming over to help me sort out some of my bigger to-do list items, so I’m pretty excited about the productive future that lies ahead. What are your weekend plans?
I’m looking forward to your post on outlet extenders.. I didn’t have a good experience with them on a project I did and I still have an outlet in my bedroom that is waiting to be updated with extenders!
Mulch is great, but it can also prohibit some of your plants and flowers from spreading.
Mulch does look good! What type are you using? I’m kinda a newbie in planting stuff, just started out with a small flower bed.
I get the kind that says it’s colorfast (won’t look dead and gray in a few months). Dark brown.
I just clicked over to your blog for the first time and coincidentally, I just learned the other day that I also tiled my kitchen outlet areas wrong, exactly as you did! I’m looking forward to seeing your fix :D