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I'm starting to realize why people just drop $$ on new cabinets. Painting cabinets SUCKS.

It's been 2 weeks since I started this project and guess what? I might get to the actual painting part today. First I had to move everything out of the kitchen. Then I took down everything attached to the cabinets/walls, and removed the cabinet doors and shelves and hardware and labeled everything. Then I patched holes and scraped off stickers and figured out what needed fixed. Then I cleaned with TSP. Then I taped everything off with plastic. Then I spent 3 days sanding the cabinet bases inside-outside-upsidedown. 3 days! We have a small kitchen! How does it take 3 days?! Yesterday I did a last wipe down with tack cloth, made some final fixes and doublechecked my tape and plastic, adding a sheet on top to protect the ceiling. I'm finally covering the screws and plugging the shelf holes with dowels in prep for the actual, real painting. This better turn out nice.

Anyway, if you're like me and you think to yourself, "yeah, I can totally paint my cabinets in a week, how hard can it be?" ha ha ha ha ha. However long you think it will take, double or triple it. If I weren't unemployed, I doubt this would be possible.

Once I get to the paint spraying, I think I'll cheer up. The prep work is a no-fun slog.

Okay so now I'm on week four. I am not done, ha ha. I realize now the worst part is painting the cabinet interiors, and also choosing two colors of paint which means more masking and care. I know I'll be pleased when it's done, but it really cranks up the difficulty and time investment. The previous dark interior of the cabinets made it tough to see what was in there, so it's not like this was a purely aesthetic thing. Plus I'm covering up dings and wear marks and whatever else. Still, cabinet interiors are terrible.

I sprayed three coats of enamel undercoater (I'm using rodda paint - good stuff!) on everything, and I've done two coats of the brighter green on the cabinet interiors (after masking off all the exteriors, which took a whole day, after I waited a day to make sure the primer was cured). So I need at least one more coat to get it really solid and even, maybe two if I'm picky. Some of the cabinets are so deep and awkward shaped that it is impossible to spray them evenly, so I have to do a pass with a roller (screwed on an extension stick) to get in there.

The sprayer is working great. I'm glad I had those smaller projects to start with. It's still a learning curve, but I feel like I'm getting professional quality results even if I have to fiddle around. I originally got the model with the gravity feed cup (which immediately fell off the table and broke) and I also bought the bottom feed cup accessory that holds a whole quart. The bottom feed is awesome for larger projects like these cabinets, plus it's much easier to manage because it doesn't feel like it's going to fling itself off the table like a drama queen if you look at it funny.

I'm spraying the shelving in the paint corner I set up in the garage. I rigged up some hooks screwed into furring strips, and then I have a hook screwed into the edge of each shelf. I can suspend about six shelves for spraying at once, and then I have another area set up to hang them for storage and drying. Seems to work fairly well. I'll have to hand paint the edges of the shelves, but it does make the broad areas go very fast. A few minutes of painting, wait 30 minutes for drying.

I was hoping to be done with everything except the cabinet doors by end of tomorrow, because spouse and I are going to spend a couple days at one of the public use cabins and the paint have plenty of time to cure while we're out. But I don't think it's going to happen. It's gaming night tonight and I'm on food so I have to go to costco to get their finest heat 'n serve. Like there's always some errand or activity that interrupts my project mojo. I think I'm going to have to settle for getting all the lighter green paint done (cabinet interior and shelves) and then do the darker cabinet exteriors when we get back. Then I will get my kitchen back! And then I can figure out what I'm doing with the cabinet doors. There's a couple painting/staining ideas I want to mess around with, because naturally I can't just paint the doors a solid color and be done with it. But the cabinets are usable without doors. I'm pretty sick of not having a kitchen.

We figured out the leak in the crawlspace. We didn't use the dishwasher or clothes washer for a while, to let it dry out and to keep an eye on things. It seemed fine so spouse did a couple loads of laundry, and then a few days later we noticed a little water in the bucket. So we were thinking it was a problem with the clothes washer overloading the drain on the rinse cycle. Then we described the problem to one of our gaming friends who is super handyman and he said it sounded weird. That got me thinking - there's two sources of water: water from the pipes or water from the sky. Yup, there's a small vent pipe running up between the walls and sticking up through the roof in that spot. We had to buy a ladder and spouse got up on the roof and confirmed that the seal around the pipe is all busted (probably from the ice buildup over the utility room this past winter). So it's rainwater finding the gaps in the seal, following the vent pipe down and ending up in the crawlspace. Which explains why it was never very much water, and the odd frequency. And it's something easy enough we can fix ourselves. I'm glad we didn't call a plumber to cut open the wall and find out it was a roof problem!

I thought the slappers were doing better but once the weather got nice they went back to their inconsiderate habits. Lately whenever they start getting noisy, I set up the bluetooth speaker in the garage and play bhangra remixes as loud as necessary to drown out their garbage. I have two soundcore speakers that can link wirelessly to play in stereo. So if I have to, I put both speakers in the garage, crank them up facing their house and shut the door. This means they get bhangra remix music interference targeted right up their carport. If they turn up their music to cover, they are blasting the entire neighborhood. I have not needed to hit max volume. I think this has made them more aware that just because they don't see us, it doesn't mean we aren't present, and also we don't like whatever they are playing. The other day I noticed they were gathering for choir practice, but they were doing it in their front yard on the far side, away from our house, so it wasn't nearly as loud. Most of the noise went into the street. Excellent. Yes, if I can't escape your racket, you bet I will fire up the bhangra.

I still really want to get that fence built before winter. I thought we could built it ourselves, easy, but then my arm was messed up for a while. It's more or less back to normal after a couple months, but I'm hesitant to commit to heavy manual labor and injure it again. So perhaps we will get someone to do it, but that means calling around and paying $$ and such ... My focus has been on painting the cabinets, and also figuring out the mystery crawlspace water. But I really need to get on that because there's not much time before the ground freezes again ... The sun is setting at like 10pm. I noticed a shift in the weather a couple days ago and I'm getting that fall anxiety. Better make sure things are stocked up because the dark times are coming.