malshag!org

It’s been a little over a month since I’ve last posted, and with good reason, everything’s gotten hectic.

E was brought on board at a great job, which means L went into daycare. Though he is benefiting greatly from socializing with other kiddos, it’s still extremely difficult to leave him in anyone else’s care after being by his side every day for a little over a year.

Having someone else deal with his allergies has always been a big worry, he’s very sensitive to a wide variety of food ingredients. The first day he was in daycare, despite us bringing particular things to eat and stressing the importance of his diet, he somehow wound up with a cheese cracker and a subsequent rash on his face. We luckily equipped them with Benadryl and a dosing chart, so he wound up okay. It was, however, enough to freak us both out and make us second guess everything.

He’s become a very, very happy little guy. He’s accumulated a medium sized arsenal of toys, and runs around the house with a few of them causing mayhem and destruction. He’s figured out how to open the latches on the dog food container, the result of which should be self-explanatory (as should the need for heavy items on top of the dog food container from then on). Since the day he entered daycare, we’ve taken to bathing him every night to get the cooties off, and he loves every second of it.

We’ve tossed around the idea of having him sit for some portraits recently, and just can’t bring ourselves to do it. Though it would be great to have a nice photo or two of him, as hardcore DIY people we can’t justify spending a few hundred dollars per sitting for a one-off. We decided it would be better to take what we would spend on a photographer, and buy a DSLR camera. We got a deal on a Nikon D40 that we simply could not pass up. This way, we won’t just have a photographer’s perfect photo of him once a year or less, we’ll have great photos of him frequently throughout his whole early life.

We headed down to Austin for Halloween, as our friend got married to his longtime girlfriend on Halloween night. I was asked to be in the wedding party, an invitation I was honored to accept.

L and E spent a lot of time in the hotel room, L unfortunately came down with an ear infection right as the trip kicked off. We arrived in Austin at 2am Thursday night, and our first night was spent consoling a screaming child followed by a 7am trip to Walgreen’s to buy a cool mist humidifier.

Within twelve hours of a visit to a pediatric association’s evening doctor group, L’s penicillin kicked in and the difference was like night and day. By the next afternoon, he was dressed up in his little skeleton sweatsuit, running around the hotel room.

The wedding was absolutely gorgeous, the venue was way up on a hill overlooking a valley, the view of the entirety of Austin was breathtaking. I got to sneak a photo of our friend spending his last few moments as a bachelor deep in reflection and contemplation.

We met some great people, L enjoyed dropping it down on the dancefloor with the ladies, and our trip home was thankfully quick and uneventful. We cleaned the house thoroughly before we left for L’s party, so we were greeted on our arrival by a clean bed with soft clean sheets.

As I said, from this point on, we finished the rest of the kitchen in less than 48 hours. I was able to fit the door casings, do the rest of the cabinets and countertops, wire the range vent hood, and lay the thresholds at the edge of the door frames.

There are a few things left to do, like replace the ugly teal ceiling fan, original to the house. IKEA was also out of stock on the large doors needed for the stove side cabinet, so we’re going without for a few weeks. On the big bare wall above the sink, we will most likely do some open shelving.

We simply snapped some iPhone photos and uploaded them to Flickr, mainly because we are burnt out. We rushed and rushed to get this whole thing done by the time L’s birthday party rolled around. Now, I don’t want to turn another screw, take another photo, wire another fixture, or even look at the resultant mess of tools and scrap wood in the garage for at least a few weeks. The ceiling fan will get to have its last hurrah.

Overall, we’re quite thrilled so far.

It’s hard to believe that at this time last year we were in the throes of doctor trips and hospital preparations. It was all very nerve-wracking, mostly for me. E seemed to have a calm about her that I envied. I don’t think I calmed down and was able to sleep without worrying, until L was a few months old. After E’s labor, I had a huge new respect for women who give birth.

We had a small party for L on Sunday, some friends and relatives came, most with their children. The party was a resounding success, and what really struck both of us was what a great home we have now that most of the construction is finished.

L didn’t like the cupcakes at all, most likely because they were a lot more sweet than the bananas and sweet potatoes he’s used to.

It’s been a whirlwind weekend, with my mother visiting for L’s first birthday party, and finishing the entirety of the kitchen in roughly two days. I haven’t been this tired or poorly rested since L was two months old.

I had put together enough of the cabinets that I got my time down to ten minutes per cabinet. Despite that, it took me three hours to do the uppers, mainly due to a shitty studfinder that turned the whole stud finding process into a comedy of errors. It began with knocking on the wall to listen for solid areas, and ended with four unneeded drill holes through studless drywall. I finally got pissed off enough that I went to Home Depot and dropped $30 on a studfinder that actually worked. After working on cars, houses, electronics, and everything in between, I’ve found that 80% of fixing anything is having the right tool.

The uppers mount to a rail that’s drilled into the studs. The mounts are standard IKEA keyhole l-brackets.

One of our problems was the placement of the electrical lines for the vent hood. I was able to cut out two small holes in the drywall, feed the lines back through the stud, and down the wall far enough to perfectly line up with the input hole in the hood. We then patched the wall and repainted that section.

Here are the upper cabinets and vent hood, midway through mounting the countertop on the wall of lower cabinets.