The Adventures of the Kitchen Remodel

So since we've moved in we've been working on our kitchen remodel. After our experience with re-doing the cabinets that were downstairs we decided it was worth it to just buy new cabinets. It took us way too long to finish re-doing the ones downstairs. First, we had to take them down without breaking them. Then, we sanded them down and stained them the color that we wanted. Then, we re-installed them. We also wanted to just make our own cabinet faces because we wanted the "mission - style" cabinets. So we had to cut those out and glue them together to make the new faces and of course stain those. Then we added new hinges and handles and finally it was finished. To the right and up is a picture of our basement kitchen remodel.

All that work led us to just buying new cabinets for our upstairs kitchen remodel. It was a lot easier and it actually turned out for the better. We wanted the Honey stained Alder ones, which compared to the oak ones that you just had to stain yourself would have been a $1000 more expensive. So, after much deliberation we decided to go with the cheaper oak ones and just to stain them ourselves, but at the last minute John decides we should go ahead and get the Alder ones to save us the trouble of staining and working on those. So he buys them and a few days later when we traveled to another Lowe's to buy the remaining cabinets that we would need we saw that they had them on sale for %50 off! We were not about to pay full price for all the other ones we had already bought. We said we'd just return the other ones and get all of them at the Bountiful store where it was %50 off, but Katrina decides that there is no harm in just asking the other store if they'd just refund our money since it would save us a lot of trouble and they would still have good customer service. So we call and ask and they agreed. So all of our Alder cabinets ended up costing us only around $700, which was even cheaper than the oak cabinets that we would have had to stain! Yay! Below, is a picture of the work in progess. Notice, the loveliness of the Alder cabinets. :)

Also, due to the value of granite countertops we decide to go with granite. We've haven't been able to do those yet, but we will be installing those tonight. We are only a few days away from being finished with our new kitchen (Katrina is way excited because that means she won't have to wash dishes in the tub anymore). Victoria has been helping out a lot as well. She helps to get the old adhesive off of the wall (well, she thinks she is, but she's really just cleaning it with a wipe) and sweeps the floor because John makes it all dusty in there. Isn't our Victoria the best?

Questionaire Extraordinaire

So I stole this from Kristen who stole this from someone named Emily. So yeah, it's just stolen.


What's his name? John Bolton Riley
What's her name? Katrina Marisol Riley
How long have you been together? since August 2004, so 3 years 7 months
How old is he? 27
How old is she? 22
Who eats more? It depends on who is more hungry at the time
Who said I love you first? John
Who is taller? John
Who sings better? Uh, perhaps a music person could tell us
Who is smarter? Street smarts: Katrina, Book smarts: John
Whose temper is worse? I blame the lack of chocolate on my mood swings
Who does the laundry? Katrina
Who does the dishes? Katrina
Who sleeps on the right side of the bed? It depends on the situation
Who pays the bills? Victoria. Her face sells millions of photos a year
Who cuts the grass? Whoever gets tired of the long grass first
Who cooks dinner? Katrina
Who drives when you are together? John
Who is more stubborn? Suprisingly enough John is...I never thought I'd meet someone more stubborn than myself
Whose parents do you see the most? John's because John's dad travels a lot for business
Who kissed who first? John kissed Katrina
Who asked who out? John asked Katrina
Who is more sensitive? Katrina
Who wears the pants in the family? Katrina wears pants more often because she gets cold. We try to make decisions together.
Where did you meet? Where every mormon couple meets...Provo, Utah
What was the first thing you said to your husband? "Your blender is broken?"
Where was your first kiss? First half-kiss was in the movie theatre, but first real kiss was at John's house
Did you have a long or short courtship/engagement? We were engaged for 5 months...is that long or short?
Where did you get engaged? At a park
Where were you married? Bountiful Temple, Bountiful Utah
What do you do now? Katrina is a mom, sells stuff online (which is what she's supposed to be doing right now), and remodels our homes. John is an engineer at a pharmaceutical joint and also remodels our homes.