This week is somewhat busy, all things considered. We have family coming to help us with projects on the weekend, which means that the bedroom that’s currently serving as our cabinet space (lots of fragile things all over the floor surrounding the bed) needs to become a bedroom again by Friday night. Which means that cabinets will be totally painted by Friday.

It’s nice to have a deadline though, and it isn’t an “everything must be finished” deadline, which is helpful.  Just cabinet bases.  So with that in mind, this is what the cabinet bases looked like yesterday morning:

And this is what the cabinet bases looked like by the afternoon:

Putting the doors back on will eventually make the white cabinet picture complete.  I decided not to paint the interior of the cabinets, because sometimes painted cabinets have wood-tone interiors.  It’s not totally unheard of.  And why paint perfectly good shelves if they’re only seen when the door is open?

Even though we’re in splotchy primer stage right now, I like the white paint so much!  It instantly made me feel better about the backsplash and the countertop.  The white appliances even look fresh now.  We already decided the green tile and appliances would stay, since they’re in good shape.  No point in getting rid of things that are relatively inoffensive visually and otherwise do their jobs.  And honestly, I would gladly keep the countertop, too.  Paint is an incredible thing.

What do you eat when your kitchen is being painted and the fridge is in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room?  We went with simple spice-rubbed pork chops, sweet potato fries (baked), and edamame that was basically just warmed up and lightly salted.  It certainly wasn’t a complicated meal, but it was tasty and relatively healthy.  The pork chops had a delicious spice crust on one side, and I loved the fact that I got to just sprinkle on the spices instead of messily smearing it on both sides.  Everybody was happy, happy, happy.

The sweet potato fries were as basic as it comes.  I cleaned the sweet potatoes up a bit, since they came straight from my father-in-law’s veggie garden.  Then I dried them so they would crisp up well in the oven.  I preheated the oven to 450 degrees.  I threw some olive oil and salt and pepper in with the fries on a cookie sheet, mixed with my hands, and put them in the oven for 10-ish minutes per side (more if thicker fries, less if thin-cut fries).  Scott added some cajun spice to his fries, I think.  Or cinnamon and cayenne.  Not sure, really.  Extra spice, anyway.  I liked them with nothing but salt, pepper and brown, crispy edges.

While all of that cooking was going down, Scott was also taking down the studs of our wall.  I know it doesn’t look super cleaned up or polished at this point, but I still like how it’s going.  A lot.

I also primed the front of the cabinet doors yesterday.  I feel pretty lucky, because we have this giant room downstairs that has very little furniture in it at the moment.  We also have a ton of packing paper that makes a brilliant (and free) drop cloth.  The only imperfect thing about the set-up is that sometimes your adorable dog might chase a fly through the room.  He might even chase it over the freshly painted cabinet doors that are laying on the floor.  (NO!)  Fortunately, Peanut and Fly only stepped on cabinet doors that were dry.  Whew.