Rocky Point

Before our kitchen remodel project really got going, we were invited by David and Jayne (my aunt and uncle) to come with them to their house in Rocky Point! They would be there for a week, but it only worked for us to go for the weekend (General Conference weekend). We still jumped at the chance though and are so glad we did!

We headed down to Mexico on Friday afternoon when Jarom had finished work for the day. Jayne had said that it is much easier to find the house before dark, aaaandd we really didn't want to be driving around Mexico at night. So we left at about 2:45pm and it's a 4 hour drive so that would give us a little bit of extra time to get there before dark. Well we didn't account for it being a Friday afternoon/evening and a lot of people heading down for the weekend. In Why we had to wait in line about 30 minutes to get our Mexican insurance and then there was about a 30 minute line to get into Mexico! So we were getting a little stressed about getting there before dark. Oh and since we were in Mexico (international) we couldn't use data on our phones without getting charge huge fees. And we couldn't text or call anyone. And we had never been to their house before (well I had a long time ago but had no clue how to get there). So we were using screen shots I had taken of some directions Jayne had written out with landmarks to look for and directions that they had gotten us from Google Maps (those had street names but the directions were in Spanish...). It was dark by the time we got to Rocky Point and pretty much impossible to see any street names so we were pretty much relying on the landmarks we were told to look for. One of the landmarks was a police station. We found that pretty quickly, but none of the other landmarks were nearby. We circled that area FOREVER looking for the rest of the landmarks to try and figure out where to go. After almost an hour of being lost we finally pulled into a gas station and Jarom asked them how to get to the neighborhood we knew the house was in (I am so glad he speaks Spanish). Turns out we weren't looking for a police station. We were looking for a fire station. And it was about 2 more miles up the road. Once we finally got those directions we found the house pretty quickly!

We had such a fun time down there! Molly LOVED the water and the sand. She played hard all day long. Jarom went out kayaking, sailing, and quad riding with Uncle David. It was so fun to spend time with family and relax for a little bit! We can't wait to go back (especially now that we know how to get there...)

Kitchen Remodel (Part I)

Pretty much ever since we moved to Tucson, we have been working on remodeling our kitchen! When we sold our Mesa house, we made a nice chunk of change that we decided we would use to do some changes in our new house. It was a debate between the backyard and the kitchen (bet you can't guess who wanted to work on what) but after a week or so of living in the house, the kitchen won! So we had enough cash to get the supplies, but not pay for any labor. So we did EVERYTHING ourselves! Electrical, plumbing, cabinet installation, floor installation. Everything.

It's not that the kitchen was super outdated or anything (the house is only 5 years old...), it was just horribly designed. It is a massive space, but there were hardly any cabinets in the room! And the "pantry" was embarrassingly small. The door to it was seriously half a door. I've never seen a door the size it was. So here are some before pictures:

By the time I remembered to take "before" pictures we had already done some work. So originally the fridge was in the spot between the cupboards and the pantry. We decided to move the fridge to that blue wall to get some more cabinets and counter space in, but to do this we had to knock out the pantry and redo some electrical and plumbing stuff. The light switch that controls the lights over the main cooking area was originally right where we wanted to move the fridge. So we moved that switch down to where the other switches already were and while we were at it, Jarom put a ceiling fan in the kitchen and added a switch for that. It's best for a fridge to be on it's own circuit, so Jarom did some rewiring and put in a new outlet on its own circuit where we wanted the fridge to go. He also had to move some outlets up so they would not be blocked by the new cabinets. We also had to drop a new water line down to where the fridge is now which actually turned out to be the easiest part of this whole thing (Jarom thought it was going to be super difficult)!

The next project was to tear out the pantry. This wasn't super difficult, just messy. Along with tearing out the pantry, we had to remove all of the old cabinets and counter tops.

Over Labor Day weekend, we took advantage of some sales, sat down with a designer at home depot, and got a bunch of cabinets and counter tops ordered! We decided we wanted to do a white kitchen. I love the crisp and clean look of it! So we went with white cabinets, a white/gray marble looking counter top (it is laminate), a dark gray tile backsplash, light gray walls, and a dark wood floor. We are a month into this project and we are so close to being done! Next post will be about the installation of the cabinets!