Actual progress was made today, friends! Actual physical construction progress on The Kitchen! We didn’t touch the fridge or painting or any little details, but took apart this and this and reconstructed them into the main body of the kitchen. Both from the ReStore, remember. The nightstand and the bookshelves will both be used almost completely to make the oven, sink / range, two sets of side shelves, and a backsplash topped with a wee ledge. I am so freaking excited that we can salvage almost every scrap of those white shelves and make them into something – I didn’t expect that to happen, and thought we’d just be cutting the sections of side shelf that we needed and junking the rest.

The top of the nightstand is really thick, and when the “sink” fit into the first cut attempted I think the whole Cheat River Valley could hear us yelling excitedly and taking turns giggling while we just stood and admired and “aww”ed. This is going to be one damn cute play kitchen.

A good day. Now that Walt has lent us hours and hours and hours of his serious carpentry skills (if you look at the below photos and think “wow, it looks like he did most of the work”, you’d be right), Mikey and I can tackle a bunch of the other stuff. More photos to come. More bouncing off the walls to be done.

Bow-tie-pasta factory: $.36 x 4 sheets of felt
Vintage glass cabinet knobs: excavated from a coffee can in Pa’s workshop (um, what can I make with the other 10? I have lots of ideas…)
Daydreaming & attention to detail: cost of graph paper & beer & hours spent browsing flickr
Backsplash tiles: $.15 x 9 tiles from the ReStore; $.83 x 2 sheets of scrapbooking paper; resin that I already had
Mini-colander that I’ve been unable to find used for months: $6.99 at Marshalls
Actual skills & attention to safety: cost of lunch at Black Bear; patience of a saint

…because of bowls. Mixing bowls, not the smoking kind.

It’s genetic. I blame my mother. She does mixing bowls. Her best friend does chairs.

Both of these things gave me near-death-experiences in goodwill this week. I spotted each one from far away when there was another customer equidistant from and approaching The Bowls in the opposite direction. In both cases the person wasn’t even looking at the same side of the aisle, nonetheless, I freaked out internally and had to make myself walk calmly towards the prize instead of making a mad dive to close the gap. My heart stopped beating for those few moments. I swear. I don’t want to end my lifetime record of No Broken Bones over a mixing bowl, but I might have some heart issues that need addressed.

On the left is a delicious green pyrex for $2.99. I want a set just like my Ma’s (it’ll make my cooking better, right?) and I already don’t have the right colors in the right sizes but that’s okay. The green bowl’s maiden voyage in its new life was whipping up some blueberry muffins and they already tasted better than any blueberry muffins I’ve ever made (i.e. more like Ma’s.)

On the right is a 49-cent stainless steel beauty that is going to be… if you can guess… perfectly in.every.single.way what I’ve been scouring thrift shops for all summer…

…Hazel’s kitchen sink! Yip yip!!

I daresay that, aside from some accessories that I can’t resist, I might actually pull of the entirely-thrifted-destashed-or-handmade-kitchen. So far so good in the construction department. I have thrifted or pilfered every single thing.