I'm hip deep in painting the kitchen cabinets. Spouse was supposed to be gone this week, so I thought the timing would be perfect to drag everything out of the kitchen and live off costco food court offerings on paper plates while I finally get rid of the slap-dash grey cabinet paint that the former owner applied with "let's get this house sold" zeal. I have an enamel primer and then the paint, plus I'm applying it with the sprayer (multiple layers, lots of drying time) so I figure it's going to take at least 5 solid painting/drying days, maybe a week to be safe, to make sure everything is cured before I try to put anything back in the cabinets. Then spouse's trip got cancelled, but too late, I'm committed and the board is green. Cabinets must be painted before the end of august while the weather is warm. Mostly it just takes longer now because I have to make sure spouse's things are accessible, maintain his routine, make sure he can get food, and he starts distracting conversations, etc.

In the process of prepping, I figured out we have a water leak. I had to go into the crawlspace to fetch the leftover house paint. I've been dreading it because some of the houses around us have issues with water in their crawlspace (the flippers across the street had that hose dumping into the gutter for months). We don't have a sump pump - Mary says she hasn't had a problem with her house either, so maybe we are the lucky ones? I put a temp and humidity sensor in the crawlspace and it has been steadily creeping up into the 80% range and I've been having nightmares that all the rain this summer has flooded the crawlspace - I'm going to open the hatch and there's going to be a foot of water down there ugh ugh ugh. Well, hooray, the crawlspace is fine, just musty. But then I saw the plywood underlayment is wet where a wastewater pipe from the kitchen sink & washer comes down into the crawlspace, and there's a little water underneath on the plastic vapor barrier, maybe a pint or a quart or so. So I poked around and I think the dishwasher drain backs up and the overflow valve leaks. There's a little water under the sink, and this has clearly been a persistent problem area long before we bought the house because the wood is damaged. The dishwasher drain backs up because the garbage disposal doesn't get run often enough, and that's because (and here's where I am dumb) we had a problem with the GFCI outlet that powers the disposal (there was something about a GFCI outlet not being installed correctly in our home inspection so I assumed that was it). It quit working last year and I couldn't reset it, so I was having to manually plug the disposal into a power strip to operate it, which is a hassle so I wasn't doing it frequently. I've been trying to get spouse to help me replace the switches/outlets so I figured we'd fix it eventually. Anyway, 5 minutes on youtube and I figured out the GFCI outlet wouldn't reset because the disposal switch was off and it wasn't getting power. Yup, flip the switch and the outlet resets and works fine. Fixed a problem I've been clumsily working around for a solid year in like 10 seconds. Womp womp.

I've since run the dishwasher and everything seems okay, as long as the disposal is clear. No leak. I suspect there might also be a problem if we run the dishwasher and the clothes washer at the same time. The waste water might be overwhelming the drain. I've got the underlayment dried out and I'm checking it to see if/when the leak returns. I've got a fan down there and a bucket of damp rid.

Like pulling on a loose sweater thread, getting the kitchen ready for painting is leading me to discover many new fun things. One of the cabinets is not supported on one corner and is no longer level. I'm going to have to devise a way to screw it into a stud. I've spent the whole week just gathering the supplies and prepping for prepping. I took before photos. I've got the cabinet fronts off, labeled and with the hardware in baggies. Then I need to patch any holes/cracks, wash everything with TSP, and then I have to sand all the surfaces to roughen them up. Then I get to mask off the surrounding walls & counter & such. Then, finally, we get to start with the primer. We're gonna be eating a lot of costco pizza at this rate.

I'm painting the cabinet interiors a brighter sea green, and the cabinet exteriors a dark green, and I'm still dicking around with the cabinet fronts to see if I can do some sort of pretty glazing/staining technique to dress up the finish. If it looks like shit then I'll just paint them the same color we painted the front door, which is a bright medium green like Bilbo's hobbit hole door. The color scheme should turn out something like this.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/422986590004787644/

https://www.stlmag.com/downloads/300838/download/Bar_Revision2.jpg

It will be so nice to get rid of that sloppy grey paint. And I want it done right because I don't want to have to do this again. I kinda wish the previous owner hadn't painted anything so I am not forced to work extra to fix her ratchet paint job. The other option is new cabinets and that'll be $$$$. I'm trying to do this on the cheap and it'll still be $200 in good paint, plus the cost of the sprayer, etc.

We've made progress on replacing all the light switches. We're now only 4 switches away from being done. Those old dirty almond toggle switches are out, and clean white paddle switches are in, with nice faceplates. Next we replace the shitty paint streaked duplex outlets. It's not fun fighting with the thick wiring, trying to cram everything back in the wall, but I think it's worth it. Spouse whines about it, but I know he likes the fancy timer switch we installed for the bathroom fans. He said I shouldn't do electrical stuff alone, just in case. Well buddy, that means you get to help.

We got the second light panel up in the project area, and boy, it is sweet. So much light! It's gonna be amazing in the winter.

I caught a second neighbor cat visiting Cat. A ginger this time. Just sitting in the backyard with Cat, chilling, nobody angry. Cat seemed bored and sauntered back in the house, and the ginger stood up on his back legs like, "hey, where are you going? I thought we were friends?" Cat is popular. All the neighborhood cats want to hang out with him.