You may remember the last time I talked about our kitchen I shared how we decided to go with IKEA cabinets and before that, I had shown you the demo and remodeling that went down to even out some of all the ceiling heights I talked about here. That's when I showed you this photo:



We were in a time crunch because the kitchen was delivered just before Christmas and their stipulation for getting 40% off the counter tops, was that they had to be installed before January 31st. Installed! Yes.  And it would take 10 days or so to manufacture the counters after they had templated for them. Which meant that the base cabinets had to be installed before January 20th.



Here we have been working hard at doing just that.



Usually IKEA suggests that you use their legs under the cabinets and screw on them until the cabinets are level. We chose instead to instal only the front legs and then put the back of the cabinet on a ledge like you see here. Our floors were not terribly even, so this method was a much easier way to do it and would involve a lot less leg fiddeling <---- seems to be my word of the week.

So did we make in time? Tune in next week...



Just kidding! Of course we made it. Here are the counter top guys making a template for the Caesar stone counter tops. Ikea set the whole thing up. We just had to call and schedule the appointment. We chose the counter top that is called "Oyster". It reminds me a bit of Terazzo, but in a more subtle way.

The counter top people could not stop talking about how level our cabinets were, while they were making their templates. They told us that contractors usually only check for level front to back, but not side to side and on the bias as we had done with our cabinets. Little did they know that not only had we used our level in every direction known to man, I had also subjected each frame to my own little marble test.

You see, after living in a bunch of rentals with out-of-level counter tops, I just wanted to be able to put a marble on my new counter and have it not roll off. Is that too much to ask?



Here you see the cabinets have gone in for the new breakfast bar. We used the tall 12 inch deep upper cabinets, which we installed as base cabinets. In the original kitchen there was just a wall under the bar top. This house needed more storage like no-body's business.

These cabinets are being used for B's school materials on the left and the right side cabinet, I use for candles and napkins. You might have seen this post where I de-cluttered and re-organized my candles and napkins back in January (scroll down just below the picture of the car).



Here is a random picture from that same time where you can see the drywall had just been installed around our new windows in the living room. And you now know where we toasted our bread...

But where did we cook in the meantime you ask?



We had pulled the old stove out to the middle of the kitchen, but still plugged in. Here B is cooking up a storm.



And here you see the new oven, fridge and pantry wall. That fridge used to be over where you now see an opening to the hall way - where the small ladder is.



Here is a wider shot of our dining room and kitchen and you can see that we used our camping table in the dining room for a kitchen table - don't judge the mess. Actually... just go ahead.. ha ha. Phew... such is life during a remodel.



Here the counter tops have been installed and we are in the middle of installing the roll front cabinet in the corner. That is dh and our contractor is lending a hand lifting it up. We had chunky shelves built between the roll front cabinet and the wing wall. They will be shown in the reveal post. 



Here the new fridge comes rolling in. And check out our handy make shift blue tape handles on the left of the picture. That was before I settled on the handles we have now. We went with the TYDA handles from IKEA.



Here the butcher block return on the bar has been installed and most of the flooring has gone in. It is now around May/June of 2011. We were working on so many things simultaneously, so as soon as the kitchen was functional, the finishes took a bit longer and we were waiting for the flooring to go in as well.



Instead of traditional upper cabinets, we built some double cabinet out of two horizontal cabinets first with white filler panels around them, then hung them as one cabinet. Here you can see dh holding one of those cabinets while I take a picture. We put up two of these, one on either side of the vent hood.

You can also see that the hood vent has a square extension piece installed on top of it which makes it look like the hood extends all the way up to the ceiling. This was a look I had really been wanting for our kitchen.

We bought the extension piece, but it was one inch too tall for our space, so what to do?

I searched around for a while and then found a place that cuts metal and powder coats truck beds (!), and I took it over to them and for $40 or so, they cut off a 1 inch strip of the metal all the way around so the extension piece fit perfectly.

Here it is without the extension piece so you don't have to scroll back up a whole lot. And here you also see our induction cook top has been installed.





Here we are using dh as a feather weight to hold down the bar top - NUMERÄR from IKEA. This was also 40% off due to the special they ran. I think we ended up saving a little over $3000 on counter tops with that deal. Woot!!



Here is the progress picture again. You notice the absence of the uppers and the shelves and such... but this was the nicest progress picture I had before the reveal.

The reveal... that's for next time. Maybe next Friday?

Have you ever installed IKEA cabinets? Did you think it was easy? Hard? or just time consuming? I think putting the cabinets together and installing them is pretty easy. The labor intensive part is cutting all the filler pieces. Especially when you don't have a table saw. Do you have a table saw? What do you do when you need filler pieces cut?

Back in 2005, I met a bunch of women through an annual scrap booking contest - Hall of Fame - that was held by the national scrapbooking magazine Creating Keepsakes.

For this contest, you had to create ten layouts for your entry. Some of the layouts had assigned challenges such as "You must use 10 photos, journaling and 3 embellishments". Others were "freebies" with no restrictions other than keeping within the layout format. And you know how I love a good challenge, right...

After sending in an entry, everyone waited around for weeks and then they announced 25 winners and 50 runners-up. I was lucky to be in the group of the 50 honorable mentions in 2005. But even better, I met, "online-met", 40 of the 50 runners-up and we started hanging out online and it was the most extraordinary, creative, idea rich environment I have ever experienced. <---- the real prize.

Some of the women in this group have gone on to becoming (extremely talented) photographers. One of them is Mindy!

This week, Mindy just opened up her new store Photographer PLAYground, where she sells her Photoshop and Photoshop Elements Actions.



Are you familiar with actions? They are kind of like a tape recording of a set number of steps that you want to repeat over, and over, and over. You can make them yourself in Photoshop by hitting "record", then do all the steps you want to record, then hit "stop". Then once you want to re-use your action, hit "play" and it repeats all the steps you recorded.



Mindy gave me one of her action sets, the Fashion Action Set, to try out. And let me tell you, that I am a pretty advanced Photoshop user (I say ever so humbly ), and I was simply blown away. Not only are these actions very simple to use, they are not just your garden variety, one trick pony either.

They are very well made and put together actions that don't mess with your original image layer - they play and go into their own layers giving you ample opportunities to fiddle with all the settings. If that's what you want.



Best part: in most cases you don't even have to fiddle if you don't want to. Click play, ... done!

I took that chicken photo at my friends house a couple of weeks ago. For that B/W photo, I just opened it up in Photoshop. Hit play on the Brown Newspaper BW action, watched in amazement as all the steps played out. That was it.

Let's look at some more images I played around with...



Here is a giraffe photo from our trip to the Living Desert in Palm Desert in January. It's SOOC (Straight Out Of Camera - all my "before" pictures in this post are SOOC by the way)



Check out that sun flare! I think this is one of my favorite actions in the set. You can choose left, right or center for the flare. Love it!







I put the name of the actions I used right on each photo as you can see. You can combine several actions to get even more effects.





I took these photos a couple of months ago. Isn't he cute? I just love to shoot portraits. It's one of my favorite things. If you ever see me with my camera out and you need a portrait for Facebook or whatever, I am always game for a mini shoot! Just ask!



A little color boost



I just love this chocolate b/w.





And soft breeze b/w .... sigh.



I think the Ethereal color looks so good on a picture that has perhaps to much bold color in it. It dulls out the sharp colors. I really like that as a fun effect.



Marilyn in Palm Desert



I asked her to do different poses, but she wouldn't...



Chocolate Coconut Oatmeal truffles recipe





Remember my back yard with LED and solar?



Here it is, a little greener, a little smoother.



Favorite alert! I took this picture on a field trip to our local wild life sanctuary. I love this picture even SOOC, but check it out with each of these three actions before I combined all of them into one at the end:



The Ethereal color gave it a little sun flare as well.





And here all three actions combined, which then created a double sun flare - swoon.



Makes that picture look almost out of this world. Is that Snow White over there behind the tree?

As you can see I tried several different ones, and I didn't even try them all.

Mindy's photography is some of the best. Check it out on her Facebook page. It's so beautiful.

Photographer PLAYground is having an opening special during all the rest of May, if you should be so inclined.




Disclosure: I was given the Fashion Actions set for review. All opinions here are my own.

When you download the actions they come with full, easy to understand instructions on installation etc. Installation was easier than I thought - I even learned a new way, reading the instructions. A couple of clicks and you are ready to go.

Have you ever used an action on your photos before? Do you record your own actions for some of the more repetitive steps? Do you like to play around with your photos?

Want to see the layout Creating Keepsakes picked from my entry for their HOF 2005 publication? Here it is:



In unrelated news: Dh thought I was taking waaaaaay to long to post the next kitchen update, so I will get to work on on that for tomorrow!