Kitchen - Day 3 - done

My brother suggested that I add a picture of what the kitchen looked like when I bought my condo originally.

Here it is:

Kitchen - Day 2 progress

HELOC

Yes, I have a HELOC. However, I just got it in October 2007. Before I had a fixed rate home equity loan. It was somewhere in the 8% arena. I switched in October because the market started going south and they talked of interest rates going lower. Plus, the fixed rate home equity loan doesn't give you access to the money once you've paid it down. The HELOC allows you to re-access it when the need arises. Thus, the ability to fund a kitchen refacing. (-;

So, it was initially 9% and now it's down to 7.24% this week. The monthly amount keeps going lower. I guess it just goes to show that there is a way to play the interest when everyone might be flocking to the fixed rate loans. Those that flocked to soon aren't going to reap these types of benefits. Either way, it helps me with lowering taxes.

Kitchen - Before and Middle - still waiting for after

My kitchen is getting a "refacing" from Sears. I used to think that meant that they walked in the door with new door fronts and walked out with my old doors. But, now I'm seeing why I spent quite a few thousand on this effort.

This morning my dining and kitchen area looked like this:

Notice the unclean picture of my kitchen. "Before" photos should always be messy so as to enhance the "after" results. Just like those face photos where they put really bad make-up on people to make them look worse before they glamour-ize them.

Right now it looks like this:

Completely gutted! Kind of cool that this is about $10,000 less than if you have them put in new frames.

This posting is primarily for my father's viewing since he has crowded our email with very large attachments showing sheet rock, unfinished deck framing, window sills, door frames, sheet rock, rocks, more unfinished deck framing, tiles, more rocks, more sheet rock, more deck framing and more tiles. (-: The difference is this - he actually does the work and I just prepare the work area for someone else to do the work while I do my job work and post pictures of their efforts to my blog.

Before the end of the week I will have the "after" pictures.