kitchen remodel: phase 5 of 31

Scott and I both took a four-day weekend to paint the kitchen. We've watched too many one-day home improvement shows on HGTV and DIY Network because we completely underestimated how long it would take to paint the room. We spent Friday removing the wall cabinets, patching the walls, taping the room, and going to IKEA. We spent Saturday priming and Sunday painting the ceiling. We finally painted the walls today and met with the IKEA contractor and our plumber friend. Now we just need to paint the trim, order the new cabinets, build, install, have pluming and electrical work down, etc., etc., not to mention the flooring. So, we've merely started the kitchen remodel.

Lower Lewis River Falls & Yale Lake

Here are Scott's amazing photos from Sunday:

Lower Lewis Falls:

Lower Lewis River Falls, originally uploaded by sweber4507.

Yale Lake:

LewisRiverLakeReflectionWest, originally uploaded by sweber4507.

Afternoon at Lewis River Falls -or- Day We Almost Lost Mom

Yesterday, Scott, Sheena, Ma, and I took what we thought would be a short drive to the Lower Lewis Falls at Gifford Pinchot National Forest. However, we didn't realize 40 miles from I-5 would take hours on winding forest roads. We finally got to the falls about an hour before dusk. Scott scrambled to take pictures (which I hope to post).

At some point, Scott, Sheena and I took the stairs down to the falls. I thought mom saw us from the viewing area overlooking the falls, but apparently she thought we headed back to the car. Worse, mom took a different path to another parking area. When we came back up and didn't find mom at the car, we all became worried. We were basically in the middle of nowhere in a vacant park, out of cellphone range, looking for mom in a dark, densely wooded area with poorly marked trails. Of course, we then started to assume the worse like she fell down the canyon into the river or some horrible Blaire Witch scenario (the only soul we saw in the last miles into the forest was a suspicious-looking hunter). Fortunately, Sheena found mom after twenty minutes of worry. In hindsight, the area between the river and parking lot was relatively small, but still it was creepy not being able to find mom right away.

French drain AKA ditch

Before we could do a more visually satisfying home improvement project like paint the kitchen, Scott forced us to do the responsible thing and install a boring French drain before the fall rains. Its fancy European name is misleading as a French drain is basically a type of drainage ditch with pipe.