• Thursday, February 9, 2006 - Help! We're remodeling the kitchen!!
Our home (as seen in my avatar) was built in 1883 and is a lovely
albeit a bit decrepit lady. Since we moved in 4 years ago, we
have tried to take good care of her as far as resources and know-how
would allow. The kitchen had undergone a rather bad remodel
several years and while it was adequate for most things, it did not
work well for us. There were very little cabinets and and even
less counter space.
This is basically the whole work/storage area. To the left of
this picture there was a built-in sort of cabinet that houses the 50
year old refrigerator and an almost useless skinny cupboard.
Behind the fridge is a closet that is actually off the downstairs
bedroom that we use for a TVroom/Library.
To the immediate left of the picture, was a door leading to an enclosed
back porch in which my husband had built shelves all along one wall for
canned good storage. There are 4 windows out there and the door
going out to the back yard.
We decided to open up that whole space and make it all kitchen!
Here you see it after much of the demolition had already
occurred. The wall is down and the big white thing to the left in
the photo is our refridgerator which was sitting just inside the dining
room.
One of the big difficulties experienced by my husband and his brother
(our destruction/construction guy) was that the cabinets had been built
in place and therefore had to be ripped out in pieces. That was
quite a job! Here they are tearing the cabinets out; you can also
see some of the lovely wallpaper that was behind the upper
cabinets.
There were also 8 layers of flooring to be torn out along with all the
sub-flooring and floor joists. There had been termites in the
house 50+ years ago and even though the termites had been
terminated 
the areas of damage had never been replaced. There was rot in the
joists and some of the other supporting timbers. All the floor
came out down to dirt and rock and new floor joists were put in and
then overlaid with new plywood. Now the floor is solid and
level. What a wonder!
While all of this has been going on (it's been a month now), what
have i been using for a kitchen? you ask. Good question.
Here it is. This is our former kitchen table set up in the living
room with all the essentials of living. The crock-pot, coffee pot
and electric griddle also often occupy the top of this table and it has
actually worked quite well. The new stove is now occupying it's
space (at least until the new cabinets and new flooring material need
to go in) in the kitchen and the new fridge is sitting in the dining
room.
So after spending one week priming and painting the new kitchen space,
this week i am staining, sealing and varnishing 27 new kitchen
cabinets. They were supposed to be delivered Monday a week ago
and just came in this Monday afternoon. They need to be finished
and ready to be installed by next Monday. Yikes! What am i
doing spending time on the computer when i have so much work to
do? The cabinets are about half done and i am waiting for varnish
to dry at the moment. 
And i haven't even mentioned moving the bathroom door from the kitchen
to the dining room! That will have to be another post.
bye for now!
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• Thursday, February 9, 2006 - i'm sorry...