Day - 11 It's starting to look like a kitchen!

Today Marshall got all but one set of the upper cabinets hung and started putting in the lower cabinets. Right before he left for the day, we carried in the longer counter top, so now it REALLY looks like kitchen cabinets. I made my dinner on it...well, after I heated everything in the microwave in the makeshift kitchen/guest bedroom, and the first thing Mark did when he came home was throw his bags where the kitchen sink will be cut out soon. They are still sitting there now. Needless to say, we are very excited about having a kitchen counter again.

This first picture is taken from the hallway looking into the kitchen. The kitchen sink will be cut out right below the window. If you look closely at the floor, you can see where the tile is out. That is where the cabinets used to make an L. (See previous entries for the before pictures...and marvel at how much bigger my kitchen looks.)


Here's the view of the same cabinets from the dining room looking back toward the hallway. You can see where Marshall has started bringing in the lower cabinets on the other side of the kitchen, too.
Here's another picture of the refrigerator/stove side of the kitchen from the other side of the dining room. You can see the cabinets a little better here. The range will go in next to the cabinet in the picture, and a set of drawers and a narrow cabinet will set in between the range and the refrigerator.

Now that the cabinets are almost completely in, I'm getting excited about seeing red paint on the walls!

Days 8-9

So I'm a little slow getting things updated for the end of last week...sorry about that! Busy week...(Don't delete me from your blog list, yet, Jason)

Thursday Marshall worked on mudding the sheet rock...a tedious job that doesn't make for very exciting pictures. The good news is we no longer have a random square hole in the middle of our kitchen ceiling.

Friday was a much more exciting day! First, Marshall picked up our counter top and micro hood, so now everything except the range is at our house. The picture below isn't great, but it gives you a little idea of what the counter top looks like. The official color name is Natural Roca, if that tells you anything.

The most noticeable change in the kitchen is the addition of cabinets! That's right...we now have some cabinets hanging in our kitchen. They're not all in yet, but it's starting to look at little more like an actual kitchen. The first picture is taken from the dining room looking back into the kitchen toward where the stove and cook top used to be. The new micro hood will go in under the middle cabinet. One more set of cabinets-the cabinet over the fridge-will go in on this wall.

The other picture is taken from the dining room near the office door looking back toward the sink area. Two more sets of cabinets will go in on the left--just outside the frame of the picture.

Day 7 - First Inspection

Everything went well today when the inspector came out, so Marshall started putting the lower level of sheet rock up, and started taping and mudding the sheet rock. There's not a whole lot to see, but here's a couple of pictures with the sheet rock up, and you can see where he's started mudding.

Day 6 - The cabinets arrive

Yesterday I didn't get the blog updated because I went to Bryan to watch the Robinson high school boys' soccer team in the playoffs for the first time ever...and then ended up sitting in the rain for quite a while. YUCK! To make a short story long, I didn't get home until after midnight and didn't feel like taking the time to upload pictures. Having said that...

Marshall finished out the pantry, completing the wall and hanging the sheet rock, so now we've got at least a bit of a road block between where Trenton hangs out and the food! As you can see in the picture, we're already making use of the storage space. Marshall also got sheet rock put up where the divider came out between the kitchen and dining room.

The most exciting news is that our cabinets came in today. We how have about 15 large boxes in our garage. We can't really get into them yet to see how they look, but hopefully by the end of this week we'll start seeing them in our kitchen!

Day 5 - Let there be light!

Today the electrician came to take care of all the wiring. As you can see from the picture at left, we now have kitchen lights. This was taken from the dining room looking into the kitchen.

They also got all the receptacles in place for the new outlets and light switches in the kitchen. This picture is the range/refrigerator side of the kitchen.

Marshall got started on some construction today, too! That's right...no more demolition! He closed the hole in the ceiling left from tearing out the divider for the dropped ceiling and even started working on putting the back wall into the pantry. While Trenton will mourn the loss of his direct access to the refrigerator, Mark and I will not have to worry so much about having food to eat for the rest of the month! The last picture shows the inside of the closet where you can see some of the framing going in.

The best news is that our cabinets are now in the state of Texas and should be in our garage some time tomorrow!

Day 4 - The Ceiling

Marshall wasn't scheduled to come today, so we have no significant changes in the overall appearance of the kitchen, but Mark put in a lot of time working on the dining room ceiling. He spent most of the morining (and a good portion of the afternoon) scraping the popcorn texture from the ceiling, which in and of itself doesn't sound even remotely fun. The task was made even more difficult by the steep angle of our dining room ceiling, as you can see from the first picture here.

The second picture is taken from the kitchen looking up to the dining room ceiling. After all his hard work, we now have a popcorn-free dining room that will be ready for texture whenever Marshall textures the kitchen.

Day 3

No new demolition today! It was a short day for Marshall, so there's not a lot of obvious change in the kitchen unless you look up. All the old flourescent lighting is down. In the picture, you can see the white rectangles on the ceiling where the lights used to be. Instead we are installing recessed lighting. The four circles you see are the new light fixtures. There will be one more in the area to the upper right corner of the picture that hasn't been installed, yet. The electrician doesn't come until Monday, so right now we're a little in the dark. :) I guess that doesnt' really matter when there's nothing we can do in the kitchen anyway.

Demolition - Day 2

On Day 2 of demolition, our kitchen got even bigger! Who knew? Marshall took out the section between the kitchen and dining room that once held our dropped ceiling in place today. While you can't tell as well from this first picture, that really opened up the room. You can see how much space that section took up in the picture below.


As you can also see, all of the cabinets are now out of the kitchen, and the oven and cooktop are gone. He's taken out everything ... including the kitchen sink! HAHahaha .... The bottom half of the sheet rock is out(Thanks, Lara Jane! Trenton was quite impressed that you did that!) and we are ready for the electrician to come in Monday to do all the rewiring needed to install the new appliances, lights, outlets, etc. The picture below is the view from the dining room back toward the kitchen showing where the oven and cooktop used to be.


Marshall also took out the pantry cabinets and the back wall of the pantry today. Trenton was less than thrilled with the idea of losing part of his closet and letting the cats have free reign in his room until the new wall is built back, but he's taking it as well as any 15 year old boy would. At least he doesn't have to worry about his house cleaning chores this week! Below is the view from inside Trenton's closet looking through the old pantry into the dining room.




Trenton has discovered one advantage to this new arrangement, though. He's loving the direct access to the refrigerator from his bedroom. This afternoon he asked Mark if Marshall could put in a door instead of a wall from his closet into the pantry! Just what he needs, not only direct access to the fridge, but to have to climb through the rest of our food to get there. Man, he'd eat everything! Hopefully that wall goes up tomorrow!




This last picture if the view from the dining room back into Trenton's closet. You can see the studs that used to be the back of the pantry. When the new wall goes up, that wall will be moved back to Trenton's closet doors. I don't know if you can tell where those are in the picture or not, but the dark areas just beyond the 2x4 in the old pantry wall are his closet doors.

Day 1 - Demolition

Today Marshall, our wonderful friend/contractor, took out all of the cabinets on one side of the kitchen, and, as expected, we've already run into a few things that are going to add on to our cost. But we were expecting this...

The wiring in the kitchen is not up to code. (You mean building codes have changed in the past 32 years?!?) So now the electrician is getting a bigger piece of the pie...just how much bigger remains to be seen. Marshall also found evidence of some "extra pets" in the attic, so we also put in a call to the exterminator to get rid of the rodents...and we're thinking rats, not cute little furry mice...big, nasty rats! We've never had any problems inside the house, so all I can say is, "Thank goodness we have 3 cats!"

Despite those little bits of bad news, we are actually VERY pleased with the work so far. As you can see from the slideshow, just taking out that stupid L and the dropped ceiling makes the kitchen look so much bigger! I'm already looking forward to seeing new stuff go in!

We finally started!

Since we moved into our house almost six years ago, I've hated the kitchen. It has a stupid L right in front of the refrigerator that, when the door to the fridge is open, completely blocks the flow of traffic from the kitchen to the dining room. The cabinets are original to the house--straight from 1977, and they are REALLY dark. When you add the dropped ceiling to the dark cabinets and L, it feels SOOOoooo small!

To top it off, the oven and vent hood are harvest-gold-painted-biscuit-but-the-biscuit-paint-is-wearing-off-showing-the-harvest-gold spotted, and the wall paper is a hideous paisley/flower combination that I detest. If you've ever read the Charlotte Perkins Gilman story about the woman who goes crazy because of the yellow wallpaper in her room...the paisley/flower paper is my "Yellow Wallpaper."

We are finally remodeling the stupid thing almost entirely...new cabinets, counter top, stove, and microhood. We're turning our itty bitty excuse for a pantry into a real pantry, raising the ceiling, replacing all the cabinets, and painting.

Here's the original look...Well, except for the wall paper we started tearing down before we remembered to take the "Before" pictures.

And the best part about all this is that I don't have to cook for 3 weeks. :)