Kitchen Update

Much flooring has been laid in the kitchen, although there are bits that still need to be done in the bay window. And all the finishing work still needs to be done. The little black squares here and there are blockers so the laminate doesn't butt up to the kick plate.


The flooring goes to the door of the laundry room


but the rest of the laundry room still needs to be done.


The countertops arrived this week, and were put on. They still need to be caulked.


The sink was installed. You know, I should put up Before and After photos of some of this stuff so everyone could marvel at how much better this sink is than the old one.


We had thought we could re-use the old range hood, but we ended up needing to get a new one. By the way, our stove isn't blue -- that's the protective film on it which I haven't removed yet since there's still stuff going on. For instance, installing the range hood involves moving the stove out and back in.


(Should the toaster oven go to the left or the right? Hmmm....)


They cut a hole in the wall so the hood now vents to the outside. Yay!

When Geeks Buy Appliances

"Wow, check out the inside of this dishwasher! It looks like the interior of a Borg cube!"






"Nope, definitely Star Wars. You can just picture the droids hanging off this little thing."



Only Whirlpool knows for sure.

The Moment We've Been Waiting For

Making tacos in a skillet on top of the stove:


Rick pointed out that it was exactly 4 weeks since we last made tacos.*

I got a little misty-eyed when I clicked on the gas burner -- it was the first time I've cooked on a gas stove in nearly 4 years. Wow, cooking with gas is sooooo much easier than with electric. (Also, I had had about 9 hours of sleep in the preceding 60 hours; I'd like to think I wouldn't normally get weepy over appliances if I'd had less stress and more sleep.)

* Tacos are normally a Wednesday night meal, but we switched up with the remodel.

It is Now Midnight

Thalia, Annabeth, and I just got home from the Muny -- we went to see Annie.

Walked in the house and the kids immediately held their noses because it smells so strongly of gas.

We got Rick out of bed. He shut off the valve. I hope it was the right one.

Yowza. It's not really easy to just plop into bed and go to sleep under the circumstances.

We Haven't Blown Up Yet

A few years ago I read a news story about someone doing something with a gas line in a house, and then leaving the house empty (no people moving in and out) for a few days, and then the house blew up because of a gas leak.

This has always stuck with me. In a bad way.

So when it came time to run the gas line for the new gas stove, I spent an evening beforehand online reading stories about exploding houses. Because, of course, that's the best way to spend your time if you're worried your house is going to blow up.

I mentioned this to Linda last week. At the time I thought they were going to run the gas line that afternoon, and that she might be the last person I ever talked to since both kids and Rick were out of the house for the day, leaving me alone in the explosive house. She was very sympathetic. Then she asked if we really did have a horrible accident, could she please have my ticket to Mary Poppins at the Fox, since I wouldn't be needing it.

So. This morning they finally did the gas line. And all day I kept thinking I smelled gas. But then I thought maybe I was just being a bit hyper about it. But when we got home from piano Annabeth commented that the front hall smelled like gas to her with no prompting from me whatsoever. Later I ran an errand ... and when I got back the front door was open.

???

When I came in the contractor said, "You've got a gas leak." Wow. He had turned the gas off, and called to have it taken care of.


Yowza. Does this mean I should start making psychic predictions? After all, when we bought the new dryer I accurately predicted that the little knob would break off within a couple of years. And now this.

Cheap Filler

I'm going through and filling in the gouges in the subfloor left by the ripping up the luon-glue-staples, using cheap wood filler from Lowes. The consistency of the filler reminds me of cookie dough. Butterscotch.



I'm wondering if opening a container of wood filler and immediately thinking of cookie dough could be a sign that I've gone too long without an oven.

Also, we can now track animals in the air conditioned comfort of our kitchen:

I Finally Get to do Something Fun in the Kitchen

I've had several hours with no one else at our house today. Which means I've finally had a chance to put something away in all of these spiffy new cabinets.

When we lived in Ohio we had an upper cabinet next to the stove that was for spices -- it had a spice rack built into the door. I thought that was pretty nice, so when the Diamond catalog said they had a spice cabinet I said, "Sure, definitely!" figuring it would be the same thing.

So the cabinet was installed right next to the stove, where it will be handy for cooking,



and we discovered that, no, there weren't little shelves on the inside of the door. Instead, the little shelves are actually inside the cabinet itself



and swing out



to reveal even more little shelves behind.



I sort of want to spend the day alphabetizing the spices, it's just so much fun to put stuff on all these little shelves. If you ever get new cabinets, you gotta get one of these.

Quiet

No one is coming over today to work on the kitchen. Which is exciting because we can have a quiet, dust-free day. But annoying because we still don't have a stove, several light fixtures are missing, and we still turn the lights on and off by unscrewing the bulbs.

Rick gets together with some guys a couple of times each month. They were over Saturday morning and moved our refrigerator into place, so it looks all official now.


That floor vent in front of it is going to be moved. It's always been annoying there, and should've been installed elsewhere in the first place. (This is where the wall ovens used to be, by the way.)

Rick had done the electrical outlet for the refrigerator himself. As to why we were left to do this stuff ourselves instead of having the contractor do it (let alone that no one's coming to work on the kitchen this week), it's a long story involving various disparate elements such as someone quitting and a float trip.

They had left a mess when they stopped work last week. Piles of crud that needed to be swept, a large pile of junk in the kitchen, and the garage was a shambles.





Saed came over to work with Rick to get it all tidied up to the point that we can get the lawn mower out, get to the work bench, etc.



Then they (Rick and Saed) started ripping up the rest of the kitchen floor in preparation to installing the new laminate. I hadn't met Saed before. Really nice guy, very sharp. Doesn't speak much English. He wants to get a job so he can learn English better, since then he'd be around people speaking the language all day; but he can't find a job because he doesn't speak English well. Quite a catch-22. Sometimes we're talking, communicating just fine, and suddenly you realize that the conversation has turned a different direction and you have no idea where it went.

Anyway, the point is, taking up the floor was noisy and dusty. And was going on all weekend. And isn't over yet. We have (right to left) cheap peel-and-stick over vinyl-stuck-to-luon which is thoroughly glued and stapled to the subfloor.



The big pieces are up out of the main areas



but there are still staples and blobs of glued down luon all over, and the laundry room still needs to be done. But no one is working on anything today, which means we can finally catch up on important things like sleeping on the couch



since that's been impossible with all these Scary Guys banging around the place.

Kitchen after 2 weeks

After 2 weeks of uproar and pounding we have trim:



(In the picture below, the upper cabinet to the right of the window is new -- there wasn't one in the old kitchen. And that gap below that has a trash bag in it is the future site of the dishwasher.)


(Desk area, which formerly had a cheapy, crappy shelf.)



We have large cabinets replacing the closet, and a bump in the wall for the refrigerator



and we have plumbing for a utility sink, which is something this house never had in spite of the relatively large laundry room


The island is still sort of floating around the room, with the cabinet that belongs above the refrigerator. And no shelves in anything -- several sliding shelves still need to be installed.

Still no glimmer of putting in the stove. This isn't a problem insofar as the oven is concerned -- at 7:30am the temperature is 79F/26C, with a forecast of 95F/35C, and it's so humid the windows are steaming up, so the thought of turning on an oven isn't really appealing -- but it might be nice to have a stovetop.

They measured for countertops last night, so we can hand in those measurements and have the countertops made. The floor is a mess, which we expected -- we're ripping up the old floor and installing laminate.

I am really looking forward to the day when I DON'T have workers hanging around the house all day. I'm also looking forward to putting kitchen things away, rather than having everything all over everywhere.

And the cat is looking forward to having 24/7 access to her favorite litter box, because the other 4 litter boxes we have in the house that are still easily accessible aren't quite good enough to poop in as far as she's concerned. And even though she glowers at the workers with her Eyeballs of Doom, they still stand between her and her litter box.

I Wash Dishes

I've realized that on one hand I can go a long time without a stove, but on the other hand it's really annoying to wash a cutting board in a bathroom sink. I can think of meals to make using a blender, crockpot, rice steamer, and/or electric skillet -- no stove needed! -- but I haven't had a good way to wash out those larger items.

Yesterday afternoon they re-installed our old kitchen sink:



so after 2 weeks of kitchen renovation I could immerse and scrub things in hot water.

Of course, this involved shutting down the water to the house for a while ... it turned out to be about 3 hours, by which time I was getting twitchy with a desire to wash my hands.

Today: light switches. We've been screwing/unscrewing the light bulbs to turn them on and off.

Kitchen Update

We just got back from being out of town for the weekend. We left Friday before the workers were finished, so we didn't get a chance to see how far they'd gotten with the cabinets by the end of the day Friday.

Now we can see that they managed to install the Deluxe Kitty Perch, which has a handy view of the countertops and stovetop.



If you want to install one of these, the cabinet places call them microwave shelves. But we know what they're really good for, right?

Cabinets

First, bring the cabinets in boxes into the kitchen:





Then the doors are taken off:



The cabinets are attached to each other all nicely squared up



and then lifted up to mount on the wall:



They expected to get a lot more done this afternoon, but had a number of unexpected things. For instance, the corner cabinet isn't true/square -- the installer thinks he can work around it, maybe -- the alternative is to ship it back to the company (Diamond Cabinets from Lowes, if you want to know who lets this sort of thing out the door) and wait for a replacement, which would probably take a couple of weeks.

Paint! Cats!

You know how some cats like to roll in dust? These days the cat can roll in dust without ever leaving the comfort of home:



Black cat in white dust. Pretty funny when you see her trotting around the house with a white butt.

But, more importantly, paint on walls! It's just in the places that won't have cabinets.




Also, paint on ceilings!



You can sort of see the texture of the ceiling in that photo. I think it turned out pretty spiffy. Every place we've lived has had a different texture on the ceiling -- blown in, stomped, smooth, etc. I now know how to do this one -- it involves sand in the paint, which is rolled on, then going back over it with a broom.

Today they'll finish the ceiling (we had the lights put on 3-way switches so we no longer have to walk across the room to turn them on and off -- now we'll be able to torn off the kitchen lights as we leave the kitchen instead of turning off the lights and then walking across the room with the lights out -- this involved several holes in the ceiling), and start putting up the cabinets.

Kitchen Remodel, Days 3 and 4

Drywall taping, mudding, sanding. Then another layer of mud, then more sanding.



Lots and lots of dust.

Also, working lights! The wires are live, so to turn them on and off the bulbs are screwed in and out. They'll hook up the switch boxes later.



The lights are a nice touch, since it's been gloomy and rainy and generally dark in the kitchen.

The rain means that the drywall mud is taking f.o.r.e.v.e.r. to dry.

Also, grilling in the rain isn't so fun. And meals are now on a card table inside.

Today's tip in case you decide to do a kitchen remodel:

If you use paper plates for every meal your trash can fills up really fast. It's startling.

Making Memories

Future conversation in our house:

"Remember when we were re-doing the kitchen, so we made a fire on the back porch and cooked stuff over the fire?"





It occurred to me that a clever homeschooler would've planned this remodel to coincide with some sort of study -- maybe a unit study of Little House on the Prairie or Birch Bark House, complete with frontier cooking experiences (Ma Ingalls didn't need these fancypants appliances or electricity, by golly!). Or integrate it with most history studies, since most of history has featured cooking over fires. Or discuss how various contemporary cultures prepare food. Or at least put together a unit on the history of cooking.

Also, there;s a Junior Girl Scout badge we'll be able to earn if we keep this up -- Annabeth seems to be earning Outdoor Cook fairly effortlessly this week.

We have a ceiling

After 3 days of work we have an 8 foot ceiling going all the way across our kitchen.



Which doesn't seem like a particularly huge accomplishment, but that's how construction goes. We've been involved in building a house before, and it seemed like day after day after day of not much happening, then all of a sudden the finishing work started and woosh all sorts of exciting things going on.

Also, although the house hasn't seemed overly dusty (other than the carpets), I swear I've breathed in a ton of dust.

The cats have been having a bonding experience under the bed while all of this is going on.

More pictures of joists, studs, and wiring

Another gripping day of construction here.

The old fluorescent tubes are gone, leaching their toxic waste into some landfill somewhere (not a fan of fluorescent lighting here), and some new cans are up.



The workers wisely left them unwired overnight, apparently realizing that most homeowners will say "sure, looks good," and then wake up in the middle of the night wondering why they hadn't asked for that one to be placed over there instead.


Some pendant lights will also be hung. And outlets wired in. I'm going to have actual outlets where I can plug in a mixer or blender or whatever -- it boggles my mind. Convenience! What a concept!

Also, part of a wall ripped out and reframed for the refrigerator, which is being backed into our amazingly large laundry room.



Our laundry room is as large as some bedrooms, so it seemed clever to use some of it towards a more workable kitchen.

I think today involves more wiring. I'm hoping this will not involve large showers of sparks or the need for the power to the computer (or entire house) turned off for long periods of time. Yesterday was exciting that way, but enough is enough.

In the meantime, we continue to grill our meals on the back porch, and use a toaster oven and microwave we carried down into the basement. The basement also has an old refrigerator we put there when we moved in, into which we transferred all of our "normal" food. Clean up is in any sink. We've been using paper plates with abandon, believe it or not (add disposable plates and glasses to the list of things I don't like and normally try to avoid, but I'm trying to pretend I don't notice them when I eat). If the gorgeous weather holds we'll continue to eat outside.

Curiosity

There are big billowy pieces of plastic in the doorways.



Why?



I bet there's something really good in there. I wish I could figure out how to get in and see it.



...

Actually, I think he mostly wants to be fed in the kitchen, because that's the proper place for the food. NOT the hallway, thank you -- that's obviously not "real" food. The real food is in the kitchen in the dish on the blue mat next to the counter.

State of the kitchen at the end of day 1:

Very, very empty.



Also, interesting open areas up high that the cats are just dying to explore.



Special bonus -- we just had our A/C unit checked, and Mr. A/C Guy says the 5-year-old coil is leaking. Good times.