The Dust Bowl of 2012 -- Deja Vu

I guess you could say that a lot got done today...It might, though, be more accurate to say that more got undone.  The window was put in.  Yay!  We are now fully enclosed.

That was the extent of the building for today.  The rest of the work was demo.  There is nothing left of what was our kitchen.  The cabinets are gone.  The appliances (with the exception of the fridge) are gone.  The ceiling and floors are gone.  The chimney is mostly gone.  The only thing left is the wall.  I think that will be gone tomorrow.  We officially have no kitchen.  We are camping out downstairs in what used to be a mother-in-law apartment.  No stove or dishwasher.  We are roughing it.

 

Where do we put all this garbage?  Well, normal people would have had a dumpster ready to go for this kind of project.  We don't think that far ahead.  The dumpster will arrive Monday.  Until then, our backyard has become a kitchen graveyard.  I'm sure our neighbors love us.  Last night I heard some funny noises and actually thought..."I hope someone is out there stealing those appliances."  So ghetto.

The one thing I somehow forgot was how much dust gets everywhere when you remodel.  Brian and I spent hours this evening trying to get the dust level back under control.  It was bad.  I still smell dirt.  I can taste it.  In a few weeks after we have cleaned everything another 4 or 5 times, I am sure it will feel like normal.  I bet we will be finding dust for a year, though.

Hope It Doesn't Rain

They finished the brickwork today.  I don't have a great picture because they covered it up to cure.  They'll come back to acid wash it later to make it blend in more...apparently they forgot to do that on the last window so that one may blend better too once they are done.  All in all, it matches pretty well.  I'll have better pictures later.

While Brian was home today, he unloaded all the cabinets, removed the shelves and doors, and took out the stove.  He had planned on taking out the fridge, but when we found that we would have to take the doors off of it just to get it out, we decided to wait until the door from the dining room is wider instead.  It's not often that you have that luxury. :)

Tomorrow, Badger Construction will be here in the morning to start on the remaining demo and to install the new window (wrapped up below the window hole in this pic).  It will be a pretty large window...I think we're going to love it.

Until then, though, we have a giant hole in our wall.  I'm really hoping that we don't have any issues similar to the last time our interior was exposed to the elements.  I'm still not over it.

Apparently Size Does Matter

Today Brian ripped out the remaining window and in doing so found a bunch of little surprises and their little larvae babies...Gross! 

After Brian had taken care of that little issue, the masons came back to work on bricking up the old kitchen window and expanding the new kitchen window.  They attempted to contain the dust with this plastic to no avail.  Our house is covered.  Everything is grimy.  Ahh...construction.  They'll be back tomorrow to finish up.  Badger may be by tomorrow for some demo as well.  We will see.

And in other news, Brian got his giant industrial faucet today.  Isn't it awesome?

What A View

Well, we won't be enjoying the view from our kitchen sink for a few weeks.  At least until the sink gets moved to it's new location.  Our new kitchen window has arrived and the masons came back today to start bricking up the old one.  Tomorrow they will lay the brick outside and will start cutting the remaining window frame to be big enough to fit the new window.  We're at that stage where I'm thinking, "I hope we're doing the right thing, here.", but it's too late to change our minds.  I hate this stage.  You'd think I'd be used to it by now :)  On a positive note, I was super worried about loosing the light by bricking up this window, but it didn't seem too bad once it was done.  Once the other window is bigger and the doorway to the dining room is opened up a little, I think we'll be just fine.

It's Going To Get Worse Before It Gets Better

We spent a few hours today ripping down part of the old ceiling, ripping up part of the old kitchen flooring and taking down part of the wall that used to separate the kitchen from our small bedroom closet. 

Then we spent the rest of the day cleaning up our mess and tasting dirt. Blegtch!

There And Back Again

We tore up the last of the original oak flooring tonight.  We reminisced about how refinishing those floors was the very first project we undertook when we bought our little house 8 years ago.  Now there's not a trace of them.  Eight years ago I couldn't wait to get rid of that UGLY carpet.  I loved those floors when they were finished.  Tonight I couldn't wait to get them up again.  Funny how time changes your perspective.  We're looking forward to a new window next week and, if we're lucky, we will actually start building this kitchen instead of tearing it apart.

 

What's The Plan, Stan?

We have slowly but surely started to plan our (Brian's) kitchen renovation. We have met a few times with our contractor and hope to have this project under way in the next few weeks. We have ordered the new kitchen window and have met with the masons to get a bid on the window work they will have to do. That's all boring work. The fun has been in getting a plan for the kitchen cabinets. Here are the initial plans the carpenter sent us. The main thing that we know will be changing is that there will be no upper cabinets above the lower bookshelf area. We will be putting a whiteboard calendar on the wall there. Other than that, we think the plans are pretty close to what we will have done. It will be a beautiful, even if galley, kitchen. We cannot wait!