New Kitchen Day 1

Well . . . it's started! I know, I know. We've talked about it for such a lo-o-ong time, but this is for real. I have pictures! So here goes. No comments about the clutter. It took days to go through all the cupboards. We are clearing things for the electrician who will be here tomorrow morning - 7:30 am to rewire for the new stove, the dishwasher, the disposal, the undercabinet lights, and the overheads. Take a deep breath and say good-bye to most of what you remember about the family kitchen.

Before

Now we've gone through ALL the cabinets (more about that later) and we are ready to remove, demolish, alter, modify. What other verbs would be appropriate?

Matt began by removing the doors. This made it easier to see where things were screwed together.

Then we pried the frames from the soffit.

Once we did one side, we then did the same to the other side.

The next step was to remove the front wallboard all the way around the soffit so

the electrician can see where the wiring comes down from the ceiling. Matt got pretty slick at taking the wallboard down.

Imagine our surprise (not) when we opened it up and the insulation was sitting there. We will have to remove the entire soffit before they will be able to put in the new cabinets. Also imagine our surprise (for real) when we discovered trails in the insulation. Remember the mouse problem we had years ago?

After taking down the upper cabinets, we took out the stove. The dark stain in the right-hand corner is scorch marks?!!!! Don't know when. I do know it wasn't there when the stove was put in. That might explain why the breaker popped.

Dana finally got her chance to wield a sledge hammer.

I think all the renovation shows just fed this desire to destroy something with blunt force. After we took off the countertop, Dana and Matt took a sledge to the cabinet. What fun!

Right Now This Evening! This is what we have. It still seems unreal, but, one thing I know for sure, there's no way to put it back the way it was. We can only go forward!

Kitchen remodeling by the numbers - Part 1

• 18 water bottles - found in the corner cabinet
• 6 kinds of hot sauce - from the cooking spice cabinet
• 2 bottles of bubbles - I don't know where they were hidden. They just appeared.
• 1 unopened package of raisins - expiration date 2006
• 8 half-eaten packages of crackers from the cereal cupboard
• 1 fun-size box of Fiber 1 cereal - unopened. Wonder why?
• 13 boxes of kitchen gear and assorted paraphanalia
• 4 BIG boxes of stuff for DI

We did keep the Barney bowl and the yellow bowls but not the sippy bowls or all the chipped plates.

The new cabinets are supposed to arrive next Monday. We'll see what happens. Definitely interesting times.