New Kitchen Part Two

We had a special visit this week while we're under construction. Lynn and Riley dropped by. They came to Casa Grande to spend a few days with Grandma and Grandad Gibson. Riley warmed up when we shared gold fish crackers. He discovered the fact that he could go around the hall and kitchen in a circle. The only thing preventing him from running that circle, like his cousins, was the wallboard on the kitchen floor, which he couldn't walk over.

We finished taking down the soffits around the kitchen. I guess I should say that Dana and Matt took down the soffits. The wood still looks new and is good and solid. I look at it and wonder what we could use it for. I really don't want to take it to the dump.

While Matt worked on the soffit over the refridgerator, Dana and I took out the rest of the cabinets and the sink. The electrician needed an open area to run wiring and put in plugs, etc.

Rusty Riggs is our general contractor, head honcho, and mentor. He was kind enough to stay till midnight on Friday, helping us with the taping and mudding of the new wallboard and building an extension for the ductwork.

So here we are. Soffits all gone. New walboard up. Outlets and plugs in place. We're ready to paper and mud. We finished the first coat about 2:45 am Saturday, set the blower, and fell into bed by 3 am.

We spent Saturday morning catching up on chores and waiting for the mud to dry. Late that afternoon, we began to sand. We got a lot of tips from people when we were getting ready for this project and the best one, so far, was to close off the area when we worked with the wallboard. We duct taped plastic along the ceiling between the family room and the kitchen and closed off the living room door. It was a good thing, too. That dust went everywhere. Our hair and clothing and faces were covered in it. We borrowed a shopvac to clean it up, but there's still dust in odd places. We got the second layer of mud up and tomorrow, Monday, we texture the new stuff.

Here is the old kitchen. We need to sort out whatever we can recycle and take the rest to the city dump. I told Dad he couldn't turn the kitchen sink into a planter in the front yard.

One comment. When we started into this and discussed what would happen and how we would deal with the disruption, my original thought was, "This will be easy. It will be just like camping." No, it's not! Camping works because you're not doing anything else. This situation involves juggling work and other activities with the construction stuff and trying to figure out what to eat that isn't take-out or sandwiches all the time. But, we are FLEXIBLE!!!!!