I think our kitchen is now fully gutted.
The backer boards are up (thank GOD. What a process).
Kevin sawed our faucets off, capped them, and then replaced the flooring yesterday. He capped the pipes because:
1. The hardware was rusted and the shut-off valves were leaking.
2. To avoid having to punch a huge hole in our new cabinets to make room for the new hardware. Now, all the cabinet guy has to do is make two small holes and fit the cabinet down over the pipes. Then Kevin can take the caps off and put our new hardware on.
Isn’t he smart?!
(Actually, that wasn’t his idea – that was the plumber’s idea. Shh).
And speaking of the plumber:
The guy came over on Friday to give us an estimate on the plumbing work – i.e. running a line to our fridge for the ice maker.
Even though Kevin can do this, he really doesn’t have the time, nor the energy, quite frankly, to fool with it. So, we’re going to hire the plumber to do it. And even though the plumber offered to do the rest of our plumbing jobs for us (i.e. hook the garbage disposer back up), Kevin is going to do that to save us some money.
Because as usual, they wanted to charge too much.
Kevin also crawled under the house to brace the floor. After he did it, he wasn’t sure it was necessary, but now our floor is doubly reinforced.
While under the house, he noticed we had mold. He’s been struggling with trying to keep the underside of our house dry for years (putting in a sump pump, which helped, but still doesn’t quite do what he wants it to do) as our house is sort of on a slope and when it rains heavily, it’s like a river under our house.
Now we’ll have to research how to get rid of mold so we’re not breathing toxic fumes.
It’s always something, isn’t it?
I vacuumed down the walls yesterday. They were coated with dust and I won’t even tell you how many cobwebs we had – it’s quite embarrassing. But suffice it to say, I think they are clean enough to put primer on – which is what we have planned for today.
Kevin wants to paint the ceiling and I’m going to paint the underside of the soffits because they’re black and quite nasty.
I want to get those painted before the cabinets go in. I think, with the boys’ help, we can get all of that done fairly quickly.
We’re also moving the rest of our crap out today – the fridge, the range, the table with all the junk on it, and the washer and dryer.
Our utility room sits right off our kitchen and leads out to the garage. We’re going to have that room, as well as the pantry, tiled tomorrow.
That’s really all we have planned for today. I think we’ve gotten to the point where we are sick to death of this project, but we’re on the downhill slope now. The kitchen has been gutted, now it’s time to put it back together again.
We will be without a range and a washer and dryer for several days. This means we’ll be forced to eat out, though I’ll probably cook something in the crockpot one day and Kevin might grill something so we can save some money, but quite frankly, I’m now behind in my work, Kevin still has a job to go to and honestly? Eating out is easier and less messy so it’s a viable option right now.
We’re going to plug our fridge up in the garage so we’ll have a way to keep our food from spoiling while we wait for our new fridge to be delivered and hooked up. We plan on getting rid of the range, the washer / dryer and the fridge this week sometime. I’m going to call some charities (I think Kevin mentioned that the Boys’ Club was interested) so that they can take those items off our hands.
Kevin’s parents have graciously offered us Nanny’s (Kevin’s grandmother who passed away several months ago) washer and dryer, which are virtually brand new, so that will save us some money having to purchase new ones.
All of our appliances are fifteen years old and older and on the verge of conking out. In fact, we couldn’t have timed this renovation better because honestly, it was time for an overhaul (our dishwasher died the last time I used it).
Tile guys are scheduled to be here first thing in the morning. We’re really looking forward to getting that done and we’re praying we picked out something that will look good and we can live with for many, many, MANY years because trust me when I say, we will NEVER do another kitchen renovation again, at least, in our lifetime.
This has been a major pain in the butt and it’s not over yet. BUT, I think our hardest part is nearly over and we can sit back and allow others to put it back together for us.
Write From Karen 