A Countdown to a Kitchen

This week has certainly been eventful!  After coming home from Washington, I was ready to see some major progress on the house.  They have made progress, believe me, though I wouldn't complain if the Rabbits worked a little harder (there's a story about that, too).

The biggest improvement since I've been back has been the kitchen.  Shall I refresh your memory of what it looked like before?

Oh yes, in all it's salmon-colored many-layered floor and plain white and dilapidated cabinets, this was not my dream kitchen. From the beginning of this process, I knew that the space needed some love, but never in my wildest dreams did I imagine this space getting completely and utterly gutted.  Which is exactly what happened.

The floor was the biggest challenge to overcome.  After tearing off five different layers of improvised and real flooring, the bow in the floor became very obviously the result of a significant amount of water damage.  Had there been a drip edge on the roof and a decent seal around the window, it's very likely that this floor would have been mostly salvageable.  Alas, it wasn't to be.

So Jared and I were left with a giant pit for a kitchen.  When I said gut job, I MEANT gut job.  This was one of those moments when I ask myself, "WHAT have I gotten into???"

The good thing about the wood rot is that now this part of the house is probably the most sturdy of it all.  New joists work wonders!  However, once the support was put in, I wouldn't see an actual floor until coming home from Seattle.  Basically, this is what my kitchen looked like for three weeks.  Originally, our general contractor estimated the entire reno would take three weeks. Does that put it in perspective?

This is what I came home to, though, which brightened my spirits considerably.  That's not just any floor, that's a sub floor.  After waiting for the inspector to inspect the plumbing, the Rabbits were finally able to start closing up the kitchen.

The pass through also made me giggle and squeal like a teenager.  I'm ridiculously in love with this thing.  Irrational?  Maybe, but I think after all this time, I'm allowed to get excited about something in this house.

I don't think I've ever been so excited about tile in my life.  Maybe this renovation is starting to get to my psyche.  Once this started going down, I was in full on laughing-while-jumping-up-and-down-in-place mode.  At least I'm easy to please, right?

Isn't it beautiful?  The tile went in in about three days, and then the Rabbits started patching the walls in preparation for the CABINETS!!!  In case you're wondering, the little room to the left of the door is a pantry, and yes, I'm excited about that too.

Last week the cabinets started coming in.  The two guys installing them were Chinese and didn't speak a lick of English, so it was an experience to try and tell them where everything was supposed to go.  Based on the finished product, they did just fine.

The kitchen is finally starting to look like a kitchen!!!

Sadly, they weren't finished in one day.  I could live with that, though, as that's just kind of been the way things are these days.  There's Pete working on the patching job.

Grout went in as well.  There is really something amazing about watching this house slowly come together.








Yesterday the cabinet guys showed up to finish their job.  I had to work, though, so once they came, I had to leave, and I didn't get to see them put up the rest of the cabinets.  It was worth not seeing it happen, because when I came home from work, it was all laid out before me like a present!

Does it look like a kitchen?  I'm thinking, YES, much more so than before.  I keep looking back at the before and during pictures.  The cabinets are beautiful, and there's plenty of storage space.  The floor is all one level, and it doesn't shake when you walk on it.  AND the drawers are soft close, a bonus that I was not expecting.  When I first opened and closed one of them, I totally giggled and clapped and jumped up and down on the spot for a good five minutes.  I'm not even ashamed to admit it!

The glorious right side of the kitchen.  The space is for the dishwasher, which will be going in soon.

The left side of the kitchen.  The stove is going in the space.  The peninsula is going to have a slight overhang on the other side, so Jared wants to put a few bar stools there.

There they are, in all their glory!  The hardware came with the cabinets, but I'm not sure if I like them or not, so they might get changed in the future.  All I can think about is the fact that I have a space that could actually pass for a kitchen, not just a hole in the house.  The bad news is that there was a mix up when ordering the countertops, so they won't be in for two weeks.  Jared has decided that once the water is connected to the dishwasher, the stove is put in it's place and the fridge is moved, we can use the kitchen by putting plywood over the cabinets.  I'm definitely not opposed to the idea.  I just want to be able to cook!





In other news, Jared and I have observed that Pete has really not been working as much as he should be, so we could be getting a new carpenter.  There's also a third of a fence put up in the backyard, so there's another project that is in the works.  Right now we're waiting on the laundry room to be finished, the water heater, and the new bathroom to go in.  We're on the downhill slide, but there's still a bit to go.  With any luck, we'll have a finished house by Thanksgiving!

Sarah