Ta Da! Number 2, cont.

I know.  This has been dragging on forever.   As in FOR EVER!!!
But finally I can officially post this.  The electrician came yesterday.  And the kitchen is mostly DONE  (I said mostly because the baseboards are going to have to wait until we finish the frontroom.)

Now, I will post the following more for my own benefit than for yours.  I'm fine if you don't waste your time looking, but this very lengthy pictorial is designed to take us from August 2008...

Before  

I feel like I'm hanging out my dirty laundry to dry.  My kitchen counters were always, always, always filled full.  It was because there simply was no room in any of the cupboards to put things away.  I am a hoarder.  That was part of the problem.

The other problem was my cheaply built cabinets were only designed to last ten years, not the 35 we had endured them.  The drawers were broken.  The ones that look closed where actually glued shut and unusable.  The hinges hung.  The stains could not be washed off, no matter how hard I scrubbed.

And my Formica would not stay down almost from the day we moved in.  Just put a pot of hot water on it, they told our naive young selves.  Yeah, right.  For 35 years my Formica popped up.

And all of this was so viewable from the front door it was embarrassing.  Really embarrassing.

 This was the beginning.  This was August 2008.  We had finished remodeling our bathroom and ready to ratchet up to the next level.  In my naive mind, I figured we would be into the new kitchen easily before summer.   Oh I was so naive.

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... to During
So, we rolled up our sleeves and we started the wrecking ball process. What you cannot see in the above pictures is the smell.  The house did smell bad.  Always.  I couldn't get rid of it.   We were soon to find out why. 

DEMOLITION!

The easiest part of any remodel job is taking down the old.  Our construction site became a war zone as we would spend the little available time we had pulling down, yanking out, and getting rid of our existing kitchen (remember, I was serving as Relief Society president during much of this time and Saturdays were mostly the only days we had available to really get into this messy part of the job).

First to come down was the wall between the living room and the kitchen.   The entire wall.  As I emptied the cabinets, they also came out.  My dishes, my spices, my table cloths and vases and bowls and cooking utensils and silverware all got boxed up.  I tried to stack the boxes so the things I would need most were on the top of the stack in the basement, but it did not always work.  We started living out of the microwave and off of paper plates and plastic utensils.

After the wall came down, the house became a little unsafe for children for a while - as in several years.  Can't remember how long that electrical outlet just hung from the ceiling. 

We also took a one year detour just creating a corner fireplace for the living room.

Brent worked and worked and worked.  There wasn't a time when he worked, however, that he didn't come away from the experience with a new bruise or cut.  He was very hard on himself.  The windows had been replaced in '07 before we did the bathroom, so those stayed in place.

We finally even got rid of the kitchen sink.  Don't know if you can tell, but all that dark stuff on the floor and at the base of the wallboard ... yeah, the source of the smell.  Black mold. It had to be killed before we could even tear out the walls. Everything had to come off and come up, but that was okay by me.  Easier to tear out than to repair, for sure.

The last chore, and this was a big one, was bringing up the old flooring, both layers.  Don't ever let a flooring guy who just installs on weekends tell you that nobody pulls up the old flooring, just lay the new over the top.  Especially if you have rotten floor boards beneath the old.   We ended up hiring our floor guy (the one who did the bathroom, not the one who did the linoleum years before) to come and pull up all the old, right along with the subflooring it was glued to.

It was a mess for a long time.  But every single thing we did brought us closer to our goal.  Even when it felt like we were getting further away.  We tore down all the insulation (R6) and replaced it with R13.  And sometime in the middle of all the tear down, we began to rebuild again.  And the awful smell disappeared with the old walls and old flooring.
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to BUILDING UP

 It's been a long long time building.  Building is definitely the most time consuming and hardest, when so much of it is done by a couple of old grandparents who really don't have the training, just hard knock experience.  Walls would be built and then torn out because they were not quite level and have to be rebuilt again. 





But with each experience came a learning curve.  And a success.

We hired out the plumbing, the electrical and the flooring.  The rest was done by us and our children.  Mike came one day and assisted his father in building up the wall along the hall.   Bill ended up doing all the texture work on the ceiling and kitchen walls.

Brent built.  I sanded, and primed, and puttied, and painted.

Had to have an additional furnace vent installed in the kitchen to bring it to code.  And to make room for the new cabinets.  We now have two vents (the one in the foreground and the circular one near the top of the photo.   The one in the middle, the old one, just got covered up with the new floorboards.

This was taken the day we got our new recessed lights in the ceiling.  I still love them.

Getting closer.  The wall was extended past where the original kitchen door was, and then the rest is opened up into the living room.

 I was so excited to finally get to the point where we could have the tile laid.  That was the final step before getting the cabinets installed, and it felt like we were on the way to being whole again.

There came a time when we finally said to our tile guy, just come when it works for you.  The walls were not painted yet, but they were finished enough...   They laid down this orange padding kind of fabric that will keep the tiles from cracking.  I think.   At least that's the theory.

And I remember still the thrill when they finished putting in the tile.  Suddenly the dreams were becoming a reality.

My awesome brother (left) Arnie, and his son Brock (right) came to install the cabinets Arnie built, and I was ecstatic.  This!  was worth it.  I kept pinching myself.

Jeff Cunico got in on the act, too.   He's a ward friend who is also a very good electrician and did all our electrical.

The move in has been slow.  We got the granite counter tops with all that drama - I've already posted pictures of those.  The cupboard doors had to wait another several weeks to be installed.  We got the appliances one at a time.  We still had the pantry to finish and repainting to be done and little odds and ends.
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to today's AFTER photos - February 2012

First of all, welcome to my new kitchen.  I'm going to take you on a tour of some of the things I like best:

Love the spice cupboard!

And the pan racks over the fridge.  The shelves on the other side, however, probably should have had pull outs on them.  They are very very deep.  Now, understand, this is NOT a complaint.  Just a comment.

The tilt outs on the sink are handy for those little tools you need to have access to every day.

And I'm loving having adjustable shelves so I can stack short things, too.

The corner cabinets on top have heavy duty turntables in them.  Terrific idea I wasn't too sold on at first and now don't know how I ever considered not doing this.

And super heavy duty turntables on the bottom, which are mounted directly to the shelves - no center pole, make great use of the corner space.  Arnie's work is remarkable and I am really enjoying all the little extras, like the soft close hinges on the cupboards and the heavy duty finish that keeps moisture off the wood.

One more pan cupboard next to the sink for cutting boards and cooling racks.

Brent pushed and pushed for us to purchase this kind of dishwasher - Two independent washing drawers.  This has been perfect for us!  With just two at home, we can load one while washing the other.  Uses only a gallon of water compared to six in a conventional washer, and only a couple of tablespoons of soap per load.  And it is so quiet sometimes I can't tell it's even washing.  Fischer and Pikel (probably misspelled). 

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But Friday we got the one thing I've been waiting on for months in order to finally post my "finished" photos:

Ta Da!!!!!

Lights under the cabinets- yes!  (if you want to make it really dramatic, scroll quickly to the before and then back to the after and then to the before and then back to the after.....) 

Looking up under the cabinets at the Xenon lights - an amazing amount of light for such tiny little bulbs fitting so compactly up against the bottom of the cabinets.  Even the ones under the shelf over the kitchen window give me plenty of light for working at the sink.  Each section can be controlled by a switch so I don't have to have them all on at the same time.  These particular fixtures are Priori Xenon Under Cabinet Lights from American Lighting.

I love having counter space without having to stack and keep everything on them.  I also love my electric double oven - bottom half is convection, with a gas range on top that has four regular burners and an oblong one in the middle for grilling.   The microwave feels huge.  The sink is so deep on the one side I can actually wash my big pans, crock pot, tall stock pot, etc., without effort.

It's hard to believe that I actually have shelves and drawers without anything on them or in them.   I was worried when we got rid of some of the counter and cupboards that I would lose some storage space, but with the addition of the pantry and the very useable cupboards (my pot shelves all roll out for easy access to the pans in the back), plus a wider counter top than my old, suddenly I have room to spare.  What a difference.

Also, for those of you who read about my miserable color choices and debates about what to do - here is what I ended up with - a soft garden green (or willow, or pale pea green, whatever...) on the west and north walls, a changed peachy tan (had them modify all five gallons) that will wrap around the refrigerator wall into the front room, and I had them modify the butterscotch into a dark tan for the south wall.  I'm happy.

And most of the time, it does not stink.   Except when I forget to run the garbage disposal.  Oops.

It's easy to see why I've gained fifteen pounds since the kitchen was finished.  It is just so fun to cook again.  I am still pinching myself to see if it's real.

What's next?
Well, just turn around and this is what still waits:

Will it ever end?