3.30.16

It's coming together!

The electrician had to come back to move some outlets, but the installers got almost all the cabinets in.

Look at the cool things in some of the drawers:

We have to figure out where to set the island (so there's clearance around it and stuff) and I think some of the pantry doors are backwards. Also have a few decorative panels to apply. Still, it's looking pretty good!

3.29.16

Fun stuff!

The electrical and plumbing passed inspection yesterday, so drywall and installation started today.

Look--we have (some) cabinets. And no more holes in the walls.

We took a chance and put the dishwasher on the street and someone took it. Hooray for (f)re(e)cycling!

3.25.16

After yesterday's demo, the electrician and plumber came today to move things for the new layout. Look at all the new holes in our walls.  The electrician was especially impressed with the plaster over drywall (not).

Monday morning the building inspector comes, and if all is good, they'll start installation (drywall and cabinets) on Tuesday!

3.24.16

Cabinets--gone!

And we cooked our first meal without a kitchen. It turned out really well, but the dishes remain to be done, so we might still have some complaints. :)

3.23.16

Demolition starts tomorrow, so we spent the evening emptying our old kitchen...

...and setting up our temporary kitchen in the basement 

Luckily our laundry room was set up with the original cabinets, likely after the first remodel, so we have storage and "countertops."  This should be an adventure!

3.15.16

Amazing (somewhat surprising) news:

Hooray!!!

So one of us (the one not at work all day) rented a floor refinished to get the gunk off the floor--at least as much as could be done in 4 hours.

And then covered them in plastic.

We are definitely living in a being-remodeled house now. Ugh!

They also came to inspect the cabinets today, so they're semi-unwrapped and we could peek at them:

Last, but not least, the money from the refinance came through so our credit cards are no longer maxed out! (Still glad we could get all those points on them, though. Enough to pay for the drawer pulls, at least.)

3.11 - 3.13.16

Sometimes it's good when your degree (Environmental Health) meets your real life, and sometimes it's not.

Late last week the cabinet install company came out to test our walls for lead paint. Given that out house was built in the mid-50's, and has peeling/chipping paint, it was a very real possibility.

However, it does NOT contain lead. (Yay! Both for the health risk and added expense if it HAD been positive.

So we continued the very-slow process of peeling the paper from the linoleum we'd removed. It took a steam iron and paint scraper, but was still slow and back-breaking. 

But then we started the seam where the kitchen meets the (carpeted) living room. As soon as we lifted the carpet edge, we saw there was an extra layer of plywood in the kitchen. Maybe, instead of this awful paper removal, we could just pry up the plywood and toss it. After all, we needed to have the floors at the same height or there would be a drop-off.

And they popped up beautifully! 

Unfortunately, there was a very sticky glue that still showed the pattern of the tile from the original owners. It was a mess! 

So we worked awhile at getting the tarry mess up until one of us mused "hope there's no remnants of asbestos in this tar from what was likely asbestos tiles." Off to the Internet only to find that many adhesives used in the 50's contain asbestos!!!

<insert panic>

After speaking with two asbestos specialists, we calmed down, covered it with plastic (more for covering the gooey stuff than for protection), and scraped up a sample to take to a lab this week for testing.

Because it's not disintegrated, even if it DOES contain asbestos, it's not friable, and therefore not releasing particles--which is when it's dangerous.  However, if it does contain asbestos, we'll still have to do abatement (=$$$).

(Sigh) Remind me again why we decided to remodel? :)

3.9.16

Two big things today. They replaced our leaking roof with a rubber roof. And they showed us where the leak was. Water damage, but no mold. That's been a headache (which we've tried to fix numerous times) since we put on the addition.

And the cabinets arrived:

We've been (slowly) working at removing the paper left behind when we ripped up the linoleum. It's very tedious...