Kitchen Project. Day 1.

They were three hours late.

This is understandable, since it is one of the coldest winters on record and sub-zero temperatures have contractors busy-out-of-their-minds with frozen pipes and dead furnaces.

Last night we were up well past midnight trying to get everything cleared out of the kitchen.  Had we known they would be three hours late, we might have slept in a bit.

However, they are nice guys, hard workers, and polite.  They got a lot done.

Here are some "before" pictures of the kitchen.

This is essentially the first view I had of the kitchen, when I first entered the house from the garage, through the laundry room.  Lulubelle, upon viewing the scene, instantly remarked, "Why is the refrigerator there?"

Here is the little hallway that goes off behind the refrigerator to the left.  At the left end of it, there are 13" of dead space, which we will be reclaiming, combining with some of the counter run, and making into a broom closet.  This is Shawn's personal coffee kitchen, and he will still have it, although it will be a few inches smaller.

This is what the kitchen looked like from the eating area.  I am no lover of peninsulas.  I've never had a kitchen big enough for an island, but somebody is always trying to crowd a peninsula in where there is not enough room.  You may be able to see that this peninsula ends 30 inches from the front of the refrigerator.  A significant problem.  Had it not been a side-by-side refrigerator, one would not even have been able to open it.  As it is, whoever was looking into the refrigerator always had his backside plastered against the end of the peninsula, and obviously nobody could get from one side of the kitchen to the other while that was going on.

If this picture continued on to the left, the refrigerator would be there, once again.  This is a view of the original cabinetry in the eating area of the kitchen.  We are removing the desk and replacing it with a large double pantry.  We are also removing the soffits.  Well, the construction guys are.

This is a view of the kitchen from the little hallway with the little sink.

This is the corner sink.

This is the stove wall.
Also, those are boxes I was packing the kitchen into for the project.
They have not been around since we moved in.

So today they arrived at about noon and tore the thing apart.  I huddled with the dogs upstairs, listening with trepidation to squeaks, jabs, loud exclamations, and house-shaking thuds, followed by the tinkling of many small pieces of something shardlike.

It was very cold, minus 7 or something like that.  They had to keep going in and out, so it was very, very cold.

If my furnace gives up the ghost, at least I already have contractors on site.  Right?

This is what my kitchen looks like now:

I think it will look better when we get rid of the tile and the soffits.

I will leave you with a picture of Piper that I just found.  It was this Christmas, and he wasn't feeling very good.  Poor baby.