Kitchen Project. Day 9.

Oh wait.

Yes.  It was Day 9... in the same respect that tomorrow (Saturday) will be Day 10 and Sunday will be Day 11.  Meaning: nobody came to work today.  Lots of pipes are bursting in and around central Illinois, creating lots of emergencies to draw constructions workers in many directions.

Of course, this means that we are another day behind schedule, which prolongs the agony, but at the same time it mitigates the agony.

If they had come to work today, they would have put the sheathing down on the floor, the whole floor, including the laundry room floor.  And to do that, they would have taken my washer and dryer out of the laundry room.  Right before the weekend.  Right after the electricians got insulation on everything in my closet, and my insulation-contaminated pajamas made it into my bed, also contaminating my sheets.

In other words, it will be very nice to be able to do laundry this weekend.

Also, Shawn came home and vacuumed like a champion last night, and... his vacuuming has stood firm!  Tomorrow, we can start from where he left off, rather than starting all over.

I am also happy because I was able to leave the house today, which felt even better than I expected.  It was tremendous.  I'd not realized how wearing it is to hunker upstairs during the construction process, sheltering two insecure and traumatized little dogs.  During the work hours I don't clean, because that would be like trying to staunch Niagara Falls with a bath towel.  I can't do laundry, because I'd get in their way.  I can't cook, because obviously.  After I shower and make my bed, there isn't much to do besides write, read a library book, peruse Facebook, and occasionally duck outside with the dogs (as quickly as possible when the temperature is below zero).

But.

It will be OK.

Kitchen Project. Day 8.

One week ago, we started the demo.

Today things started to look a little like they are going back together again.

Yesterday, I hurt myself trying to vacuum all the insulation that workmen tracked all over my home.  When I had my surgery, the doctor told me no shoveling, no vacuuming.  She said, "You are a new car."

But chunks of pink insulation taunted me from all over my floors.  Pink insulation isn't something I can let lie.  When they went through my bedroom closet to get to the attic to put the lights in my bathroom, they got a lot of insulation in there too.  I vacuumed it three times, but I still went to bed with insulation all over my pajamas (I realized too late), and I found yet more insulation behind the closet door this morning.
I did a great deal of necessary vacuuming yesterday, and then I told Shawn, "I think I have dented the new car."

Today, I laid low, in hopes of avoiding the need for surgical reconstruction. 

I wrote 4323 words on a book I will never publish and nobody will ever read (or maybe I wrote half of those words yesterday).  As the sky turned pink with sunset, Microsoft Word cursed my formatting and the margins mutinied, so I did a "save" and "close."

I gave up on nutrition , sloshing a can of chicken and dumplings into the crockpot with some token cans of mixed vegetables, a feeble attempt to shore up a meal based on carbs, gluten and MSG, three things I try to avoid, but my heart is just plumb-wore-out.  Licked.

Oh.  And the guys doing the work said their boss's timeline is not realistic.  The cabinets will not be installed by Tuesday.  Seems reasonable, based on what I can see.

Our old refrigerator lurks uncomfortably in the midst of a changing world, holding just enough food to beckon us down when we are desperate.

The lights, switches, outlets and sheet-rock are in place, over plumbing and duct-work, which are also in place.

The dust is heavy, but I am lying low.  If I clean tomorrow, it will last all weekend.

Kitchen Project. Day 7.

Today they did electrical.

I went down this morning to get a light bulb out of the laundry room (don’t ask).  There were approximately 329 workers standing on short stepladders in my kitchen, sawing at the ceiling with power jigsaws (I made that up; I have no idea what tools they were sawing with, and also I am using hyperbole; there were less than 329 workers, perhaps 73).  A six-foot pile of pieces of putrefied pink insulation loomed in the center of the floor; they were pulling chunks of it out of the rafters.  They had arrived a full hour earlier than expected.  I am trying to look on this as a good thing.

It is very cold in here today, on this 7 degree day when all the insulation has been extracted from my kitchen ceiling.  There is so much dust in the air, my eyes sting and my throat is sore.  The dogs sit with their front feet splayed, looking up at me, their faces a mixture of perplexity and terror as the floor beneath them in this upstairs bunker goes, “Boom, boom, boom!”

Usually, as soon as the workers leave, I get out the vacuum.  But today, in this haze, I wonder if there will be a point.  Most of the dust hasn’t even settled out of the air to a surface from which it could be suctioned up.

[Aside]  I wish I could go to my sister’s house, sit in her beautiful kitchen and look at her beautiful things.  A pear.  A piece of driftwood.  A rustic wooden box.  I would like to sit with a hot mug of coffee garnished with steamed milk (because she has a Nespresso milk steamer), and not hear rough voices, bangs, crashes, drills, saws, thumps and a radio station not-of-my-choice.  Or, I would like to go to my parents’ house and eat dinner, real dinner, a hot casserole pulled from a working oven, served with salad made of vegetables that were washed in the sink and sliced on the counter, in a house where there is almost no dust, ever. But wishes aren’t fishes and fishes can’t fly.

I spoke with the contractor today.  He thinks the cabinets will be installed by next Tuesday (February 4).  Then the countertop people come and measure, and it takes a week for the countertops to be manufactured.  So a week later, on February 11, we might get countertops.  After that there are a few more things:  the backsplash, installing the appliances.  The contractor said, “Unless we run into any hitches…”  Unless we run into any hitches we might be done by February 17 or 18?

Dare I hope?

Eleven years ago, when we did our other kitchen, it took three months.  However, it was never like this.  I can’t remember clearly, but it was almost as if that guy took out one cabinet at a time and replaced it, allowing me to move my stuff as he went along.  I do remember that there was only one day that I didn’t have a kitchen sink, and that he literally cut the old counters out a strip at a time so I always had at least some countertop to work on until the old cabinets were all gone.  But then, it took three months.  The old band-aid analogy may apply here.  I hope this is the quick rip. 

I hope the fluster, flying dust, flurried activity, racket, booms and crashes will pay off here.

It was a very long day.  In fact, they are still cleaning up downstairs, and the sun is setting.  I won’t be able to get pictures of the kitchen, but mostly their work involved repositioning the old can lights and changing around the light switches.  It was a long day, and messy, loud and difficult.

HOWEVER.

They put lights in my bathroom!!!

There is still a gash in the wall where the original light was.  The carpenter will fix that on the day he does drywall in the kitchen.  But in the meantime, I have lights in my bathroom for the first time in six months!

So, I am happy.  Overwhelmed with dust, but happy.

Kitchen Project. Day 6.

Today the water was turned off for most of the day, which meant that I could not have any tea, nor could I wash my hands after I ate an orange.  I couldn't use the bathroom either, but I guess that wasn't much of an issue, since I wasn't drinking any tea.

The plumbing got rerouted, which was good.  We have shiny new copper pipes in the ceiling and walls now, where they should be,

and a drain pipe was moved back into the wall as well.

The closet has been framed in.  That was another piece of "bad news" yesterday... that the closet would be smaller than originally planned.  Frankly, I didn't care.  As long as it is a closet and it holds my vacuum, I will be happy.  I suppose the door will be really expensive now though, since it isn't a standard size anymore.  Here is the closet, underneath the beam that cannot be moved, the soffit that will remain.  Schubert gazes curiously from behind a plastic sheet.

They moved the random heat vent that used to be in the middle of the room.  You maybe saw it in some of my earlier pictures.  It used to come out under the peninsula cabinets, where it kept my canned goods toasty warm all winter.  When they removed the peninsula, it looked like a toilet drain.  Now it is in the corner, and eventually it will come out under the sink cabinet and shoot hot air on my toes while I am peeling carrots, which, in theory, should be very nice.  We are talking theoretically because we are not in a mood to count chickens before they are hatched.

I also found out how much our replacement cabinet will cost.  No.  Nobody but us is going to pay for it.  We are keeping the cabinet that won't fit.  Any suggestions for what we should do with a random 42x42 oak wall cabinet?  Perhaps I will have a really snazzy home for my lawn chemicals in the garage.

Kitchen Project. Day 5.

I am counting total days.  This was the third day of work, as days 3-4 were over the weekend.  But I want to know how many days the project took when we get to the end, so this is how I am counting.  Day 5 of living in a construction zone.

Today was not a stellar day.  Here is what happened:

1.  They scraped the rest of the glue from the tile off the floor.
2.  They finished removing the soffits.
3.  They told me a bunch of bad news.
     a)  They need to reroute plumbing (I guess we knew that).
     b)  They need to reroute electrical.
     c)   There is a load bearing beam in the soffit over the butler's pantry.

I am particularly unhappy about the load bearing beam.

We had asked the contractor to come out before we ordered the cabinets, to drill into the soffits and see whether there was anything inside them that would preclude our ordering 42" cabinets that would reach to the ceiling.

He came and drilled.  He hit solid wood when he drilled over the butler's pantry, but he told us he didn't think there was any problem, to go ahead and order the 42" cabinets.  So I did.  But the hole in that soffit haunted me, deading out as it did into solid wood, not an open black hole like the other holes he'd drilled.  We looked at those holes all through the holiday season, but they were supposed to be our insurance that the cabinets we ordered would fit.

I ordered the cabinets a couple weeks ago, and they will be all built and ready to install tomorrow.

Except I have to re-order those butler's pantry cabinets in the 30" height now.  And I doubt that the company will give us back our money for the 42" ones.

Swallowing hard.

It is a pet peeve of mine when contractors make mistakes and I have to pay for them.  Once in NY, a contractor was doing a bathroom for us, and he mixed up all the grout for the shower... but forgot to add the waterproof additive.  I watched him dump the entire batch of grout into the trash before he went back to the store to buy more cartons of grout powder.  Guess who paid for that?

Swallowing hard again and hoping it works out.  Hoping somebody else ordered this style of cabinet in this finish, and can use the cabinets we can't fit.  Hoping against hope.  Soon I will be back to being a realist, as these hopes are dashed.

Always try to end on a bright note.  The ceiling looks a lot higher with (most of) the soffits out.  It's nice.

Kitchen Project. Day 2.

We are not used to this yet, although we are finding ways to cope.

I still have a crazy optimistic hope that we will not have to cope for a terribly long term, because coping is not super comfortable.

We have a "kitchen" in the boys' room.  This is actually a banquet table placed against a wall, over an outlet, and covered with all manner of things that I had to get out of my kitchen and that I thought might come in handy.

 (That isn't bread flour, it's homemade hot cocoa mix)

Since we are doing food upstairs, I threw a bunch of old rugs around to try to protect the carpet.

It was a good idea.

This morning I went down to the refrigerator which is the only thing left in the kitchen.  With nowhere to set anything, it was a precarious proposition to pour myself a glass of orange juice and scoop up a bowl of yogurt.

Then the contractor arrived and wanted us to move our vehicles.  I hurried upstairs to set down my "breakfast" in our makeshift "kitchen."

Unfortunately I tripped on the top step, fell, and spilled orange juice and strawberry yogurt all over.  Thank goodness for that old braided rug I'd put the top of the stairs.  I think I got most of the orange juice out of the carpet.  Piper helped me get the yogurt off the rug.

Shawn had to move my van for me.

Lunch in the "kitchen."  Apple slices and almond butter.

We do dishes in the bathroom sink.  We make coffee there too,
and tea with our new Hot Pot.

This shelf of "provisions" is in the basement.  Very sensible, right?  "Kitchen" upstairs, refrigerator on the main floor in the middle of the construction zone, and canned goods in the basement.  Not sure where the can opener is at present.

I suppose it will all settle out.

It will need to.  They found plumbing in a soffit today.  I wonder how much time that will add to the job?

The plastic over the doorways may have cut down on the dust.  However, there was a lot of dust at the end of the day.  I vacuumed as thoroughly as I could, but it all needs to be wiped down with a damp cloth.  And then they will be back Monday.  One wonders how much cleaning it is prudent to do.

On a bright note, the tile is all gone.

 

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.