Cabinets Are In!

All the cabinets are in! Tomorrow the countertop is being measured. By next week the appliances will be in and the floors and walls will be done.
You can actually see the window in the dining room!!
Until next week the appliances are still in the living room. Teddy is very offended by them. She did try and lick the hose from the dishwasher and was unpleased with result.

Progress!

About half the cabinets have now been installed. Here's the dining room wall. Please notice how lovely the lights look as the glow under 5 inches of dust.
The fridge will go where the ladder currently is. It looks really big, but will actually be smaller than what we had before.
This is where the bar will be.
The far wall still needs a little bit of work and the peninsula still hasn't started.
The floor has been put in, but it still needs to be sanded and stained. They will do that after all the cabinets and appliances are in.

Complication

Yesterday the floor guys came and laid down all the hard wood so there are no more nails sticking straight up. They didn't do anything to the electric work, but for some reason we have no power in half the the house. The electrician comes this morning to try and figure out how to get power so we don't have to shower in the dark. At least the air conditioning and the hot water heater still works.

End of Week Two

End of week two and the cabinets come on Monday. Hopefully that means this wall will have the stove on it the next time you see it.
But we do have all the lights in and all the electrical run. The guys came today and laid out the floor in the kitchen. It's starting to look like we might have a kitchen again some day.
But there's a crap load of dust. This is Matt's black baseball glove in the basement.
Seriously. Lots of dust.

Lettuce is the New Eggs

I apologize if I ramble a little bit, but today I bought 36 heads of lettuce, 3 arugula plants, 4 tomato plants, 2 cucumber plants, 2 basil, 2 parsley, 2 cilantro, 2 mint, 1 oregano, 1 thyme, and 3 garlic chive plants. And then decided to plant them all in one day. If I have a hunchback the next time you see me this is why. I also took Matt to the airport, went to Home Depot AND Ikea, and solved the Middle East conflict. It's only 5pm. It's amazing what you can do when you get up early and don't take a nap. Stupid being 30 and responsible.

This is the 85 feet of lettuce that I planted around the roses already in the yard. I have limited places to put pots right now because the construction guys keep needing to use the deck, so for right now the parsley and cilantro are living in pots in the garden.
Two tomato plants where the compost pile used to be. Did I mention that I removed the compost pile? I did that too. Vegetables that haven't composted are slimy and roses never loose their thorns. I generally put the cage the other way (upside down) but these are in prime area to get knocked over by construction guys, so I'm giving them some protection.
Close up of the lettuce. It's six different varieties that do well in extreme heat are slow to bolt. It took less than two hours until Teddy laid down on an entire row.
My herb garden. Because I buy so much basil and that stupid hyrdo basil plant never works for me. It's in pots because I am officially out of space in my garden. If I want to plant anything else I need to pull up the grass.

Garlic chives. These might have been my favorite thing we got in the CSA last year.
I'm going to go take about 5 aspirin and go to sleep.

Week Two

This is what the contractor was opening up when I heard "What is this?" Oh no. Thankfully it wasn't a big deal, but it did give me a minor heart attack.

Right now it's electrical work so there's not a lot of visible changes on a day to day basis. But today they had to dig into some walls to run the lines and that created a lot of dust.

Lines running across the kitchen wall.

This is the inside of the kitchen wall. Because I've always wanted to know what was there.

The chaos is not making me crazy. Teddy is driving crazy however, so it's balanced. If any one has ideas about how to deal with schizo puppy I would appreciate it.

Heartbreaking

Friends of ours recently lost their three and a half month old baby boy Lukas. He is profoundly loved and missed. His family will be in my thoughts and prayers.

I Swear That I Did Not Find This Site In Anger

From http://mattbites.com

I have been debating what the first thing I make in the new kitchen will be. I think this entry for Carne Asada Fries is currently taking first place.

Any other requests for the first meal?

End of Week One

Floor level destruction.

You can see 60 years of paint. Our dining room apparently has been pink multiple times.

You can see the basement thru the kitchen floor!

Teddy is not liking the crate while people are home. She's REALLY likes to whine when we're home and she's in the crate.

Day One

OH. MY. GAWD.

This used to be the peninsula and the dining room. Note the yellow piece of paper taped to the wall. I appreciate that they employ the same tactics we did.

Plastic to try and limit the dust to the rest of the house.

What used to be the kitchen.

It's actually not nearly as bad as I imagined. Of course I've now jinxed us and it will turn wacko tomorrow. The kitchen/dining room actually looks smaller than it did before we pulled everything out.
This pile of wires is exactly why Teddy is currently at the dog walker's.

In case you're curious, this is what our living room currently looks like. A fridge and piles of chaos.

Before

This week construction starts on the new kitchen and dining room. Here are the before shots.
The peninsula. The upper cabinets will be replaced and the sink will be moved here. After construction there will be no more missing drawer. That stupid, freaking drawer that kept breaking and was what started this project.
The fridge will be replaced, and cabinets placed on both sides of the fridge. The cabinets will go all the way to the opening to the living room.
This is how we've been marking out progress.
The stove will be moving to be centered on the far wall.
Built in cabinets will be on the left wall. We're getting rid of the drapes and going with something that doesn't look like it was made from Grandma's couch.

I'm excited but nervous. The next couple of weeks will be stressful and full of dust. I'll let you know if I loose my mind.

Genes

Most of the time I blame my craziness on my mother. She's a one of a kind wackadoodle with a very colorful vocabulary for a minister's wife. I get my pale skin, blonde hair, and the need to make my own sounds effects for everything from her. From my father I get my blue eyes, tennis playing, and a talent for eye rolling. The smart@ss comes from both sides. But every once in a while my dad does something that reminds me he's got his own level of craziness.

Yesterday was my dad's birthday and I sent him an email telling him I hope he's having a great time whatever he's doing. This is what I got back.
"Thanks, sweetheart. I'm in Kenya on the shores of Lake Naivasha in the Great Rift Valley. It's almost 6PM on the 7th, and I'm about to go down to look at the flamingos and hippos. Maybe I should take my malaria prophylaxis (otherwise known as G&T*) first!"
Let me get this straight. You're going to have a few drinks and then go play with wild animals? That seems like a great idea...

Book smarts and common sense are two very different things.

*G&T is gin and tonic for those of you who don't speak WASP.

10 days till Demolition

Matt and I are starting to pack all of our kitchen and dining room into boxes before the construction starts. We've made a good dent in the dining room, but that required us to sort of the second bedroom first. See, the books from the dining room are going in the second bedroom, but we needed to clean off the entertainment unit and disassemble it before we could fit the bookcases and books into the room. I've never seen Matt so happy to get rid of a piece of furniture as he was to get that entertainment unit out of our house. He's hated it for almost 10 years, but we've moved it at least three times.

We've started on the kitchen packing, but then ran out of newspaper and boxes. We've also started to thin out what we keep in the pantry and the fridge, so I think that's going to lead to weird eating habits in about a week. Thankfully we've figured out that we'll be able to move the fridge into the basement, so we'll never be without a fridge during the remodel. I did realize that we will be sans microwave for about three weeks. I think fridge trumps microwave, but we'll see how often we end up wishing for a microwave.

In preparation for demolition, we've also started to get Teddy used to a crate. For the most part she's enjoying the crate, but we haven't had her in it for very long yet. She doesn't whine at all in it, if she can see us. If she can't see us, then the whining starts. She's so spoiled and I blame Matt. He blames me, so it works out well.