We have walls

The electrical is done, save for the overhead lighting, and the drywall is up.

Chad says, "tell them we need to do all the mud work, and taping, but it doesn't have to be perfect, because tile and cabinets are going to cover most of the walls. We need to move the gas this week to service the new stove location. Not that big of a deal, but routing the flexible copper gasline through some tricky spaces can wear at your nerves. Oh yeah, that's a good one. Oh man, don't write that crap. Emily, stop. "

We figure we have 4-6 weeks left with this project. I am looking forward to being done.

We are taking this weekend off for a trip to NYC. And then, back at it.

The drywall:

We've reached a standstill

Progress has been slow for the last two weeks. Chad and I both got sick, literally, and then sick and tired of working on the kitchen. Kitchen remodeling depression, you might call it.

Chad has been working on the wiring, and he started working on the back entry way, pictured below. I had to ask him to focus on the kitchen, but that was after he had ripped out the floor and the stairs to the back! The back entry is a verifiable mess, but I would prefer to tackle that after the kitchen. Jeez. I didn't even get a chance to take good before pictures, I snapped a few in progress pictures below.

The Floor Is Back In -- Hallelujah

So, Chad took out all the wood floors in the kitchen. He wanted to clean up the gunk inbetween the floor boards, and he also had to patch in the new entry way to the kitchen. He also needed to take out the floors under the cabinets, and use that extra wood to patch in the new entryway. All that meant that it was easier to just take everything out and put it back in again. What a hassle. This took an entire weekend.

The floor is partially back in...



Detail of the new entry way.

Plywood goes under the new cabinets. The white square shown below is where the stove will go, we are going to tile that with a tile that matches the backsplash.


The fridge will go to the left in the picture below, that will also get tiled

The floor is back in!

It sucks not having a kitchen.

I was planning that no friends would want to come over to our house during the kitchen remodel. Last weekend, we quite successfully held a movie watching evening. Chad and Zak spent all day putting in the new floors, and at the end of the day, I think they were too exhausted to consider relocating. I made a salad with grilled chicken, grilled bread, mozzarella and tomatoes because I was sick of eating out, and afterall, we have a grill.

Here's to entertaining during the kitchen remodel:


This weekend I got really fed up with eating out. I had to take a stand. We have no stove. I can't cook anything decent via the microwave. I needed to do something! So, while the boys watched the superbowl, I cooked up some food for the rest of the week. A big pot of chili, some roasted veggies, pumpkin bread, wild rice, and a chicken casserole-thing for the week.

I am hoping that we can hook the stove up soon. Not having a kitchen is really starting to drag me down. I was figuring that this would happen, but I still was not prepared for the inconvenience of not having a kitchen -- oh, and having the rest of the house in chaos too -- for multiple weeks. Hopefully some home-made food will help just a little. I'll hang in there.

Meanwhile, Chad has been spending so much time working on the kitchen, he is making great progress but overall it's just a ton of work. Our friend Zak has helped a ton, which we really appreciate. I called Chad tonight and he said that he was "farting around" -- which besides being a very odd turn of phrase, he never does. I think he is starting to feel like his life is being swallowed by this project as well.

I have confidence that at the end of all this, we will be so happy that we decided to take on this project.

Probably the biggest thing that has happened as a result of this new feeling of being under-nourished and over-worked is that we are willing to put a little bit more money into some of the finishing touches that we were not planning on spending money on before. For example, we originally were planning on spending $350 for a low to mid line dishwasher. But we found that Bosch, and Bosch makes the best dishwashers, and it was discounted (but still more expensive than the $350 we were originally planning to spend -- it was $500). However, our life is in shambles, our time is forever gone, to hell with it, we are going to spend an extra $150 to get a kick ass dishwasher that will hopefully last a long time and run as quietly as a winter night. It's just not worth it to disrupt our lives so totally and then end up with a final product that is merely "good enough." We're investing so much time, I want the whole thing to be special.

We're feeling that way about the countertops too. The choices are still between soapstone and laminate, with soapstone being around $2000, including shipping from Vermont, and laminate being in the $300-$1000 range depending on whether or not we get it installed. We still have to view some samples of soapstone and get further details, but when it comes down to it, we might go for it.

I hope we are making the right choices because we can't get our time or $$ back!

Send us good vibes because it sucks not having a kitchen.