Author: mgcrafts

My house has a walk-in refrigerator!  You probably call yours the garage.  It’s probably the “tomato”  – “tomoto” thing.  But it is convenient that it is so *#&@ cold here in Connecticut that food is staying fresh and soda cold in the garage.  Which is also a good thing when the sub-zero (our real refrigerator and the only  thing surviving the demolition of the old kitchen) is one floor above this tiny operating kitchen and behind a sealed plastic wall.  I’ve found a good way to diet — if the fridge containing all the snacks requires shoes and a coat, a set of keys, and a trip up the stairs out thru the dining room slider and into the kitchen slider to get to.  No wonder I’m losing weight — and I thought it was all the worrying about the money being spent on this remodel.

So, with all the stuff out of the room it looks so big.  Wonder how we can keep the illusion as we put the kitchen and sitting room back together?  The carpenters started laying the new hardwood floor last week, but work got delayed by last week’s snow storm (8″ on Friday).  Tomorrow is supposed to see ALL of the sheetrock installed — that will be quite a feat!   Then work will most likely be halted again as we deal with this week’s foot of snow.   One storm a week — more than we need — seems to be the pattern.   Hubby has really put the hours on the snowblower and my errand for tomorrow is to pick up a cable to repair it before Wednesday’s “big blow”.   I’ve taken the annual picture of hubby and blower, but will have ample opportunity for more, I think.

At last, some reconstruction has begun.   The electrician has hung all the boxes that go above the sheetrock, but today the carpenters will begin laying the hardwood floor.  The first day of reconstruction.   This is what it looks like right now……

The kitchen area is now completely gutted. As we peel back the layers, it is very interesting to discover the wack-a-doodle things the prior owners did on the first and second remodel of the kitchen. This large blank area in the middle of the floor is the result of a re-tiling from 14 years ago when they apparently did not  remove and reinstall the island. No wonder it always felt a bit short as they had  raised the level of the floor around the island without raising it too. So, those ugly white, cracked tiles are soon to be gone. Handy thing about putting in new windows. The carpenters are tossing all the old stuff out the rough opening for the window so they don’t have to walk through the finished area of the house with construction destruction debris.  And, of course, there is a big open hole in the house and the temperature is 20 degrees.

And where am I hiding out, you might ask?  This is my temporary hovel in the laundry room/downstairs kitchen.  Everything in one tiny little space including the table which now serves as my office where I’m about to start writing the annual Christmas card.

After two very hard days of work, the old kitchen is fully packed up and moved either upstairs to a spare room or downstairs to a very tiny mother-in-law kitchen for the next few weeks.  Two cabinets are already down and headed to Housatonic Habitat for Humanity’s ReStore operation tomorrow.   The rest will come down and out by the end of the week.    And then the walls come out as we look for wood rot and any other damage that might be there before we reconstruct.  Ceiling is coming down too.

It will be the coldest day of the year so far — high temp maybe up to 27 degrees — and this window in the photo is coming out tomorrow.  Good timing on our part, don’t ya’ know.  But in its place will be a giant deep bay window. Then the second bay goes in the next day — right before the weather changes and the temps get back up into the 40s.  But at least it’s clear and not raining or snowing.

It’s finally here!  Start date for the kitchen remodel, that is.  Hubby and I both took some photos of the old space so we can look back on them with fond (or not so fond) memories.  Over the Thanksgiving weekend, I smoked the ceiling accidentally with burning cranberries on the stove and  hubby cut his hand badly on broken glass and got blood all over the floor.  Then early this morning, the coffee maker malfunctioned for some reason and for the first time ever and ran coffee onto the counter, down the cabinet face, and onto the floor.  Guess we are getting our last oops in with the old kitchen and I’m certainly glad this didn’t happen with a new ceiling, new wooden floors and cabinet doors.  Time to charge those camera batteries and get ready to document the big (read that “expensive) renovation!