Kitchen remodel underway

Hard to believe we've been in the house for almost 10 years now, but it's been long enough that we've tackled most of the necessary small- and medium-scale projects. Now we've got a couple of big ones that we can't ignore any longer: remodeling the kitchen and bathroom. These undertakings are notoriously tough on the old pocketbook, so tackling them simultaneously is not an option. Up first, the kitchen. Timeframe for the bathroom is TBD.

As luck would have it, Vern, a good friend of ours, is a contractor who does a lot of kitchen work. He'll be handling the 'skill' portion of things- building/installing cabinetry, countertops, sink, dishwasher, etc. (the fact that we'll have a dishwasher again is perhaps my favorite part of this whole deal!). The role of Rhonda and I largely involves 2 tools- hammer and crowbar. You can definitely save some dough doing your own demo. Our approach is basically to demo and rebuild half the kitchen at a time, so some functionality is retained (and we don't have to pull every pot, plate, fork and glass and stack them up all over the house).

New appliances have been bought, but are mainly just in the way.

Here's a peek into how the demo has been going.

Today, Vern patched drywall into that big bare section of wall (the floor linoleum we inherited with the house was also applied on top of the wall behind the stove- pure genius). Also, he framed/drywalled off the doorway from the kitchen to the middle of the house. We decided to close off that doorway to gain some counter/cabinet space. Hopefully this will end up being a wise decision.

More soon.