I knew that remodeling a kitchen was a big project. Probably the biggest project we'll have with this house. But I don't think I fully understood how the kitchen remodel basically flows into the whole house and takes over your life! Not that I'm complaining, of course, I'm just commenting. We began the demolition a few weeks ago when the contractor from Frey came over to take out the wall (turns out taking out the whole wall costs the same as putting in a pass thru). Then Adam worked on finishing the drywall from that project. Then all of a sudden it was time for major demolition. That began on Friday night. Our neighbors across the street wanted to recycle our kitchen hardware, so they came over and helped us take stuff down. Dave actually helped a lot more than we expected him to, and he and Adam were able to get all the cabinets out that night.
Saturday morning Adam's parents came and we set to work pulling out the flooring. This turned out to be a fairly big pain, since we were taking out two layers of vinyl plus a plywood subfloor. We had to take it out so that our new bamboo floor wouldn't be significantly taller than our existing oak floors in the rest of the house. That took us the entire day.
Sunday Adam installed the new, thinner plywood subfloor and I painted the ceiling (I'm not sure, but my hair might still be partly white from this!) and a first coat on the walls. We also realized at this time that the fact that we had a heating vent and a cold air return directly next to each other in the floor (a product of removing the wall) was not a good thing. Something about an infinite furnace loop...? We frantically called our furnace vendor Monday morning to see if they could come out and tell us what needed to be done. Fortunately, the guy came right away and he and Adam worked out a solution (to be installed tomorrow).
Monday morning Adam's dad came back and they began installing the bamboo floor. His dad left around dinnertime when my dad arrived. Together, my dad and Adam finished the floor that night at 11:30pm. They had to get it done because the staple gun was rented from Home Depot and it had to be back by 8am the next morning.
Today my dad and Adam installed the cabinets. They finished all the wall cabinets and most of the base ones. They're installing the sink cabinet as I write this. That one was tricky because of all the existing pipes. I'm hoping they are able to start on the dishwasher installation, but given the fact that my dad said he'd be gone by the time i got home from work (30 minutes ago), i'm not hopeful.
Adam has the rest of the week off to finish as much as he can. The countertop guy is coming on Thursday to do the measurements for our Silestone. Adam's dad is coming back on Friday to take a load of construction debris to the landfill and help finish up projects. I'd say by this weekend we will have a significant portion of the work done, and from there on out it will be finishing up smaller details.
Once the project is closer to being finished, i'll post some before and after pictures.
