Kitchen Destruction (weekend of 2005-07-16)

We did a few things different this time. First, we knew what we were doing. There was not exploratory destruction - not questions, no hesitation. Second, our friend Dan came up for the weekend to help. Third, we bribed some other friends and had two extra hands each day (Saturday and Sunday). Fourth, we took regular breaks (every 2 hours) for snacks and rest. Fifth, we had a dumpster delivered for all our destruction debris - no more figuring out where to put the trash. The result? What took 3 months with the living room took 2 days for the kitchen!

First, the dumpster. We got it earlier that week and loaded all the destruction materials from the living room - that had been sitting in our second driveway giving us a nice "white-trash" look. You can see Sarah just about to start loading up the dumpster in the top-right-most picture (below). That took up about 1/3rd of the dumpster, maybe a little more. With the kitchen destruction, we could just through trash right into the dumpster. We had enough trash, though, that we had to periodically organize the dumpster a little to maximize space. You can see Dan doing just that in the lower-left-most picture (below). In the end, the dumpster was just big enough (lower-right-most picture, below):

One of the most-fun parts of the destruction was taking down that annoying wall that breaks up the space between the kitchen and living room making both feel small. Once we removed the puny supports connecting it to the ceiling joists, a quick run with the saws-all and we just pushed part of the wall over! Woot!

With a little more work, we had removed the wall entirely. Below is a picture of the room at the end of Saturday. We had done pretty-much everything but the floor in one day!

Since we know we won't be able to afford cabinets for a while, we kept our sink around. We plan on replacing it, but this way we can hook it back up once the floor is replaced and at least have a sink in our kitchen while we do all the electrical, insulation and drywall. Below is a picture of the sink, saws-alled out of the wall and set aside. The thing is cast-iron and weighs a ton!

The work for Sunday entailed ripping up the floor. This is one of the hardest parts because, like the living room, the sub-floor was made out of long diagonal planks covered by shorter non-diagonal planks. I'm sure this made it strong, but it also made it a pain to pull up. With the help of more friends, though, fresh ones, ready to through their all, (we'd already used up the last batch and threw them back ;) Thanks J&K!), we were able to rip up the floor in no time (Thanks K&K!). It didn't take all day - so we were able to lounge around in the afternoon and enjoy a leisurely barbeque lunch.

The results of kitchen-destruct-o-ramma-weeknd? Take a look!

That isn't quite -all- the destruction. We still had to deal with all those wires in the ceiling and joists. We had to clean up and remove all the old-old, no-longer-used plumbing that was still there. And, of course, those joists were getting replaced. Always more to do! But still, for the most part, 3 months reduced to 2 days, no, a day and a half!!! We rock! (and so do our friends! Thanks again everyone! Especially Dan!)