Archive for February, 2005

This weekend Mark came over and took the doors and hinges to many of our cabinets. He is going to use them in his basement, for some crazy project he is working on.
We also started to get all the stuff out of the kitchen. I can’t even believe all of the crap we have.

About half of all of our kitchen “stuff” is now laying on the living room floor, with food in plastic bags.

Sangi is in heaven. All sorts of new wonderful smells and things to get into.

More crazy mess..

Lots of light getting into the kitchen now..

I opened up all the boxes to make sure everything is correct. The box pile is growing..

Around the beginning of the year, Karen and I decided that it would be a good idea to upgrade our kitchen.
The reasons for this project were many:
- reclaim wasted space (mostly vertical space)
- open up the room to outside light
- make the kitchen more functional
- spend lots of money

We’re also learning a lot about the overall home improvement process. We’ve learned it sucks. You need to micromanage everything, and costs can explode very easily. But the end result will be worth it.

The installation is scheduled for next thursday and friday. Thursday night I will have pictures of the kitchen completely dismantled. That should be wicked cool!

Here are the “before” pictures:

The new cabinets have arrived, and are filled up our dining room. We had to take apart the kitchen table to make space for all this stuff, and put it in the living room.

The current sink and bar. The new bar is going to be 4″ wider than the old bar, and the sink is moving 6 inches to the right. With the new bar, we’ll be able to put some barstools on the dining room side and actually use it to eat on. Ignore the mess.

Unfortunately, the backsplash has to go because the existing countertop sits on top of it. Mark and I tried to yank some of the tiles, breaking some of the underlying sheetrock. We’ll have to fix that. Conventional wisdom says that removing tiles is never pretty, and this is no exception. I’m putting in the new backsplash myself, once everything is done. Gulp.

The cabinets above the bar are being replaced with cabinets with glass doors on both sides, so more light can come into the kitchen. The new cabinets are also 6 inches shorter than the existing cabinets.

The new countertop, laying in the living room. Unfortunately the manufacturer screwed up one of the countertop pieces and they are coming over tommorow to pick it up and fix it.

We’re replacing the existing wire shelves in the pantry with 4 solid wood shelves (with a laminate coating, for easy cleaning). This should also give us lots more useable space.

The new sink base is substantially smaller than our existing sink base, which gives us room to put a really big 3-door cabinet on the left.

The stove side. If you look on the left, you’ll see a big gaping hole where the silverware drawer used to be. The sliders on the existing drawer failed, which was one of the reasons we wanted to upgrade the kitchen in the first place. All of our silverware is sitting on the countertop right now, to the right. It’s really annoying.

I went to Boston Markup tonite, and to my complete delight, they had Savory Stuffing on their menu!
I couldn’t believe my eyes. A few months ago Walde and I went there and I ordered Savory Stuffing, and they somehow didn’t have it. They told us it was seasonal? Eh? Since when is breadcrumbs, water and salt seasonal? Boston Market is clearly stupid.

So tonite they had it. And I ate it. Except it wasn’t very savory.
Actually, come to think of it, I think I’m glad it’s seasonal. That stuff is pretty nasty.