Demolition

Demolition is fun! And it didn't take nearly as long as I thought it would. As you can see from the pics, we are out of the kitchen except for the refrigerator. I'm going to move that Saturday, which will take away ice and water, but still leave us a place to store food. OK, so here's some details on the demo.

Here some of the first cabinets are being removed. We were starting with just the over the range microwave, which my friend, Matt White, helped me with (Thanks Matt!). We had so much trouble, we started taking cabinets out, so I just kept going. We came across something interesting electrically when we were working on the OTRM. There was a live wire in the same box as the microwave, and it was on the family room circuit (next room over). Unfortunately I found it the hard way. My hand was still stinging a few minutes later. We'll cap that at first chance and figure out what to do with it later. Obviously, we did get the microwave out, and I'll admit we had to find the directions. It was not obvious how this thing attached to the wall.

So, cabinets started coming out pretty quickly, faster than I figured. Unfortunately, I keep finding things in this kitchen that don't excite me (read: I have work to do that I didn't expect!). It looks like the builder set the cabinets flat on the floor rather than on top of the tile floor. Considering that the new cabinets won't hit exactly in the same places, I'm not sure what I'm going to do about this problem. I'll consult the experts on what to do with this. I guess I could add leveling to the holes and try to set the cabinets at the tile height or I could cut out tile where the new cabinets fit. We'll see...

After the cabinets came out, I finished taking out the ductwork and remainder of soffit drywall and wood. In order to keep the kitchen and garage clean, we got a dumpster from AAA Affordable dumpsters. For $150 they delivered a dumpster on wheels for 4 days and $5 per day after that. When I'm finished all I have to do is call and they take care of going to the junk yard. How easy is that!?! So I took the opportunity to start filling it. It was good that I was able to get this so quickly, as we started filling up the garage with cabinets, old and new!

Yep that's right the new cabinets arrived yesterday. The Kraftmaid truck came at about the time kids were getting off the school bus, so the neighborhood was out watching. It seems like we are the talk of the neighborhood, now, as everyone learned we are remodeling the kitchen. My neighbor, Helmut, who helped carry some counter top to the garage, asked me not to tell his wife Chrissy I was doing this - sorry Helmut, too late, now! So, now we have a garage full of old cabinets and boxes of new ones.

It looks like Saturday will be about electrical and drywall. There is a lot of remediation to do in that area, more in the electrical area than I anticipated. I'm learning a lot about how kitchens work as I go along. Hopefully, I can get the electrical done and start the drywall today and finish it by Monday. Of course, watching some of the Buckeye's opener might interfere :)!