Buh-bye kitchen

Well, it is gone. Ugly as it was, I miss it.

The workers showed up yesterday, and within 2 hours my kitchen was gutted.

Here is a photographic tour of my kitchen from Sunday afternoon to Monday afternoon.


At left, the kitchen as it looked before the packing up and demo.








Here is my what my kitchen looked like Sunday afternoon as I was trying to pack up its contents.

At first I had no idea where to start.

Then I just jumped in with both feet and started packing boxes and bags.

It is amazing how much stuff there is in a kitchen.

More amazing to me was that I actually use most of it.

I was thinking there would be a ton of stuff to go to the thrift store or in a yard sale. But there really isn't.

Rather than throw stuff away or give stuff away at this point, I packed it all up and will make those decisions as I bring things back in to the new kitchen.



More from Sunday's marathon packing session.

I got the whole thing packed up in about 4 hours.

I had to stop after a couple hours because I was so overheated.

I had been working with no air conditioning and just had the windows open, but it got to be too much.

So I cranked up the a/c, cooled off then got back to work.

Most of the stuff ended up in the spare room/office.

I can get at what I need, but it is still a pain.



Luckily I had some help from George.

He was very good at making sure I didn't miss anything in any of the drawers of cabinets.


















I think he made a point to go into any open cabinet he could.

It was like a dream come true after years of being shooed away from cabinet doors left open for more than 10 seconds.




















This is from Monday.

Demo was well under way at this point.








More cabinets, gone.

The crew was kind enough to move my fridge, with all the stuff still inside, into my living room.

So now I make coffee in the spare room and go to the living room to get the milk for it.









More demo from another angle.















This is my favorite shot.

I had gone out to the ceramics studio to calm my nerves and get out the way of the workers.

When I pulled up in front of my house, the kitchen sink was on the lawn.

My guess is that baby will find its way into salvage someplace.

I hope so. It's a perfectly usuable sink, just not part of the new design.






No more oven, no more stove.



Good thing I have a barbecue, huh?










No more sink, no more dishwasher.


Paper plates for everyone!












They took things apart so carefully since they are basically just swapping out the old pieces with new pieces and not doing any construction work.

So the tile was removed from the bar counter, then the roughtop came out.

The whole area is surrounded with a large plastic sheet to keep the dust away from the living room as much as possible.


And, by the middle of the day Monday, the kitchen is gone.

The guys did a really good job of cleaning up as much as possible.

They came today to remove the floor.

They had to bring a special tool. It was quite scary looking.

I took a picture of that and will post it later.

So, there really is no turning back now.

Before it was about contracts and orders and plans.

Now it is about not having a kitchen.