I’ve been avoiding posting about what is actually going on in my home for about two weeks now. I can avoid it no longer, though, as the demolition gang is set to appear tomorrow at daybreak. Well, between 9 am and 11 am, but morning in any event. As you know, we are in the midst of a dramatic kitchen remodel. ‘Dramatic’ may be too strong of a word, but to someone who has never called a plumber (knock on wood) or an electician (double knock), it feels dramatic. And everything’s going, except the walls. So, two weeks ago the cabinets were delivered. Since that time, the place has looked like this:
Home sweet home
And this:
View of the space that was formally known as the dining area
And this:
View from the bedroom door. Good morning!
It’s hard to capture a picture of the sheer horror that is felt when stepping into the condo, or out of the bedroom, but I’m certain you can use your imagination to graft a sense of it on to these pictures. It’s a disaster! Why, you may be asking, would we sit with these boxes in our already small space for two weeks? Good question. The cabinets arrived on January 5th from KraftMaid. On January 6th, the construction folks (Crew2 from the Home Depot) arrived to “inspect” the cabinets. They opened all the boxes (in theory anyway, I’m not totally convinced they did) to make sure all the right parts were there and that nothing’s damaged. They don’t want to start “the install” — everything in construction parlance has nicknames; it’s not “an inspection” it’s “the inspect” — until everything’s right. Well, of course, everything was not right. One cabinet was damaged and some molding or something was missing. So, they left the house promising to order the right replacements and they’d be back when that was done. And here we sit. We heard an estimate of 7-10 days, and the Crew2 project manager, Brian, scheduled the demo for tomorrow, January 20th. But…we just heard yesterday that KraftMaid will be making their delivery on the 26th. I almost started to cry. Another week living with these houseguests whom I want to stay permanently, but not in my dining room! Or in my hallway. Or in my living room. I coudn’t face it; instead of panicking, though, I pretty much went into a stoic-denial mode. I sent off an extremely brief email to Brian that said something like, “Cabinet will not arrive until Jan. 26. Ugh.” I anticipated him rescheduling everything again. To my surprise, though, he said we could go ahead on our current schedule and nothing too awful will happen. He said the cabinet we’re waiting for is a wall cabinet (aren’t they all in a galley kitchen?) and they can wait to do those until next week — I think he means upper wall. So, we’re on. Old cabinets out tomorrow. Yay!
Ok, hold on there, buster. The problem with taking the old cabinets out tomorrow is that Habitat for Humanity, to whom we are donating the old cabinets, does pick-ups on Wednesdays only. And tomorrow’s a Wednesday. And while the nice woman at the resale shop wanted to work with me and call in the afternoon to see if their truck could come get them then, when I talked to her today she said she was really frazzled and would prefer to do it next week. So, where will the old cabinets go for a week? The garage, I suppose. Which means parking the Buttermobile on the street, which you wouldn’t think would be a big deal but it could mean a ticket due to my neighborhood having crazy parking rules because it’s so close to campus and my old high school. In any event, I’m going to try not to think about that. Or about how four large appliances are entering the place on Thursday and I have no idea where they’re going to go. Tonight it is all about taking down the kitchen, which I am only semi-embarrassed to report has fallen mainly to Aaron. I cleaned out several cabinets, but it’s a small space and, let’s face it, I was getting in the way.
Empty!
life and puppies 
I feel your pain. When Tom finished off the family room, he was wonderful about cleaning up and leaving me a path through the mess every night and it still made me crazy. This is one of those no gain without pain kind of moments. Deep cleansing breaths, deep cleansing and keep thinking about how wonderful it is GOING to be. Love you.
OMG. That is overwhelming. And right after the joys of taking down Christmas decorations too. And the car. And the old cabinets. I just can’t imagine the chaos. I expect to walk into your office and see all the furniture in the hallway just so that you can enjoy a clutter-free minimalist zone.
Ok, so all of the kitchen, minus the stove and the refrigerator, are out. And I mean out. They took the cabinets away. They weren’t supposed to do that because Habitat was supposed to come and get them, but there you have it. They are gone and we were not charged for the haul away. Of course, Habitat doesn’t get the cabinets and we don’t get the tax-credit, but we also don’t have an entire set of cabinets in our garage or have to pay the hundreds that they were going to charge for the haul-away. I’m actually ok with this. As much as I wanted them to be resused, I’m not sure they would have been that popular or wanted anyway. In fact, Habitat told me that they generally don’t take cabinets more than 20 years old, but after sending her a picture, she said they’d take mine. It’s ok, though, right?
I think it’s totally OK. Although our experience with Habitat was almost exclusively with new homes (we did do some extra hours at that older house in Charleston once, remember?), I just have this feeling they might say they’ll take stuff and not end up using it a lot of the time. Just call it a hunch. It’s all good.
New kitchen!
Birthday one week away!
Thanks, Fee. I appreciate it.
And do I remember? That was my project! Remember how one of our requirements was that we had to organize our own weekend volunteer project? Oh boy. Well, that was mine. And remember how they were vacuuming out the walls because they were filled with cockroach, um, waste? Oh God. That is an image I wish I could forget.
So, today is the electrician and the appliances. Let’s hope this goes smoothly. I’m nervous because we moved the stove out to the garage last night because we were told to and we do as we were told. And let me tell you that was not easy. In any event, they were supposed to come and deliver the appliances to the garage and haul away the old stove. We were going to move the old fridge down to the basement. In fact, that’s how this whole thing got started. Anyway, we’ve now decided we don’t want the fridge because it’s old and stinky and doesn’t work very well (it pretty much freezes everything) and we’d rather they took it away and we received the tax credit for buying a new fridge and getting rid of the old. But the fridge is inside. So, we want them to take the fridge from the condo and the stove from the garage. This shouldn’t be a big deal, but I feel kinda dumb about it.
OMG that totally was your project. How quickly I am forgetting some details. It was 11 years ago! Can you believe?
Now that’s crazy. 11 years.