First week of remodeling

Kitchen all cleared out and ready for demolition!

The "first" week was really more like a half week. The cabinets arrived 1 week ahead of schedule, and our contractor Bryan, managed to squeeze in some hours.

Most of the work actually was taking place in the basement and "between the walls'. The existing electrical sub-panel was full, so another one was installed. Almost all of the electrical outlets would end up being moved or replaced for the up-to code (those by the sink). Furthermore, since we are getting a full height 3 cm granite backsplash, the outlet boxes were brought out to be flush with the backsplash.

Most profound change by the end of the week was the lighting. Ugly fluorescent fixture and the brown "chandelier" were replaced with 4 recessed light cans. The difference was like a night and a day. So much light!!! The hallway light fixture was also replaced by the recessed can.

Old kitchen

We moved into the house 4 years and 1 week ago. When we moved into the kitchen, it looked like this:

We actually lost counter and cabinet space by moving from an apartment into this house! We had to compensate by using things like a a utility cart to store pantry items (no pantry closet in this late 1980's house!). Half of the kitchen was empty (previous owners used it as an eat-in-kitchen), so we shifted some things around, and moved the fridge to the opposite wall to open up the very cluttered part of the kitchen. The ugly wallpaper went next, and we painted the kitchen in mango color. Loud, yes - but at least it distracted from the hideous cabinets, old appliances and the stained countertops!

Here's what we lived with until the kitchen remodeling began about a week ago (practically 4 years to the day since we bought the house):

We were loosely planning to start the remodeling in the beginning of 2007, but the old dishwasher and the fridge died right when the GE appliance store was having a 10% sale in August of 2006. So the 6+ month planning started.

In this blog, I will try to keep the remodeling progress updated as we go through the demolition and installation. Perhaps in a separate blog I will capture all the work that went into planning, but for now I will focus on the actual progress!