So long and farewell, Old Kitchen

May we never meet again!!

Steven and I are both very grateful for some time away from work for the holidays. We enjoyed a wonderful trip to Asheville with his parents for Christmas, then we got straight to work on the house on the 26th. Earlier this week, we met with the contractor who will be doing the exterior work (framing the exterior wall in the future dining room, plus windows and siding for the whole house). Also, our window supplier came to take measurements for all the windows. We should be getting the estimates for all of this by the middle of next week, then we will begin the process of obtaining a loan.



In preparation for the contractor's work, we had to demo the existing back porch (if you could even call it that, more like a walk-through really). The whole porch area you see below will be enclosed as the future dining room, and we'll have a double glass door leading to the back yard on the new exterior wall. The new wall will basically be a continuation from the wall you see on the left side of the photo. This porch was a later addition to the house, and there are some complications with the roof structure over the porch because of how the porch roof was just plopped right on top of the original house roof... We decided that this load-bearing, exterior wall job should be left to the pros!

The back porch area will be enclosed for the future dining room

Ginny is pretty upset with us because this was her normal route to and from the yard.

Ermahgerd!

So while Steven was tearing up the porch outside, I was nice and warm indoors while moving everything out of our old kitchen and into the temporary one. We kept the refrigerator but tossed all of the old appliances, and we'll be making due without an oven and range until the new kitchen is ready. (All the more motivation to get to that point!)

Here is our old kitchen, a.k.a Hibachi Station, a.k.a The Pentagon... One of its many cons was that the only entry/exit was a 15" wide gap between the fridge and counter. I'm not at all sad to see it go.

We had to remove a door and part of its casing to get the fridge to the new temp kitchen spot.  I'm glad Steven was laughing, otherwise I would not have dared to take his picture at a time like this, haha!

As far as the temporary kitchen goes, we are very fortunate to have a second location in the house that was previously used as a kitchen. When the Sellers family owned the place, the daughter basically had her own apartment within her parents' house. The cabinets from her kitchen are still in place, and we've just been using them for storage.

Not bad at all for a temporary kitchen setup :)  Washing dishes is going to be the tricky part though...

On to the demolition!

YAY, it's gone!!!

A day like yesterday could only be topped off by the fact that Steven stepped on a nail when we were almost finished with removing the kitchen, and Ginny and Lily escaped from the yard for the first time ever. Fortunately, Steven is fine - the nail didn't go in very deep, and his tetanus vaccine is up to date. We were just about to go to bed when I found an open gate and no dogs in the yard... I stayed at the house in case they came back while Steven drove around the neighborhood. Our house sits at the corner of a two-lane and four-lane road, and Steven found them on the opposite side of the four-lane road. They came right to him when he opened the car door (good thing they associate car rides with daycare). It was horrifying, and I really hope it never happens again :(