It's hard to believe that a year has passed since we demo-ed our old kitchen. Living without a kitchen has been, err... well you can imagine, but seeing the changes over the last year reminds us of how far we've come. Steven and I have had moments when we kind of forget how things looked when we started this!
Here's a view of the old kitchen prior to demo...
And a view toward the same wall now. Well, not actually the SAME wall. We pushed it out to enclose the small back porch (more like a walk-through than a porch actually) and gain about 50 square feet for the dining area. Although that exterior wall was a DIY job, much of what you see here (floor/ceiling joists, subfloor, drywall, and electrical) was contracted out.
Our other big project from 2013 was the front porch. Our building inspector didn't like that the roof on the former screened-in porch was being held up with puny aluminum supports. Also, we were not big fans of the screened look since it made the entry look kind of dark and creepy from the main road.
So down it went over the Fourth of July weekend!
And here we are in its current state. The first-floor windows and front door you see here were added earlier this year also. I'm proud to say the porch was a DIY job, and we are most grateful for helpful neighbors.
After Christmas, we began transforming the garage into a cabinet shop since we will be building the kitchen cabinets ourselves! Steven has been dreaming of having his own New Yankee Workshop since he was a kid. (We had a lengthy discussion about Norm Abram on our second date, and Steven was very impressed that I knew the shop safety speech, haha!) Electrical outlets was the primary need for the garage to become more useful as a workshop, but lots of decluttering had to happen first... The garage only had ONE electrical outlet - how impractical is that?!
This was the garage scene about a month ago... I could barely walk through with a laundry basket :(
We have since torn off the paneling from two of the garage walls, reinforced some framing, added insulation, and installed nine 120-volt outlets and two 220-volt outlets. Taking off the wall paneling uncovered some rot and termite damage along a portion of the sill and rim joist. BUT, if that hadn't been discovered, we would not have known that we also have a very small leak near the water heater. Obviously, this leak has been dripping for quite some time if the sill under the water heater was rotten. It's not something that must be immediately addressed and the water heater needs to be replaced at some point, so we're just going to put that project on hold.
This is generally the same view as the photo above, but we're in much better shape with all the outlets and much less clutter!
Hopefully there will be a cabinet update very soon here :)
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