Monthly Archives: November 2011

Now you see them, Now you don’t

Posted in Velvet Toolbox by

Our old kitchen cabinets.  Now you see ‘em:

Old Kitchen Cabinets, view from Patio

Our old kitchen cabinets, view from family room

Now you don’t.

Our kitchen's bare bones, view from Patio

Our kitchen's bare bones, view from Family Room

Our cabinets are gone.  Loooong gone.  Where will we eat for the next 3 months , you ask?  Let’s see…our makeshift living room has been moved upstairs into the same room as our makeshift office, to make space downstairs for our makeshift kitchen.

I can’t believe that 1 month after finishing to unpack, we’re living out of boxes once again.  Stay positive, Mel.  You are one step closer to a beautiful kitchen.  You like indoor camping way more than the outdoor version.  Ok, I think I’m good.

Tonight, our contractor’s dropping by to estimate the cost of moving the plumbing. Now, everyone, please repeat this mantra:  Plumbing will be cheap. The estimate will come in under budget.  There will be no hidden surprises.  Now repeat three times, tap your head and rub your belly.  Let’s pray that works.

The beam team

Posted in Our Home by

Howdy!

As you know, we’ve been working on preparing our kitchen and family room for a drastic makeover.  Our first big task was to knock down the wall separating the two rooms, which involved lots of muscle, an engineer, a permit, and a contractor.

This past week has been all about finalizing the prep work for the supporting beam, and having it installed.

With the amount of dust in the air and on just about everything, we decided to upgrade to some heavy duty masks:
Adam, dust-free

That’s Adam.  Good looking AND healthy, just how I like ‘em.
Ready for destruction Me, with an appetite for destruction!

We also hooked ourselves up with a Bagster for all the trash, only $40 at  The Home Depot.  It costs about $200 to have a truck pick up the bag when full, but we calculated that it would still be more economical than renting a container for an undetermined amount of time.

The BagsterAfter some final prep work for the beam,
Final preparation for beam

Gyprock demo We called in the big guns, and they got crackin.  On the first day, our contractor set up supporting structures on each end of the future beam location.Temporary support for beam

Temporary support for beam 2

Temporary support for beam, view from the family room Take a look at this 18 foot beam.  Yowzas!

Our 18 foot beam Day 2: Contractors added the beam in and fastened it to the joists:

Supporting Beam, closeup Off went the support structures, and voila!  Le Beam!

Beam, final

Beam, kitchen view

View from Family room

It’s truly amazing to see how much of a difference one wall (or lack thereof) can make.  Our kitchen already feels SO much bigger.

First major task is done.  Next up – raising all of the plumbing in the kitchen ceiling so that it sits between the joists and leads into one of the kitchen walls.  Guess what that means?  Kitchen cabinets are coming down!   Gulp.  Say goodbye, old kitchen!