Update June 26 mouse poop

Now the kitchen is our bitch. I will explain in due time.

Yesterday I got to show Nancy and Abigail the fruits of our labor. Bless their hearts, they're excited for us! (Or terrified for us, not quite sure, but either way, they were very encouraging :o)

After they left, I worked on painting the office until Rich got there for the real demo work. Dane (our gimpy friend) showed up again to see the progress and no doubt to covet our apples again. I'm sure we'll have to watch for him in the cover of night in a couple of months, stealing through the gate in the dead of night while he thinks we're asleep and lumbering off with a bucket of apples . . . not that we'd notice the lack of apples on that tree!! He liked our decision about the washing machine pan, leaving it from the original shower pan, so I think it's a done deal now. Still waiting on getting the last bit of plumbing capped off (tomorrow) to knock out the rest of everything.

Started on the kitchen. All that was left was the lower portion of the window side of the kitchen, and some walls. We wrestled Sara's dishwasher out of there and safely deposited it in the garage. Couldn't move the stove through the doorway (or the fridge), so they're just getting shifted around the kitchen to whatever spot is NOT being tackled at the moment. Anyone want a white fridge or smooth-topped stove? We're selling them for cheap!

Ever the adventurer, Rich refused to turn off any of the electricity that we're using a reciprocating saw around, so needless to say the comment "watch it!" popped out of my mouth with amazing regularity. At one point I basically begged for the light switch to be hung on the wall instead of just maneuvering around it literally hanging 4 feet from the ceiling, the post to which it was attached having been long since hauled to the garage for disposal. We've still got one electric socket sagging to the floor, the lightswitch now "nailed" to the wall and the phone cord lolling around on the floor.

Started pulling up the newly installed vinyl in the kitchen. Luckily, they hadn't bothered gluing it down when they installed it (brilliant contractors), so it's coming up like a champ, exposing brand new plywood sheets that I'm sure we'll be using later.

With a reciprocating saw, crowbar, wonder bar, and hammer we demoed the rest of the cabinets, the sink, the drawers, and anything else that got in the way. And I learned something about myself. My entire childhood and young adult life was spent avoiding all that was breakable and destroy-able. As nails were screaming as they were getting dis-anchored from their 47-year-old home, as the faucet ripped and the sink clanged and banged, I found myself wincing, wishing I didn't hear breaking sounds. No wonder I don't like demo work! My entire life is spent trying to save things and keep them from breaking and here I was, doing all that is NOT natural to me. Once I came to grips with that, I was able to start hacking at some stuff with gusto. Still not my favorite activity, but enlightening, nonetheless. Imagining the neighbor upstairs on that sheetrock as I kicked through it was rather satisfying.

Once all the cabinetry was stripped away, we discovered a secret stash of mouse poop that the previous owner had been keeping all to himself. It was easy to see how it got there, what with the big hole in the floor and all, from the rotting wood from an old kitchen sink leak that had been ignored for far too long. Wood under the window sill is rotting and we can actually see the brick facade in some places where everything's kinda fallen apart. We'll definitely have to put in some new subfloor, walls, cripple studs . . . We're now debating about how much else to rip back . . . I'm all for ripping out all the drywall (there's no insulation, for whatever reason), and starting from scratch. More money down the drain to get it right, and more for the inspector to have to analyze.

These things aren't entirely unexpected, just unwelcome. Luckily, drywall and 2 x 4s aren't that expensive. Extra time and permits are. Blech.

Loaded up the truck with all the detritus of the day and drove home. Took everything to the dump this morning. An old guy monitoring the station actually helped, barehanded, empty our truck of all the nastiness. He insisted. Sunday mornings at the dump must be gosh-awful to offer to help with that!

The kitchen's a mostly empty shell now, except for fridge & stove, connecting headers and fake wood paneling from the area next to it that we're claiming for the new kitchen. That'll get tackled probably tomorrow while I'm at book club, as well as the floor and subfloor, so we can figure out what we're doing with the floors . . . marrying old hardwoods in with new? committing more hardwood sin and ripping them out to install a cheaper floor that's unified through the whole kitchen? covering it all over with pink marble? we're just not sure yet . . .

Hoping to receive our gorgeous cabinets tomorrow. They've been in Burlington on a truck since Friday morning at 6:30, so hopefully they're coming soon!!!

Off to do the earning-the-money-so-we-can-pay-for-all-this thing . . .