The cabinet guys (Spencer Cabinets in Monroe, WA) showed up early Friday morning to a kitchen that wasn't even completely demolished, but they were done, so whatever. We stacked them in the spare room and dining room. I knew we'd eventually cram them all into that spare room, but the cabinet guys don't want to risk dinging them. That's for us to do.
They look good. Solid wood, shaker, white, etc. They did screw up one thing, but I really don't want to mess with it. The back on one of the "bookshelf style" cabinets was supposed to be cut out so that we can expose our fuse box. Yes, it's located in the kitchen. Well the back is in tack, but we will cut out a hole and paint the fuse box white to match. Then we'll install adjustable shelves. This way if we ever blow a fuse, we can remove 2 shelves and fix the issue.
While the guys were loading in, I was busy with a Wonder Bar (get one of these) ripping up 3 layers of linoleum. Low and behold, Fir floors! Who in their right mind would slap on a thick layer of glue and then linoleum? Seriously, what were they smoking in the '60s? And they say meth will kill you....what about linoleum?
So after a few calls I can return my tiles with a re-stocking fee (of course) of 25%. It's going to cost me $150 to return my new floor and another $880 to get these re-finished. He'll patch where we're widening our door. The floor meets up with the oak in the dining room, so this will be tricky. Then, over the course of 3 days, he'll apply 3 coats of Swedish treatment...whatever that is. Hopefully it works out because we're going with natural stain. So all in all, the floor is going to cost about $1000.00. That's about $400 over budget. Really, we're only going over budget by about $500. I think that's probably pretty good. $10,500 for a new kitchen~
I'm hoping the Fir turns out well. I hear maintenance is a real issue, but how can you turn your back on that? I feel like the house is breathing a sigh of release . It's thinking, "Finally, someone who understands me." I wonder what four-letter word it'll bust out when Buddy slides across the floor and digs in with 16 toenails made of steal?
Here's Buddy helping with the plumbing. Notice the rubber band holding close the cabinet doors? Hopefully we'll never have to use that again.
Here's the truck all packed up with the old kitchen. $41 for that dump run, but it felt good throwing it over the wall. I thought about Craigslist, but the cabinets are sooo crappy.
While we were at the dump, the electricians were hard at work ripping out a strip of sheetrock to run new cables to the fuse box. It's insane how destructive they are. Seriously, I don't think they realize we'll have to do all the repair ourselves to stay in budget.
$1000 and 6 hours later, we have 5 beautiful new cans, several new switches and plug-ins, updated stove plug (220), 2 pendants above the sink, and a re-worked fuse box. And a LOT, a LOT of repair work. Here we are hard at work installing the first piece. First it required a run to Dunn Lumber for a new sheet of rock and a few bats of R-11 insulation. For the first time the fellas there commented about seeing us there before . They were interested in what we were up to. We have a Dunn family! Pretty excited about that!
See the wall to the right of Buddy? With the heat register? Well we've decided we're ripping that out. Seems like it's going to be another week of work, but it's probably better that we're figuring that out now than in June after everything is done.
Oh, we picked out the sink and faucet too. Be prepared for a few nights of that mess. Which type: stainless or white? Then you have to match a faucet: color, correct amount of holes, etc. We ended up with a stainless, double sink (8 inches deep, 18 gauge) and a stainless faucet (pretty standard, nothing fancy.) If you know why they make a yellow-er nickel faucet, please let us know. I feel like they don't match anything. We should have just kept the old one, but the man insists it's worth the $117.
Also, the appliances showed up. In our living room we have a new Whirpool dishwasher and microwave.
Note: Living without a kitchen is not fun. I thought it would be like camping, and it is, except that there's no beauty or fun involved. Imagine camping, but having to go to work, being dirty, taking care of two dogs!, and not having campfires or hikes or swimming. Crappy.
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