Progress with the Kitchen Reno!

After the walls came down and we then had to begin the process on the other side of the kitchen!  So once again I built a shelving unit to house the remaining 'important' stuff from the kitchen, and box the rest unit the cabinets are up and ready.  (Yes, that's a  http://www.luckyvitamin.com/  box you see ... )

By this time we knew the pressure was on to expedite the project, so I did as much as I could during the day.  Our goal was to have the entire kitchen floor laid with hardwood, sanded, conditioned, stained, and glossed.  To make it a little more interesting, we decided to hardwood the entire floor, not just to where the cabinet baseboard ends ... so that translates to EVERYTHING being movable - including the plumbing!  Yes, wall to wall hardwood floors!

We began to lift the existing hardwood with a crowbar (by the way, heads and crowbars don't mix), where the hardwood had met a wall.  This meant pulling the floor back in staggers - right up to the foyer.  We managed to save 95% of the existing hardwood which we would be reusing back into the kitchen floor.

During the week we started taking off the top cabinets, and then by the Saturday, we finished up with the lower cabinets ... with the exception of the sink unit and sink.  The old cabinets were picked up by the freecyclers yet again!  Our dishwasher is in the garage, our reverse osmosis is in the basement (miss that terribly), and the garbage disposal unit is sitting in it's hole unusuable.  PJ did find that whenever the plumbers roughed in the house, they made the PVC pipes run uphill to get the water outside ...

In the week-end we began retrofitting the hardwoods - old and new.  With a lot of patience and TLC, we managed to get into our funk.  We managed to get started and worked up until we needed to move the kitchen sink.  With visits to Lowes, Home Depot, IKEA and Costcos, we actually didn't get as much done as we would have liked, so that meant evening work needed to become intensive. 

Each night this week we have been working into the wee hours in order to lay the floor by Wednesday night .... chipping away at the stock of hardwood and laying it piece by piece.  Cody miraculously has slept through most of the noise?????  Some days I have been without running water - even without a stove/oven ... you tend not to realize how fortunate we are until something so basic is taken away ... 

Above is the IKEA cabinet.  This is the corner unit.  I built it so that we could use it for making sure we were spacing correctly and for placement of the new vent and plumbing wholes.  I even got to pull the new kitchen sink out - sexy!!!!

How is the kitchen floor looking?  Are we on target?  Will we accomlish our goal?  Are we tired campers?  What is the next step?  Stay tuned folks ...