Kitchen Remodel Under Way!!!

All right, folks, the kitchen remodel has officially begun!  Make sure to check out the photos by clicking the link on the right-hand side.

Well, Jenny and I ordered the tile last Thursday and began our grand adventure into kitchen rehab.  Over the weekend we packed up all of our kitchen items setting aside what we considered the bare essentials to get us by until the project is done.  I will be setting up a temporary kitchen in the front room in the near future.

On to the project -- There is a good bit of work for me to do before the tile can be laid.  Our cabinet guy delivered our new lower cabinet (a three-drawer piece) that will go where the refrigerator was.  We needed this to get started because the tile will be laid around it.  I spent yesterday (Tuesday) ripping out cabinetry.  As with any renovation, there are always some small (or large) unexpected hurdles.  Since I wasn't around in 1962, I kind of assumed (before we purchased the house) that cabinets were built then as they are now.  Not so!  Most (read: all that I know of) modern custom cabinets are built modularly.  That means that each unit is assembled in a shop, transported to the house and then installed and attached to one another in place.  In the 1960's many cabinets were built on site, in-place.  What this means to me is that I can't just unscrew the cabinets and carry them to the curb.  They are all attached to each other with lots of 2" nails.  All in all, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be and I was pleased with my progress yesterday.

I still have some kitchen demo to do, but this stuff will be more tedious.  Yesterday mostly consisted of removing stuff that we were throwing away.  The next step is to perform surgery on the cabinets to remove what we don't want and preserve what we do want.  I'm still trying to figure out the best way to do this, but I have a few ideas. I will be making a trip to Lowe's today to pick up some supplies and seek some ideas.

The next step prior to tile installation is removal of the old vinyl plank flooring.  At first thought this might seem an easy task.  Hell, half of it is coming up already.  Unfortunately, I must remove the base trim in the hallway and closets in order to pull up the floor in there.  Let's also not make light of the fact that we are talking about over 500 ft² of flooring including three closets.  Yay.  Also, the glue that was used to adhere this stuff is pretty nasty.  The tile guy will take care of the glue as long as I remove the flooring.  To keep from getting this stuff all over the bottom of our shoes and into other areas of the house, I will put down some type of floor protector in the meantime.

There are about 2 dozen more steps in this process and I won't bore you with all of the details yet.  I hope to keep up the blog on a daily (read, days I work on the project, not every day) basis.

As a side note, one of the camellias is dying.  The biggest one has struggled since being transplanted and is in dire shape.  On the other hand, the other two seem to be doing very well.  I will let you know what happens.

Project Camellia

You thought I had forgotten about this, didn't you? Well, I kinda did. I didn't forget about the blog per say, but I haven't really done much work on the house recently. The next big project planned for the house is the renovation of the kitchen. As this is easily one of the most expensive projects we plan on tackling, we are currently trying to save up enough money to be able to complete the project once started. Donations are welcome!

On to the task at hand. Here's the background:

Jenny and I really like these camellias and, based on a conversation we had with the ladies from the Camellia Society (ha ha, we're old), we believe that ours are particularly large and special. We were told that the way to go about moving them was to root prune (stick a shovel a foot in the ground all the way around them) in late spring and then transplant in October/November. The reason that we wanted to move them was so we could open up the area outside of our back door and eventually put in a deck or patio.

Jenny spoke with one of her coworkers who tends to own some random pieces of equipment and he said that while he did not own one, he was planning to rent one to do some work on his property. He told Jenny that he would be more than happy to bring it over to our house to help us out.

December rolled around and he has not gotten around to his project, but we really needed to do this now to avoid waiting another year. Our December calender has gotten pretty full by this point so we need to do it this weekend. I spoke to Nathan on Friday night and asked if he would be able to help. He said he could, so I spent Saturday morning pricing compact or mini excavators.

Lo and behold no equipment rental outfits are open on Saturday. AAA Rentall had one, but it was $195 for the day (Saturday afternoon until 9 AM Sunday morning) and they charge $50 to rent a trailer to haul it on. My experience with AAA is that they have a large selection of equipment in rough shape. Having seen the excavator they rent on a previous occasion, I sought other viable options. I called a place, Volvo Rents, in Geismar. I only called because their web page listed their hours as 7-5 with no days listed. I call and the number transfers to a cell phone. Not wanting to bother someone with my small job on their day off, I hung up without leaving a message. Long story short, the lady on call returned my call, opened up the place for me, and rented me a much, much nicer excavator with trailer for around $200. I will call them first next time.

Nathan and I tried to get some work done yesterday, but it kept raining and we didn't get much done. We started fresh this morning around 9. It probably took us about 2 hours (maybe longer) to transplant the first one. We didn't really know what we were doing and that was part of the problem. I think we transplanted the second one in about 30 minutes. The third one was the largest and by far heaviest of the group. It probably took as much effort to dig it up as it did to get it standing up straight in its new home. That kind of sucked. A lot.

Nathan did a fantastic job and was an invaluable help. I will probably buy him a thank you gift for this one. He is much better at operating equipment than I am, though I did a lot better than I thought I would. When my back wore out, he did the manual labor and let me work the machine. God bless him for that. For the record, there was little to no swearing and we never fought with each other. We make a really could pair for projects like this, sometimes.

I don't know when I will post again as we are still trying to save up for the kitchen. Hopefully that project will start soon. I hope to post several times as the project gets underway. I hope you enjoyed this post and MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Check out the Picasa album as there are a few pictures.