Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Kitchen 2.0...day 142

Since the initial burst of activity on the kitchen remodel there have been several weeks of puttering around doing odds and ends. Time has a way of sliding past when you work regular hours and try to accomplish things in the extra time you can squeeze out of the day. I decided that I needed to take some vacation to get the rest of the kitchen squared away. Luckily my work is somewhat flexible enough that I can ask for a week off on short notice and they can work it out for me. (Thanks Calyn)



I roughly put together an island so I would have the cabinet space to move all my plates, and 22 boxes of tea, and the myriad other ingredients that reside on the sink side of the kitchen. Once it was cleaned out I could get to the meat of tearing it apart.

Little one offered to help initially but quickly got bored with the task.


We started by removing the pantry, and upper cabinets.


Then came the removal of the stone countertops.


This can be tricky. Stone is extremely brittle and you have to gently pry it away from the copious amounts off goop that the installer smeared atop the cabinet bodies. Using a wedge I lift the front, bit by bit, while running a razor and a 5 in 1 and anything else I can jab in there to cut through the caulk as much as possible.



The solid square chunks came off easily but the sink surround didn't fare so well. There is still enough to do a smaller kitchen with, or in this case I will likely use the stone tops for my outdoor BBQ set up which is planned for "sometime next year"

I made an effort to save all the cabinets I could instead of just breaking them up. RE-USE is the mantra of the salvage jihad. That being said, I had a hard time bringing these cabinets to Second Use. Because they are SOOOOOO dam ugly that they should be destroyed. However since I work there I have access to some employee benefits like the "get rid of your EXTREMELY ugly cabinets" clause in the employee handbook. I did break up the blind corners, and the big pantry did not survive extraction.



Total hauled to the landfill so far: 1700lbs :(

Stay Tuned for:
TENT CITY!!!

3 comments:

Boe said...

How would you rate Little Ones overall contribution to the kitchen remodel project? Would you say he (a) makes a great project manager, (b) is more of a quality control kitty, or (c) just looks damn cute?

I'm guessing the answer is c.

Kurt said...

As I mentioned he offered to help and then lost interest, so obviously A. project manager.

Les Sterling said...

Little One strikes me as more of the Senior Management type. Comes in, rubs his smell on stuff and just gets in the way. But, toss a shiny object across the room and he's off like a shot :)