And now we have walls..and a light for the table

So today there was a significant change in the kitchen! Our walls have been closed back up with the drywall.  Its starting to look like an actual room again.  And no more air conditioning in the 140 degree attic.  Our electricity bills are instantly lower.

No more microwave! 

An actual wall.

Empty Kitchen

Ebear standing where the closet used to be.

I also looked and looked extensively for a light over the table.  I was beginning to get pretty frustrated because i liked nothing...that and everything was uber expensive.  By a stroke of luck I was on Craigslist and I happened to find this drum light for only $20.  Lighting disaster averted!

This is where out light will eventually hang.

EBear with our new light!

Tomorrow we should be getting the drywall taped and floated and then onto the texture! 

The update you have all been waiting for!!!!

Oh where oh where has scrambletron gone? Scrambletron has been waiting....waiting very very patiently for something, anything to happen in the kitchen. Plus updating is slow when a certain blogger, I won't name any names, cannot use a laptop.

This Monday the electrical passed inspection from the city. This was after a full week of waiting for the inspector to even show up at our house.

With the electrical done we were hoping to come home to a newly drywalled house with no more hole to the attic....which, with 102 degree temperatures outside, makes me fear the electrical bills this month. Well no drywall today, or should I say no drywall on the walls.

There's the drywall, but its not on the wall....

The drywall ended up not going up because the electrician had to wire smoke alarms throughout the entire house..I guess its part of the code or something.

To pass the time we decided to go look at granite! Our two faves were Via Lactea (left) and Pegasus (right).

We decided we like the Via Lactea the best!

Then I convinced ebear to take me to the HD to look at back splashes, lights, and paint samples! No far...no idea what I want! I am leaning towards a white marble subway tile, but do I put accents of glass mosaics in? If so do I put the accent at the bottom of the back splash or in the middle? Should I keep the blue we have in the kitchen? What color in the other room? Yellow? Blue? Tan? What light over the kitchen table? Fan? Drum pendant? Vintage chandelier? Vintage swag lamp? ARGH! way too many choices...I think I am starting to get on ebear's nerves with the questions :)

Electric Pony Wall

Things moved along while we were in Hawaii. The rough-in electrical work was mostly finished today, and a pony wall was added. Recessed can lights, a three-way switch and some outlets were added. The pony wall will be behind the base cabinets, beneath the counter top.

Recessed Lights

Pony Wall

We let the animals out in the house for a bit, but butters soon tried to get into the wall space. The cats were placed back in quarantine. I don't want to have to call a chimney sweep out to retrieve any kitties. I think Tater Tot would go in and never come out, having found the most secretive of lairs away from the dog and human faces.

On a travel note, we were glad to have a direct flight, although it was direct to H-Town which entailed a 2.5 hour drive to Austin. My dad and sister were kind enough to meet us with Ziggy and our car so we could hit the road from Intercontinental airport. It was about 17 hours of travelling. Hiking down to a mammoth waterfall the yesterday before our flight made our last day of vacation not too shabby, and to top it off we came across a wild hog in the road on the way from the falls to the airport. Back to the grind tomorrow, but hey, it's only a one-day work week.

Top of Wailua Falls

Yea we made it to the bottom!

Hawaii 5-0

After losing a purse after a sunset booze cruise off Waikiki we met with a local police officer to file a police report.  Flying is going to be difficult without ID, we read having a police report should help.  The cop showed up and began making the 'police report' in his tiny spiral-bound note book.  I imagined he was writing something along the lines of:

Dear Dairy,

Purse was stollen, left in a cab off Waikiki.  If found call this number...

XOXO
Officer Pe-yope'

The lines had no quality control as he scribbled his notes across the small page of his diary.  I wondered what happens with those notes?  Does he turn in that chicken scratch to his commander, who'll gather everyone together to show what a great job he did, placing in a high prominent spot on the refrigerator.  Or maybe they'll all go out and bury it in the yard and see if a pretty banyon tree will grow.

Wall comes down

The wall has been gutted and re-framed. The new expanse is 8'6". We pushed part of the opening towards the living room, shifting the expanse about 3" away from the stove area to remove re-routing a gas line, money and trouble. It's nice to get out of the house at this time, since there was so much dust and insulation blowing around. Just a few hours in it made my sinus and lungs feel funny.

Our cabinet guy should have gotten in there to make his final measurements and begin construction. Hopefully those will be finished, or close to when we return.

Don't have too much time to format this, breakfast awaits at Boots and Kimo's.  The That's Lanikai Lillers, and me eating some poke', and drinking some Big Swell IPA.

Kitchen Remodel Begins....with the help of scrambletron

Yesterday marked the official start of work on our kitchen.

         

  Wood Arrived on Friday.        The prep left the house with a ghostly feel.

Apparently the 1950's was a great year for well made cabinets since the contractor could find no possible was to remove the nailed into the wall cabinets in one piece.  After a day of trying, the contractor gave up and we said to destroy the things.  It does make you wonder....is it such a good idea to destroy such well built, perfectly ok cabinets? Oh well!

This is how much cabinet demo happened in one day.

Now to the lovely hole in our wall...in knocking out a section to see what was behind there our contractor found a gas line 3 inches in from where we wanted to knock down the wall.  So we could lose 3" from the opening or pay to move the line 3" back somewhere to the tune of $100/in.  We decided to go for it and move the line...those 3" are important!

Bye Bye Wall!

With all the surprises and durability of a 1950's kitchen, the demo was moving a little slow.  Way too slow for scrabletron.  She decided to take matters into her own hands and start the demo herself.  Unfortunately she isn't very smart and ended up demoing part of the living room wall instead.  EBear fixed her mistakes with some plywood.

Look I helped!

Say goodbye to the Refrigerator Hole to Nowhere!

Thursday the city of Austin picked our 1986 Kenmore refrigerator.  This thing was born in the same year as my brother.  It came complete with the recently discovered refrigerator hole to nowhere!  Has anyone seen Ghostbusters? I think Zuul might live in my fridge.

I am scared of the hole to nowhere...it looks way bigger is person.

So the fridge is gone and I regrettably had to plug in the new fridge before the new kitchen is complete.

But since the new fridge is so big we really can't fit it into the kitchen until the wall comes down.  So its now conveniently located next to the front door.  Easy to put the groceries away!

E-Bear also did a great job of DIYing a shut off valve for the waterline to the fridge.  I also discovered there was a cable line located behind the fridge.  We considered keeping it, in case we wanted to put a TV on our bar for whatever reason....but we decided that since that scenario would be rare, we could scrap it.

Where the fridge previously lived, complete with water and cable!

The engineer finally told our contractor how to not make our house fall down so we are set to begin Monday...that is if there are no more delays!

Bresley's wedding tomorrow!

--KBear