Kitchen Wellness

I took a "wellness day" from work today and cabinet boy came over and helped me build some more cabinets and rip out most of the old ones. We're leaving the 4'x1' pantry up until the bitter end, but the rest of the old kitchen including the counter top grout is out out out!

Hopefully he does come back tomorrow to help with modifications to the bar height pony wall.

Here's what my lower kitchen cabinets looked like. The rug in the middle is the sample of my new bedroom carpet, color "hazelnut". It will abut the same color tile at the door to my bedroom


After we unloaded the cabinets into the living room, it became packed to the gills with stuff. I can still only sit in the purple chair, which is where I am now. I did find the TV remote, thankfully.


It left the kitchen cabinets looking like this, Notice the too-small spaces in the corner to the right and the lack of space at all on the left.


At which point we could take a look at what's really going on under the sink. Yoipes! Looks like we can find the leaky bits now. There's a disposal, a dishwasher feed, drain, and vent, hot and cold taps and two sink drains. Plus electricity. Joy.


Fortunately, we can turn off the electricity. Anyone who ever saw the total of 2, count 'em 2, 15 Amp fuses then circuit breakers of my last 2 apartments knows how thrilled I am to command this much juice. See how I've sensibly turned off the ones labeled "Garbage Disposal" and "Dishwasher".


We found it was easier to remove the cabinets from underneath the counter than to try and take the counter off. Don't look at my chub, but do pay attention to the look of manic glee that I'm taking out the worn out enamel sink and dreaded tile.


In the meantime, we took this stack of flat pack boxes


And turned them into this stack of assembled carcasses and loose parts


Which are now waiting for their chance to go in this space


I've managed to almost totally coat my hands and spots of other parts of me with KILZ primer. I had to spray the sink area with bleach to kill the mold, then go get mold resistant primer. They never did prime behind the cabinets and the texture coating is absorbent without it. At this point, I've got the wall primed (except where we took out the tile border, still not sure what to do there) as well as the raw back edges of the sink and neighboring cabinets.

Kudos to the date for working REALLY hard on this, taking care not to muss up neighboring cabinets, appliances, or anything else. And for helping haul out trash! Which did fit in the dumpster, so I think it's allowed.

It looks like the cabinets will fit, but leveling and securing is the next challenge. Well, after shortening the bar wall so I can take out the 1' deep pantry and replace it with a 2' deep counter and pantry. Then I can call in the countertop experts to come cap off the pretty new kitchen.