MelissaH's Kitchen (Renovation) Dreams

[Chris Amirault]

Here's a good topic on kitchen lighting, which discusses the undercabinet question. I've installed a set of these IKEA Trettio lights under the wall shelving unit. I like them a great deal....

edited to figure out what IKEA names require all caps or lead caps or what... -- ca

[KitchenMom]

I have the GE Profile flourescents, and I am very happy with them. They are very low profile (not all the GE undercab lights are so slim, so you have to check), don't flicker at all, and give off a nice light, not at all bluish, as flourescents can be. I looked into xenon lights, but they were much more expensive and also got fairly warm, though not as hot as halogens.

[MelissaH]

The floor (Marmoleum Click) is ordered. We decided to go with a pattern that is mostly Silver Shadow (because it's lighter than the Serene Grey we'd originally been considering) but with a Bleecker Street red "zipper" up the middle of the aisle between the cabinets. We'll lay the floor across the short way of the kitchen. That way, we'll be able to use almost entirely the 3-foot-long planks of gray, with only two boxes of red squares. I'm hoping we can get the old vinyl torn up without also destroying the subfloor.

We've also started to deconstruct the kitchen. The table that used to be next to the refrigerator has been relocated downstairs near the barsink in the family room, as has the IKEA kitchen cart. We've started to sort through all the stuff, to figure out what we want to keep available and what can be boxed and stored for the duration. I'm already missing having a surface next to the fridge, to make it easy to load or unload. (I'm anxiously awaiting more word from the temporary kitchen thread that wonderbread just started, to see if any good ideas come up.)

I'm debating whether it's worth keeping the Rubbermaid containers available. The other choice is storing all leftovers in plastic bags and/or whatever gladware-type containers we deem necessary to acquire. Our water source for the duration of the remodel will be the bar sink in the family room. We took the bar out, because it divided the family room and made it feel really small. But the sink was attached to the wall, not the bar, and it has a bit of countertop next to it that was covered up by the bar. (I'll try to take a picture in the near future.) The sink is about the size of a bathroom sink, but it's stainless and it has a "catcher" in the drain so we don't need to worry about sending gunk into the pipes. It'll be adequate for the short term, but I'm still planning to minimize the amount of dishes that will need to be washed.

I sometimes wish we had more options for take-out food in this little town. There are a couple of Italian restaurants, but to me their stuff is more suited to cold winter days than the middle of summer. We have pizza, of course. The burrito place here is only about half as good as Chipotle, and it hasn't gotten any better over the time it's been open, so we don't consider them a viable alternative. We have a decent Thai place, as well as OK if a little greasy Chinese. (I prefer Thai.) And Rudy's, the fish place on the lake, will also do take-out, but there's no reason not to just walk there and eat in rather than taking it out. I sometimes envy those of you who live in cities with take-out choice.

Once the farmer's market starts up, we'll start to see some local produce also. That's always nice, especially since much of it won't require too much prep.

We're currently taking bets on whether the faux brick on the walls behind the current cooktop and sink will come off without destroying the drywall we presume is underneath. But either way we win, sort of: if the drywall is in good shape, we don't have to redo it. If the drywall doesn't survive, the electric stuff will be easy to do.

As far as heat for cooking: we'll have the Weber gas grill and the old propane 3-burner stove outside. Inside, we'll have the Black and Decker toaster oven we got for a wedding gift, as well as a microwave, the rice cooker, the crockpot, the electric water boiler kettle, and a single electric burner. These will probably all be set up on the cart, since that's closest to the wall with the electrical outlets. The table will be an adequate food prep area, and the space under the table will be for storage of drygoods and the equipment we want to keep available. We're thinking we'll keep a bunch of tongs, at least a couple of silicone spatulas, the pasta pot, a 3-quart saucepan with lid, and our crappy old non-stick frying pan that we'll probably toss out when we get the kitchen done available. We have a good supply of paper and plastic, to minimize the need for dishwashing. I've been vacillating on whether or not it's worth having a metal 9-by-13 pan available as well, to act as secondary containment for marinating meat in ziplock bags or in case I get the urge to try baking something like brownies in the grill.

I'm also quite torn about whether or not to keep the KA mixer available: without an oven and with limited ability to clean up poofed-out flour, I'm not going to be baking anything touchy, but I'd like to have some kneading help available if I want to make some pizza or flatbread dough to grill. But we can get respectable rectangular pizza shells at our grocery store (one makes enough to feed us about 2 meals, appropriately topped) and we also have a pizzeria willing to sell us balls of their dough. I'm leaning towards packing the mixer at this point, much as it breaks my heart. And my friend Anne has one, as well as a range with a functioning oven, that I can probably use should the need descend upon me.

We'll probably keep our chef's knives and a couple of paring knives out, as well as the instant-read thermometers and probes. Maybe a whisk and a pancake flipper too. The ice-cream scoop might be a good idea also...or we'll make a point of walking to Bev's on the lakeshore if we want ice cream. It's always a nice walk there, and it lessens the guilt somewhat.

The fridge will get wheeled around the corner to the living room, at least until the kitchen is demolished, the utilities are done, the floor is laid, the walls and ceiling are painted, and the cabinets are into that end of the kitchen. At that point, we'll be able to set it back into its new home. We'll probably be pulling Rachael Rays, seeing how much refrigerated stuff we can get into our arms in one shot for each trip downstairs. Maybe that's another reason to keep the 9-by-13 pan available: to help shuttle cold stuff. Or maybe we see if we can acquire a cheap dorm fridge now that all the students are getting ready to move out at the end of the week so we have something downstairs.

Our plan is to keep as much as possible in whatever drawers they're currently in, since the drawers can be stacked one on top of another somewhere out of the way. A bunch of other stuff is already in covered plastic bins. The other day at Big Lots, we got more plastic bins with lids, to hold the rest of everything that needs to be stored. (Note to self: might be a good idea to keep at least a little bit of flour and sugar available.)

We've entered the clean-out-the-refrigerator phase. This week is the last week we'll have a kitchen to cook in!

As far as lighting, I'm thinking xenon for under the counters. I like the ability to dim the lights there, if necessary. And the ones I looked at in our local Lowe's were most definitely less thermally hot than the comparable halogen lights. IKEA's not really an option, because we won't be anywhere near one until long after we'll be ready for the lights.

MelissaH

[jgarner53]

This is so exciting! It's like remodeling vicariously, but without the dust (at least on my end) Congratulations for getting it all together and started!

[snowangel]

Melissa, I've done this twice and my folks did it once. You've prepped very well, but I'd think about holding out one half-sheet pan for hauling stuff around. A 9 x 13 doesn't hold very much, and a half sheet pan is thin enough that they store easily (and accumulate stuff like junk mail equally as easily!).

And, as you box stuff up, label to excess.

And, yes, think about acquiring a dorm fridge. Got any students who will lend you one for the summer?

[StephMac]

Wow - almost time to start! My one moving tip: Label EVERYTHING on multiple sides of the boxes, because if things get stacked with the labels facing the wall, it's not fun

And thank you so, so much for writing about all the steps and decisions and back-and-forth involved in this project... DH and I are currently attempting to buy a home, and we're pretty much resigned to the fact that we're going to have to do some sort of kitchen work down the road. Having this thread to come back to - and live vicariously through - is a huge help. Good luck, and here's to a sudden improvement in the local take-out options...

[C. sapidus]

Melissa - We chose xenon lights over halogens because they are cooler. The (Ikea) cabinets above the lights still get warm, though. We put a glass shelf on the lowest hole of the spice cabinets to create an insulating air space below the spice jars. We have found the dimmer on the recessed ceiling lights more valuable than the dimmer on the under-counter lights, though.

During the remodel, we set up a temporary kitchen and dining room in the unfinished basement. We cleared off some basement shelves to keep kitchen gear accessible. The toaster oven, microwave, and coffee maker were our mainstays (mid-winter remodel, so not much grilling). Our main problem was a dearth of electrical outlets in the basement. The microwave couldn’t run at the same time as the toaster oven, and running the miter or table saw shut down all kitchen operations. Doing dishes in the same sink where we were washing paint brushes and drywall trowels got old very quickly.

Urban camping was fun for a while, but by the end of the remodel we were on a first-name basis with the good folks at the all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet and sushi bar. They had wonderful eel sushi and incredible mangos at the buffet. On days when there were no mangos on display, the manager would send a big pile to the table for our boys.

You are farther along than you may realize. Good luck, and trust that the end result will be worth the effort.

Bruce

[coquus]

My heart bleeds for you on hearing your description of take out options. I actually ate Burger King once during my small house renovation. My helpers and I were only eating out for lunch and her dad doesn't do chinese, so pizza, subs, whole cooked chickens, and the like, and the occasional Ola Mae barbeque (upstate new york dining thread, New York Forum). Also, about 50 percent of the time it was cold cut sandwiches my mom. She's a vegetarian, but still made us some meatballs once in a while, that was a huge hit with everyone. Fortunately dinner, for me anyway, was at my restaurant, or at her parents' house where we stayed for six months. Having family sure made a mole hill of a mountain. If you get depressed along the way, just remember, you're take out options will likely be the same at the end of the reno, but your kitchen won't. That's really the hardest part, keeping focus on the goalline.

BTW, if you have any contractors on your project, a few cents on coffee every day will easily pay off in triplicate.

[MelissaH]

We're underway!

Let me backtrack, briefly. Much more, including pictures, will be forthcoming.

We took 14 university students on a ten-day trip to Belgium, getting home on Wednesday at about 5 PM. The trip was fantastic, and they all seemed to enjoy themselves for the most part. But that's a story for another thread. The relevant part here: we were able to get in as stand-bys for the earlier JetBlue flight from JFK to SYR, which meant that we got home much earlier than 1 AM. This is important because it meant that we were both functional yesterday and today, albeit more than a little jet-lagged.

The weekend before we left, my mom came to visit on her way to a ceramics workshop in the Ithaca area. Because she and my dad are moving out of the house I grew up in, they were looking for a new home for their dining room table (40 inches wide, 74 inches long with no leaves, but with two leaves that each add 19 inches). So along with all the cabinets in the garage, we now have the dining room table and four chairs to go with.

Also that weekend, my husband was driving back from Michigan, and he brought some more IKEA goodies including four more chairs to go with the table, door pulls, and slow-close drawer bumpers.

So, because we were functional yesterday, we spent much of the day packing the kitchen up. The things we thought we'd use, we put into plastic bins. The stuff we thought we wouldn't need, we put into cardboard boxes. Most of the boxes are stacked and in the spare bedroom, but a few with the fragile stuff are on the mantel, where they'll stay for the duration.

We also made a trip to Syracuse yesterday, because we needed to pick up the floor. The floor is now in our living room, acclimating. The red accent tiles for our floor are exactly the same red as the new chairs from IKEA (Bonus: we got to go to Wegman's yesterday!)

We finished the last of the packing (and purging) this morning. (Jet lag is a wonderful thing: it makes even those of us who are not morning people jump out of bed wide awake at 5 AM!) Then we went to our local Lowe's to get floor underlayment and pick out a paint color (current choice: a very pale yellow) and look more at lights and backsplash tiles (shiny black 2-by-6-inch with bullnose edge, we think) and get a plastic mat for under the dish drainer downstairs, and a few other things I don't remember in my currently foggy state.

This afternoon, we relocated the refrigerator to the dining room, right next to the window. We'll find out before long whether the outlet it's plugged into is on the same circuit as anything in the kitchen.

This afternoon, we also got the sink and the four turntables that will be used to modify the base corner cabinets from IKEA.

The dumpster will arrive in about an hour.

We're expecting the stove, hood, and dishwasher to arrive probably late next week.

Demolition will begin tomorrow! In the meantime, I'm going to have one last hurrah in the kitchen by preparing a sort of Greekish salad. Our friend Anne is joining us; we'll get to borrow her kitchen for the next week and I plan to make a batch of lasagna to freeze in portions and microwave later, maybe a baked mac-n-cheese to freeze in portions, and whatever else comes to mind.

Any other ideas for foods that are good to eat in the summer, but freeze and reheat well?

MelissaH

[Nina C.]

Melissa - thanks for continuing to update us on your plans.

Immediate thoughts at this hour include

-cold soups like gaspacho or chilled carrot soups seem like they would freeze pretty well.

- soups that use the bounty of summer vegetables like soupe al pistou

- marinated and grilled meats to make fajitas, toss on top of big salads or put into sandwiches

- pre-assembled (seasoned, stuffed with cheese, etc.) but not cooked hamburgers

- stock for use in other recipes

[coquus]

I made spanakopita and mac and cheese last week, froze it and ate it a few days later, both turned out great. I also made a pizza and some bread and froze that, they also turned out. I pre cooked the bread and pizza sans cheese to almost done let them cool, threw cheese on pizza, wrapped and froze. It made my vacation much more of a vacation.

[MelissaH]

Nina C. and coquus, thanks for your thoughts on food. I'd forgotten about spanakopita, but about a month ago we ate the last of the spinach-and-cheese phyllo triangles we'd made a while ago. They reheated reasonably well in the toaster oven.

It's been raining here today. I'd considered grilling dinner tonight, but it's chilly and cold and damp, so something indoors might be more in order. My husband predicted that our pantry and freezer supplies will dwindle over the summer. Maybe Mexicanoid for tonight, since we have lettuce, tomatoes, beans, and cheese? (Burgeroid is what we call the frozen bags of veggie crumbles, just as the spreadable butter substitutes my husband grew up with and still prefers for spreading on toast have become butteroid, and all the small breads with holes in the middle available around here are bageloids. When burgeroid is used as a substitute for ground beef in combination with taco seasoning, it long became known in this house as Mexicanoid. And since we discovered how well Mexicanoid works for us, we almost never do "Mexican" with real ground beef, although we certainly do our share of other, more authentic, Mexican cuisine, although we probably won't be doing much of that this summer. In general, we've found burgeroid substitutes reasonably well for ground beef, as long as you aren't cooking it for too long or trying to keep the cooked leftovers around for a second meal, since in either case they get a mushy texture that neither of us likes. But for quick-and-dirty meals when neither of us has much time or inclination to cook anything fancy, Mexicanoid (either rolled up in tortillas, or dolloped onto chips to make nachos, with other appropriate stuff added as well) fits the bill for us. For nights when we grill, we've also discovered that Morningstar Farms Spicy Black Bean veggie burgers fit nicely into a tortilla as well, when halved and the cut side is nestled into the tortilla fold. As long as you don't expect it to taste like a real meat burger, which definitely has its place in our book, it's pretty good, really easy, and involves minimal cleanup.)

The bar sink isn't great for doing dishes, but it's far from impossible. While we were on the east side of town, we considered a trip to the grocery store, but decided that we'd wait till tomorrow when the new ad comes out, and see if anything good goes on sale. I'll be getting lasagna fixings (already have mac and cheese fixings) and whatever else strikes my fancy, to cook and clean up in the real kitchen I'll have access to next week. The grocery store has rectangular cooked but not browned pizza shells in their refrigerated section, which they sell in packs of two. We did a test run with those on the grill during finals week when we were both busy and didn't have time to think about cooking, and discovered that you can do a respectable pizza on the grill using one of the shells from the store, pre-grated cheese, and whatever sauce and add-ins are on hand. One shell feeds us for two nights, so a pack of two means four meals. The shells freeze well. I suspect that's going to be our M.O. for summer pizza.

Last night, we ate from paper plates. We assembled the salad out of the contents of two fridges: leaf lettuce, red pepper, cucumber, grape tomatoes, lunchmeat, feta cheese, two kinds of olives (big and green stuffed with lemon and orange zest, and small black oil-cured), and a dressing made from lemon juice, walnut oil, and a blob of raspberry dijon mustard. We heated some crusty rolls from the grocery store in the toaster. For dessert, from plastic cups: vanilla ice cream, made from heavy cream, half-and-half, sugar, a healthy glug of vanilla, and whatever else was added to the freezer bowl since I wasn't in the room at the time that happened. Eaten with Hershey's dulce de leche syrup, which Anne and I love but my husband claims tastes like sawdust...and he oughta know! We did see some lights flickering with both the toaster and the ice cream machine on last night, and this morning the coffee maker cycling also made the lights cycle. We haven't had to reset any breakers yet, though.

Breakfast this morning was downstairs. Or at least the cereal and bowls were downstairs: the milk is still upstairs in the fridge because we didn't do anything about getting a small one to go downstairs (and now don't really have a good place for one). After breakfast, I removed all the knobs from the doors and drawers. They're destined for eBay.

This morning, we realized that it gets really dark in the kitchen when the power is turned off. So Lowe's got more of our money, in exchange for a stand with two halogen worklights. The stand will migrate down to the garage workshop eventually, to give my husband better light down there. (The outlets on the non-cabinetted side of the kitchen are apparently on different circuit(s?) than the ones for the stove, oven, and cabinet-side outlets. We left those on for now, because it makes for a better place to plug in the worklight.)

We also got a cat's paw-type prybar, because the one we'd had was a bit big for many of the kitchen jobs. The new one works well on things like molding and to yank cabinets out of their moorings. We'll see how well a job it does on faux brick veneer. If that doesn't come off easily, we'll have more drywall work to do than we'd initially anticipated...but it will mean that running electrical stuff will be easier.

Before starting the heavy-duty demo, we used the adjustable poles we'd gotten and some old sheets to wall off the open end of the kitchen, to try and keep dust down. So far the cats are both doing OK with everything: Lyon's been sleeping on "his" bed, and Leo's spent a bunch of time on top of the bookcases downstairs. We'll know when Leo's had enough of the noise, because he'll vanish into my closet.

The kitchen cabinets are currently on their way out: all the uppers are gone except the one over the oven, and the tall cabinet that had been next to the fridge. On the back side of the tall cabinet, we found a packing label that said "September 10, 1962" and the company's name, "Gregg and Sons." We knew the house had been built in 1962, but now we know about when things were being finished up inside. I took a picture of it, but we haven't even gotten around to downloading our Belgium class trip photos yet.

To get the tall cabinet to move, my husband first had to take out the molding around its base. The first piece took some effort, but after that, the other two sections popped off relatively easily. Underneath the cabinet is just plain old plywood subfloor, so the cabinets obviously went in before the flooring.

To get the uppers out, the soffit had to go. We figured that would probably be the case, because when we got the new fridge two years ago and needed about half an inch more space than the cabinets on top of the fridge permitted, we had to destroy that soffit to get rid of the cabinets. So my husband took a hammer and started bashing away at the soffit, to get a look inside. We didn't get any big surprises, and these cabinets came out about as easily as the ones over the fridge area had. With our first look inside, we also confirmed that the soffit was added after the fact, as the wall behind the soffit was nicely drywalled. I hate soffits, and I really don't understand the point of adding one afterwards!

I heard my husband buzzing away downstairs in the garage just now, with what sounded like the router, maybe? No clue what he's doing. It's quiet now, so maybe it's time for a lunch break? Or maybe not: I just heard some crashing so I peeked out the office window and saw the upper corner cabinet with the turntable resting on its side in the dumpster. And now there's more noise coming from the kitchen, so work's underway again, probably this time on either the oven or the lowers. The cooktop's already in the dumpster!

MelissaH

[MelissaH]

Did I say the barsink wasn't too bad for doing dishes? I'll need to get a nice low chair to sit in before long, since I hadn't reckoned on the sink's height (or lack thereof).

By about 2 PM today, we'd gotten nearly everything out of the kitchen and had even vacuumed most of the junk up. Some interesting notes:

* The "faux brick" is actually NOT faux! They took half-inch slices of real gen-yoo-wine red bricks, and glued them onto the wall with something black along the lines of tar. They came off relatively easily, with a prybar banged with a hammer. We'll definitely need to do some drywall patching, though, and certainly a skim coat of plaster or mud over the debricked area. The good news is that we probably won't need to completely redo any of the drywall.

*We actually had three, count 'em, THREE layers of sheet flooring. There was the one we had always seen, which was only glued at the edges and would have come off in one big sheet had we been able to maneuver it down the stairs and out to the dumpster. We couldn't, so we got out the utility knife. Beneath that was the red mosaic stuff that we unearthed when we removed the semicircular shelves on the end of the cabinet. That also seems as though it will come up without too much of a fight. But the surprise was beneath that, we found what was apparently the original floor, some kind of pastelly ugly floor.

*We found no fewer than three different versions of shelf paper in all the various cabinets. They're all ugly, and various shades of rust, avocado, and harvest gold. Someone at one time thought it would even be a good idea to run the paper up the insides of the drawers, glue exposed, so that the screws holding the knobs in were covered. I got to use my own utility knife to expose the screws so I could remove the knobs and add them to the collection.

Our local Lowe's doesn't have the cans in the size we were looking for, for renovations and able to be in contact with insulation. We may be able to use new construction IC cans, though, depending on what we find in the attic. Otherwise, we'll have to order them from somewhere.

Right now, as far as outlets, it looks like we'll be going with regularly and liberally spaced duplex or quad outlets along all the walls. Since we have walls to put outlets on, we're in a somewhat different situation than our friends with the beautiful enormous island with the power strips.

I'm still wavering between xenon and fluorescent under-cabinet lighting. I can waver for a bit, though: those won't go in for a while, and can be done well after the rest of the kitchen is completed if need be. (I hope it won't, though!)

Dinner tonight was in fact Mexicanoid, cooked indoors on our single electric burner because it's been yucky and raining all day. We also heated up some black refried beans in the microwave, and I chopped up a bit of colby-jack cheese, half a tomato, and some lettuce. We rolled it all up in flour tortillas. My husband added some salsa to his, but I didn't feel the need for any additional heat since we'd used a hot-and-spicy taco seasoning. The cooking was easy, but the cleanup made my back ache a bit. I think I know which cutting board I'll be using until I have a big sink again: it's the biggest one that's small enough to rinse well in the barsink.

Coming upstairs after dinner, doing the dishes, and dark, I realized that the upstairs hall light is not working. Must investigate whether it's just got a dead bulb, or if it's on one of the kitchen circuits that's turned off. A hallway light that's out of commission could get to be a pain in the butt, because when the sun goes down, it gets dark in the hallway!

Tomorrow's tasks: remove all the old flooring (get out the dust masks!), and get the electrical completely planned out so that we know exactly how many circuits will need to be run, and therefore how much wire we'll need to buy. (We're waiting to see what the electrician says about locating the subpanel: whether it needs to go in the garage right next to the main panel, or if it can go into the utility room where it will be much closer to the kitchen, meaning less wire required per new circuit.) I'm guessing that I'll probably be spending at least some of the day on the stepstool, armed with a spray bottle and a wide putty knife: I was able to pull off the outermost vinyl layer of the one remaining section of wallpaper with my bare hands, but the paper backing and glue residue are still on the wall. Historically, we've been able to get rid of most of the backing pretty easily by spritzing with water, letting it soak in for a minute, and then scraping the wall with a nice wide flat blade. Once all the paper's gone, if it looks like a lot of glue residue is left behind, we'll go back and wash with TSP substitute. (We tend to think about phosphates a lot, this close to one of the Great Lakes.) No sense in thinking too much about patching drywall yet, because we'll need to make more holes to deal with the electrical. And at some point tomorrow, we need to look in on our friend's feline beast, who doesn't like anyone particularly. We'll also need to go food shopping sometime this week, so I can use someone else's oven to make lasagna and whatever else I come up with. My own oven is now in pieces in the dumpster. Good riddance!

MelissaH

[MelissaH]

As of now, about 2/3 of the flooring has been removed, and the wallpaper backing is now gone.

My wonderful husband worked on floors for several hours yesterday, including bashing a thumb open, and finally called it quits at about 3 PM. The cats dealt with the noise remarkably well.

I'm really glad we're doing a floating floor. Otherwise, we should have bought stock in the companies that make self-leveling compound.

This morning, he's in at the office, working on a presentation he'll give to some of the summer students tomorrow. I took advantage of the empty kitchen to get in there myself with a scraper and spray bottle filled with warm water, to get rid of the paper backing from the wallpaper. The backing's all gone, but much of the glue still remains. I scraped off what I could, but the walls will need a washing down and I don't know where the TSP substitute is. So, when my husband gets home, I'll take care of the rest of it, unless he's going to be back beating on flooring. If that's the case, I'll mow the lawn to stay out of his way.

Wallpaper is evil!

MelissaH

[MelissaH]

The floor is now getting some serious ammunition: the heat gun came home from the lab!

As for me? A friend and I just got back from a pleasant little bike ride, my first of the year. Now, to the lawnmower. (Grass is food for some organisms, right? )

MelissaH

[MelissaH]

Help!

The ugly under-cabinet lighting issue has come back to rear its head. Apparently I surprised my husband when I said that not only do I want them ALL THE WAY AROUND the kitchen, but that I also want them to have wall switches (rather than just the little rocker switches on the individual lights) for the three sections of light. I'd kinda thought that was normal, when you had lights you also had light switches. I envision one section from the fridge around to the shelves over the baking area; a second section (with its own switch) from the baking area around to the sink; and a third bank of lights from the sink down to the end (again, with its own switch). My husband hadn't realized that I wanted the third bank of lights, because he thought the recessed cans in the ceiling would take care of lighting the workspace there. I'm not convinced that the cans won't just shed shadows onto the countertop, and so I at least want it to be easily possible to add them in later if shadows are an issue.

Anyway, I think I've settled on fluorescent lights, because (1) they're cooler (thermally) than halogen, (2) they're less expensive than xenon, and (3) they're possible to change after the fact, if necessary. But all the fluorescents I remember seeing are the kind that you plug in to an outlet, and then use the integrated rocker switch directly on the light body to turn on.

Anyone know of a source for undercabinet lights that you can hard-wire directly in? Or does anyone know if it's possible to modify a plug-in light with an integrated switch to be hard-wired into a normal switch? Should I be saving these questions for the electrician later tonight?

MelissaH

[Darcie B]

Help!

The ugly under-cabinet lighting issue has come back to rear its head. Apparently I surprised my husband when I said that not only do I want them ALL THE WAY AROUND the kitchen, but that I also want them to have wall switches (rather than just the little rocker switches on the individual lights) for the three sections of light. I'd kinda thought that was normal, when you had lights you also had light switches. I envision one section from the fridge around to the shelves over the baking area; a second section (with its own switch) from the baking area around to the sink; and a third bank of lights from the sink down to the end (again, with its own switch). My husband hadn't realized that I wanted the third bank of lights, because he thought the recessed cans in the ceiling would take care of lighting the workspace there. I'm not convinced that the cans won't just shed shadows onto the countertop, and so I at least want it to be easily possible to add them in later if shadows are an issue.

Anyway, I think I've settled on fluorescent lights, because (1) they're cooler (thermally) than halogen, (2) they're less expensive than xenon, and (3) they're possible to change after the fact, if necessary. But all the fluorescents I remember seeing are the kind that you plug in to an outlet, and then use the integrated rocker switch directly on the light body to turn on.

Anyone know of a source for undercabinet lights that you can hard-wire directly in? Or does anyone know if it's possible to modify a plug-in light with an integrated switch to be hard-wired into a normal switch? Should I be saving these questions for the electrician later tonight?

MelissaH

←

I'm not an electrician, but I don't see why you couldn't just cut the cord off the undercabinet plug in light, separate and strip the wires, and wire it (in an appropriate box) with other undercabinet lights to a single switch. That way you could switch them all on/off at once, but the individual switches on the lights would still work when the main switch was in the on position. We have converted a few things from plug-in to hard-wired and vice-versa with no problems.

[MelissaH]

I'm not an electrician, but I don't see why you couldn't just cut the cord off the undercabinet plug in light, separate and strip the wires, and wire it (in an appropriate box) with other undercabinet lights to a single switch. That way you could switch them all on/off at once, but the individual switches on the lights would still work when the main switch was in the on position. We have converted a few things from plug-in to hard-wired and vice-versa with no problems.

←

Thanks, Darcie.

I think the panic's over. My husband told me where he was planning to order the recessed cans from (USA Light) and I took a look at their under-cabinet lights. And their Web site specifically says that their lights are designed to be installed permanently and hard-wired to the circuit. The recessed cans will be ordered sometime tomorrow.

One more little detail, something those of you with IKEA cabinets may be able to help us with: are the upper cabinets flat across the bottom? My husband commented that we probably wouldn't be able to mount a 12-inch light in a 12-inch cabinet, and I wondered why you couldn't just put the lights across multiple cabinets. It seems to me that it would be really tedious to have to match many small sections of light to the sizes of each cabinet. If I can get an answer about the cabinets in time, we may be able to include the undercabinet lights in the order with the recessed cans.

Today's little surprise: The wooden casing came off the side doorway, the one that we weren't willing to close in because it's the main route between kitchen and stairs. Underneath, we found some of what we believe to be the original paint color. Today it would probably be called mustard. Back when it was put it, it was probably called harvest gold. As for me, it reminds me of what was in my cousin's two-month-old baby's diaper. I won't be sorry to see that go.

My husband talked to the electrician, who will be stopping by tomorrow sometime to discuss adding the subpanel that we'll need. In the meantime, my husband's working on the corner cabinets, adding the nonwimpy shelves and turntables we want. The plywood for those will be delivered either tomorrow or Thursday.

The range, hood, and dishwasher will arrive on Thursday afternoon between 2 and 6 PM, or so the company says. This afternoon I cleared a path to where they'll rest until we're ready to put them in.

We'd forgotten about the double-trap situation in the kitchen sink. We might need to ask a plumber to help clean that up, but there's plenty of time before we'll be ready to think about running water.

My husband went over to look in on our friend's cat this afternoon. Said cat was rather upset with me, because I spent nearly 3 hours there yesterday (productive hours, making a dish of mac and cheese, another of lasagna, and four baked potatoes to boot since the oven was on and there was room) but didn't let him go O-U-T. Tux doesn't particularly like anybody other than his mistress, but he's particularly un-fond of me and my husband both. I got an earful yesterday, and this afternoon he picked up with Casey right where he'd left off with me. I'll probably be back at it tomorrow. If I plan it right, I'll scoop the mac and cheese and the lasagna into two-person servings and freeze them before I go over, so I can use the big sink in our friend's kitchen to wash the pans.

MelissaH

[MelissaH]

The electrician came to consult yesterday. We're going to be able to put our new subpanel in the utility room, as we'd wanted! This is particularly good because it means we'll be able to save on wire, running the new circuits. Everything kitchen-related will be in the new subpanel, and because we'll be moving some things from the main breaker box to the subpanel, we'll be able to open up some spaces in the main box for things like a 220V circuit for the tablesaw!

Yesterday, my husband also opened up a little bit of the subfloor, to see what was down below. The subfloor is actually two layers of subfloor. but we liked what we saw: it will be really easy to run wires from the kitchen into the utility room because the chase is completely clear. My husband is currently working on getting wiring in place. We may be able to start cleaning up the drywall by the end of the weekend!

MelissaH

[MelissaH]

We are now into the electrical system. My husband's been up and down to the attic today, running wires hither and yon, and trying to make sense out of the existing wiring.

Earlier today, we spent a couple more hours (and many more $$$) at Lowe's, getting mostly electrical goodies (switches, lights, yards and yards of wire, outlets, screwcaps, the works) as well as a little piece of drywall and other drywall patching supplies. The electrician will be back on Monday to connect things up, and we'd like to have all the internal wiring in place in the meantime. Our electrician is also certified to run gas lines, so he'll do that on Monday as well.

We've tweaked and tweaked the electrical plan, making sure we'll have sufficient outlets and being sure the switches are in logical places. We'll have a total of 11 recessed cans, in two rows, evenly spaced except for the "missing" light right over the side doorway where nothing (other than traffic) will happen. The four cans in the closed end of the kitchen plus the unpaired can by the sink will be on one dimmer switch. The three cans on the window side of the kitchen will be on a second dimmer switch, and the three cans opposite will be on the third dimmer switch. We decided in the end not to bother with a pendant light over the baking area (we decided that AFTER the drywall had been cut, so now I get two more electrical outlets instead! ), because we'll be able to run undercabinet lighting all the way across. (Furthermore, if the shelves are made of anything but glass, the light from up above wouldn't get down to where it's needed anyway.) This leaves us with one pendant light over the sink, and in the end we decided that the 50+ inches of open space between the two runs of wall cabinets merited more than one pendant light. So at Lowe's this morning, we picked up a linear triple fixture, and three UFO-shaped shades to go on that fixture (2 yellow and 1 red). This fixture takes bulbs with a small base, and we were able to find 40 W round bulbs to fit. There are compact fluorescents with the small base as well, but they're bullet-shaped, and I think the round bulb will look better.

(Tangent: we'd also looked at a fixture that takes normal old bulbs. But the shades were plain old white bell-shaped glass. It looked like the sort of thing you'd put in if you were fixing up a house to put it on the market: new but rather impersonal. I like our UFOs, enough to deal with the hassles of a not-normal bulb.)

For dimmer switches, we went with kind of fancy ones that you tap on and off, and have a pre-set level. But if you tap the switch twice, the lights go on full blast.

And for the garbage disposal switch? That's a standard old-fashioned switch, the only one in the kitchen. All the light switches will be the big rocker-style switches, the kind that are easy to bonk on with an elbow if need be. So Darcie B and Smithy, I think I've won this one. The big reason my husband wanted the disposal switch in the cabinet was so that it couldn't be turned on by accident. Having the different kind of switch should make it obvious, and we can always put a little flip-up cover on if we want to be even more obvious about it. I'm happy.

We haven't ordered under-cabinet lights yet. But my husband put together one of the wall cabinet boxes, so now we know that the bottom of the cabinets are completely straight all the way across, and attaching a light longer than the cabinet won't pose a problem. (Eeeek: weird thought! We were planning to leave the area of shelves between the wall cabinets un-lit from below, originally. I hope we have enough of the light valance to cover the opening. Although if we had planned to do the returns on both sides, it shouldn't be an issue.) We also now have a mark on the wall showing where the bottom of the wall cabinets will come down to, mainly so my husband knew where to cut the drywall to put outlets and switches.

After Lowe's, we stopped at a grocery store since we were on that side of town anyway. We've been invited to a picnic tomorrow, and were asked to bring soft drinks, so we got some stuff and a bag of ice to chill it down. Everything's resting in a big cooler for the duration. While we were there, I asked my husband what he wanted to eat tonight. He wants Thai, so that means I won't have to do dinner dishes for two days in a row!

So far, the part that's getting to me most is NOT the cooking facilities. It's the &^%$ little barsink I have to use to do dishes in! I'm hoping that things continue to go smoothly, and that we're able to get back upstairs sooner rather than later.

MelissaH

[MelissaH]

Some of the issues we've run into so far: a quirky electrical system, structural stuff in less-than-perfect locations, and deliveries not arriving within their windows.

The structural stuff we can't do a whole lot about. We've had to relocate the range two inches closer to the dining room, because otherwise the hood's duct would have been right at a ceiling joist. This isn't a problem, because we built some wiggle room in to the design. It just means that we'll need to figure out whether to put the two inches between the range and the cabinet, or between the cabinet and the door. It also means that we'll lose two inches of the countertop overhang we'd planned. Again, it's not a big deal: there will still be about six inches of overhang. In fact, until yesterday, I didn't even know that a little bit of overhang was in our kitchen plans, but we have the extra little bit of butcher block, and we have the extra little bit of space, and my dear wonderful husband realized that an overhang would be a great place to clamp the pasta machine. (Yes, I still hand-crank mine. We don't use it often enough to warrant anything fancier.)

I also include the vent stack pipe we found in the structural category; there's a bathroom just on the other side of the wall from where the oven used to be, and in the process of putting in new outlets and switches we found the vent pipe for the toilet. So we had to move the locations of things a little bit, so we didn't try to use the toilet's vent pipe as part of the electrical system of the kitchen. No big deal.

As far as the quirky electrical system: the house is over 40 years old. We've found a couple of places where the original electricians ran three-wire cable through the walls, and then split the red and black lines to two separate circuits and breakers but used the same neutral (white) wire for both the circuits. It worked fine, but has caused some major headaches when we started to trace things and figure out what went to what. In a couple of cases, things that we'd expected would be cold actually still had power. (Example 1: the back wall of one of the boxes. It was a case where the cable was split, and one circuit was off but the other wasn't. No harm, though.) We think we've found all the split cable circuits, and separated them from each other. For most of the kitchen, we're running brand-new everything, so both of us spent time pulling wires yesterday, and things are pretty much as far as they can go without having the lights here or the power on.

On deliveries: we were told that the range, hood, and dishwasher would be delivered on Thursday afternoon (two days ago) between 2 and 6 PM. Which was fine; we cleared our schedules and made sure that the path upstairs was cleared. The delivery company had both my office phone and my cell phone, and I kept calling and calling my office voice mail but never had anything there. We waited and waited---nothing. Finally at 6:30, I called the delivery company, and was told that they were at the stop before us. Fifteen minutes later, the truck finally showed up. The dishwasher was pretty easy, and only took one guy to bring up. All the various bits and pieces of the hood, and the smaller boxes of range parts, were also relatively easy. But the range itself was an absolute beast, as we'd expected. Because of the way our split-entry house is laid out, the 350 pound range had to come into the foyer and get lifted over the half-wall separating the stairs up and stairs down. And that was a really tight fit, so the staircase wall got slightly banged up. (Not a big deal; we have plenty of other drywall to fix next week anyway.) At one point, my husband even had to get in to provide a little bit of extra muscle on the stairs. Eventually the range made it all the way upstairs where we'd wanted it for now: just on the other side of the wall from where it will wind up in the completed kitchen. We put a cardboard box on top of it, so the cats don't investigate too much and so that we could then put the hood on top and open the pathway through the living room again. Right now, the living room is an absolute wreck, between the range and hood, the stuff in boxes, and the pieces of various half-built cabinets.

I don't necessarily mind deliveries coming at 6:45 PM. I don't even mind deliveries taking an hour to get everything into the house, especially when they do a relatively good job. But I do mind, tremendously, when they know it's going to be later than they'd originally said, and they have phone numbers to call, but they make no effort at all to contact me! Obviously, someone in a dispatch office somewhere has a schedule of some kind written out. They know the order in which they'll be making the deliveries. They also are figuring on X amount of time to make each of the deliveries on the schedule. So if they get somewhere early in the afternoon and the way isn't cleared, they need to take down a door, the homeowner needs to move furniture out of the way, or whatever it is that takes longer than the dispatcher's estimate, call me and let me know that the delivery schedule's now half an hour late, and don't expect to see people until such-and-such a time! Is this so much to ask?

This morning we've been dealing with more electrical untangling, and also working out hood details. We went with the Monogram restaurant-style hood, which is set up to take 10-inch vent ducting. Our local hardware store carries 10-inch ducting, but only in 2-foot lengths. They don't have a good cap for the duct after it goes through the roof, or flashing for where it comes through the roof, or the other stuff we'd need to finish the vent system, though. (Neither does anywhere else in town.) We can get 60-inch lengths of 8-inch duct, and the accessories for 8-inch ductwork, but not the adapter to step down from 10 inches to 8 inches.

Furthermore, we're now debating whether we'd be better off going straight up and through the roof, or if we should instead bend and come out through a small gable area. Therefore, on Monday we're going to call our local HVAC contractors and see if they can tell us where to get the stuff we'll need to plumb in the hood, and what they'd recommend as far as the best way to run the vent ducts from the hood to the outside.

My husband's asking for my help, and tells me I should probably turn off the computer. This can only mean more games with walkie-talkies and circuit tester.

MelissaH

[snowangel]

Oh, Melissa, I feel your pain about the electrical. My husband and I, as we have mapped the circuits in both houses we've lived in, wonder just what the electricians are smoking, or just how much bizarre stuff previous homeowners have done. In this house (we've lived here two years), it's the first thing we did. The second thing we did was make a more proper order out of things.

And, the deliveries. I love the company from which we purchase our appliances. They let us know what day, and whether it will be am or pm. Then, they actually call my husband when they are about 20 minutes away from our destination, which gives him time to get home!

Glad things are shaping up, and good to know that we are not the only people who find a strange jigsaw puzzle as things start to unfold. The best laid plans...

Tell us what and how you are eating these days!

[MelissaH]

Tell us what and how you are eating these days!

←

We love friends with kitchens.

Yesterday we were invited to a summer picnic, which wound up being an indoor party because it was about 60 degrees and damp out at the appointed hour. So we ate well: Elena is Russian, and her salads are truly something to behold. Yesterday's menu also included a soup made with foraged greens, which nobody knew the name for. (They're long and skinny, with a forked end, and a sour taste. The soup was wonderful.)

The day before, we went to our local Thai restaurant and had pineapple curry and spicy eggplant and jasmine rice. That day, it was actually raining. Yuk. We still have a few leftovers, ready to either put into an omelet, or wrap in a tortilla, or maybe to cook more rice as an accompaniment.

As far as cooking: downstairs in the family room, we have our temporary kitchen set up. On the table that used to be in the kitchen, we have the microwave, the toaster oven, and a tiny little prep area. The cereal boxes and the bread live on top of the microwave. On the cart, we have a bit more prep area, as well as the single electric burner hot plate. The coffeemaker and water boiler are on the ledge just over the cart. The rice cooker is also available, as are the electric frying pan and the crock pot, but we haven't used any of these yet. For light in that part of the family room, we've put one of our halogen lamps there. It's not great, but it's better than nothing. Use of these electrical appliances is strictly limited to one at a time, as even that makes the lights in the family room (halogen lamp and the normal lights that have always been there, on the ceiling fan) all get frighteningly dim. I say frighteningly, because of something we learned from our Ohio electrician: As circuit breakers age, they get harder and harder to pop. I'm wondering if we should be considering replacing at least the family room breakers with something that will trip if they get overloaded, as long as we're dealing with other electrical work in the house anyway.

We kept the pasta pot with lid and strainer, the 3-quart saucepan with lid, and a couple of frying pans easily available. Much of the other stuff is packed away and inaccessible at the moment, but some of the utensils that used to live in cabinets are available. The drawers from the old kitchen, with their contents, are stacked in the middle of the family room floor. I couldn't find the box grater on Monday, so I borrowed Anne's when I went to her house to bake stuff. She's back now, and appreciated that I'd washed it and left it out to dry rather than putting it back damp to rust.

We actually have pretty good cooking facilities at home, all things considered, when you include the gas grill and the three-burner propane stove outside. (About the only things that are out of the question here are things that require an oven. Like the spinach souffle I've been craving, for some reason.) But even though we're well equipped, I don't really like cooking outside when it's 60 degrees and raining, even if I'm under a deck with a roof.

The sink is a miserable little barsink, about which I will refrain from detailing any further in this post.

And the fridge is still upstairs. I'm hoping that we have the circuits untangled enough so that we don't get any more surprises of the "Hey, I just opened the refrigerator door and the light didn't go on. Did you mean to turn that breaker off?" sort. (Insulation. Maybe that's what electricians smoke? Does fiberglass addle the brain?) I'm also hoping that after tomorrow I'll be able to finally get back to my own summer projects on the computer, without needing to stop for a power shutdown or to help pull wires. I don't mind helping, especially if it makes things go faster, but I have stuff I need to get done this summer that have nothing to do with the kitchen.

Speaking of faster: we've decided that we'll ask our HVAC company for an estimate on putting in the vent hood ductwork. If it's less than or close to the cost of the new ladder we'd need to buy, it's going to be worth it. They do this sort of thing more often than we do, and I like the idea of being able to call someone outside the family if we have problems. I also like the idea of someone other than my husband climbing on our roof, 18+ feet off the ground.

As far as what and how we've been eating:

My standard morning ritual these days is to start with breakfast. (I swim at lunch during the week if it's not nice out, and I go for a bike ride if it is nice. No sense in showering in the morning for either of us: me because I'll be getting either sweaty or chlorinated, and my husband because he's been crawling in the attic and the utility room, making drywall dust, and otherwise doing things that will require a shower before bedtime anyway.) Whoever's up first feeds the cats. They still get to eat off of their normal dishes, because we wanted to disrupt their lives as little as possible. Their current feeding location is downstairs, just underneath the table.

If my husband's up first, he makes himself coffee. He's switched to pre-ground coffee for the duration of the project, and he's also not using the insulated coffee holder because it's a pain to wash in the tiny little barsink. The pre-ground stuff doesn't smell as nice as when he grinds his own beans. He's been using one of our insulated mugs for the coffee; two mugfuls is one potful.

My breakfast is still generally a bowl of cereal. These days, the bowl is styrofoam and the spoon plastic. I pour the cereal into the bowl downstairs, stick in the spoon, and carry it upstairs to get milk from the fridge. On the way up, I pick up yesterday's Wall Street Journal (it only comes by mail around here, and the mail comes in the late afternoon) to peruse while I eat. I generally eat on the living room floor, amidst the boxes, with the paper spread out in front of me. But since the range arrived, I haven't had the room to do that upstairs, so I've been eating downstairs.

Right before we went to Belgium, I used up eggs and milk by making a double batch of waffles, which I froze. We haven't needed to dip into them yet, but it's comforting to know they're there if I want them. I suspect they could even be "toasted" on the grill, should the power get cranky.

Lunch is often whatever leftovers we have, collected upstairs and heated and eaten downstairs. Or sandwiches, with the refrigerated stuff brought down for construction and then brought back up after lunch. Those waffles might be useful for lunches also, one of these days. We still have some of last summer's blueberries in the freezer.

For dinners, we've been eating lots of stuff from the freezer that just really needs to be heated. (The deep freeze is just down the hall from the family room, in the garage.) And pasta with <gasp> jarred sauce and garlic bread. And whatever friends invite us over for. Salad is also good, because it's easy to open a bag of triple-washed greens that can be transferred by the handful directly into a styrofoam bowl or paper plate. Pre-shredded cheese is also a godsend these days.

I'm debating finding the blender. We got some cubed frozen mango when it was on sale a couple of weeks ago at our local Aldi. We're thinking that, along with some yogurt, would whip up into a reasonable lassi. Of course, 60 degrees and rain is hardly lassi weather.

I've also been daydreaming about a mango upside-down skillet cake, which is of course impossible without an oven. And blueberry crumble. Muffins. Biscuits to eat with whipped cream and strawberries. All kinds of other things that just aren't do-able for another month or more. I may need to make do with mango salsa, because it's easy to just cut stuff up and throw it together in a bowl. Or tapioca pudding, which has an advantage over some other things because I love it and my husband doesn't (to state it mildly), so I get to eat the whole batch. I particularly love it still warm, with a handful of chocolate chips stirred in till they just melt.

I'm already making plans for our next trip to Syracuse, which will include a trip to the Asian food store. We need more ramen, because it's yummy, filling, easy to cook in the microwave, and can be eaten from the container it's cooked in.

Have I mentioned how much I love other people's kitchens, no matter how inadequate they think they are?

MelissaH

[MelissaH]

As of now, here's where we stand:

The electrical work is nearly complete. The only parts not yet done are the recessed cans and the under-cabinet lighting, because the cans won't arrive until the middle of next week and we haven't yet picked out the under-cabinet lighting (and probably won't until we get the cabinets installed and measure exactly how much room we have). The electrician recommended we cut the holes for the cans small, because the clips to hold the housing don't take much room. We're waiting till the cans get here before we do anything.

We also know we have one more outlet to install, for the iPod stereo system which will go on the shelves over the baking area; the wire's in place but we don't want to cut the outlet until we decide on a height...and we can't do that until the shelves are better planned, which probably also means waiting for the cabinets to get installed.

I'm particularly fond of the dimmer switches we picked for the recessed cans: you tap them once to turn them on to the dimmer level, you tap them again to turn them off in a 3-second fade. Or you can tap twice to turn to full-on, or off in a 10-second fade. We have a slew of outlets, and we have faceplates for everything (but won't put them in until the painting's done).

The old garbage disposal was hard-wired, but the new one will plug into an outlet. We got lucky and in the old kitchen, we had a switch on that same circuit. Thus, we were able to use some existing wire.

We have a new subpanel in the utility room. It's all connected to the old panel and to the circuits in the kitchen. We have connections (both gas and electric) for the range in place.

We're waiting on the plumber still. If we don't hear from him by today, he's getting a call tonight. We need a plumber to remove the baseboard heater (whether the pipe gets relocated beneath the floor or just moved right down to floor level won't really matter) and also to redo the drain arrangement for the sink. Neither of us is great at sweating pipes, although we're both pretty good using a torch for creme brulee.

The walls and floor are completely bare. My husband worked very hard yesterday with knife and mud bucket, particularly on the areas that had brick in the old kitchen. All the holes we don't need are patched, taped, and mudded. The sanding will probably come this afternoon, along with possibly more mud.

We put together a normal-size base cabinet, and put it up on its legs. We also hung a length of the wall cabinet hanger on the wall, and actually hung a wall cabinet from the hanger and slid the molding on top. We'll have about half an inch gap between ceiling and molding, which is fine with us. The reason for doing this was to get a feel for how much gap we'll have between cabinets. Once we add in the floor and countertop thicknesses and account for the light valance, we'll wind up with about 16 inches. This should be enough height to allow my KA mixer to live in the corner of the counter.

We also hung the hood on the wall, to make sure the height would be OK for us (it is) and that all the electrical connections are in the right places (they are).

We have paint waiting for after the drywall's been completely fixed and sanded, and (we hope) the plumber's done his jobs. The ceiling will be a version of white, and the walls will be a pale yellow color the paint company calls "Cream Cake."

I spent a couple of hours yesterday with a paintbrush myself. My husband's cut the pieces for the mods to the IKEA corner cabinets from a couple of sheets of veneer-core birch plywood, to add a shelf and two good turntables to each cabinet. Yesterday, he put the edge banding on the turntable Pac-Men and on the edge of the shelves that will show. So then it was my job to cover the pieces with polyurethane, to seal the plywood. I did that yesterday afternoon. (I could have done it the day before, but that was the afternoon I mowed the lawn. That's something else I've taken over for the duration of the project.)

In the process of working with the power tools, my husband got the garage reorganized somewhat, and we can now walk through again!

Our plan of action for the next week or so: First, finish the drywall. Once that's done we can prime and paint. (We've Xed out the spots for the ceiling cans, and we'll just be sure to paint around the Xes so we know where to put the lights.) We're hoping the plumber will get here to deal with the baseboard before we start painting, because it's in an area that will show so we'll need to take some care with the paint there. Next week, the HVAC people will be here, to take care of a drip in our boiler system (better to do that now, when we don't need the house heat on) and to figure out what they'll need to do to run the hood vent ducting up through the roof and cap it off.

Even if the plumber doesn't get here as soon as we'd like, we'll still be able to paint. Once the walls are done, we'll put the floor in. Again, even if the plumber can't make it next week, we'll be able to lay most of the floor---just not in the area right up against the baseboard. We'll probably give the floor its initial coat of sealer before the cabinets go down, because that should be easier to do in an empty room. For some reason, we've had lots of offers to help with the floor. I think people are curious to see how it goes in, and how it looks afterwards. The painting and floor sealing will be the two critical times we'll need to keep the cats out of the kitchen...which means they'll be the two times the boys most want to go in and see what's happening there!

When the floor and quarter-round molding are in (and maybe sealed), we'll be able to start installing cabinets. (We could probably even do the upper cabinets before the floor is down, should we get stuck waiting for the plumber. The lowers, however, will probably be better off waiting, to some extent, as it will be easier to do the drain work without the sink cabinet in place.) We have lots and lots of cardboard to lay down to protect the floor as we move stuff in, since every single cabinet piece is in its own box, and we have more huge cardboard pieces in the box that's currently over the range. If that isn't enough, our friend Bruce just put in a bathtub surround, which also came in a large box. With any luck, we'll be able to start putting cabinets in by the end of next week.

We may also need to wait to do the upper cabinets next to the hood until the hood goes in. And I have no idea how long that will take to get done.

My husband commented yesterday that the cabinets went together and installed much more easily than he'd imagined possible. I hope he's right.

Dinners? The day before yesterday, we did burgers on the grill with all the fixings, macaroni salad from the grocery store deli, salt potatoes, and coleslaw from a bag but with homemade dressing (a takeoff from The Gift of Southern Cooking's recipe with boiled dressing: since I didn't have heavy cream, I just used a bunch more sour cream). The salt potatoes and boiled dressing were done on the propane 3-burner stove outside.

Yesterday we had the two leftover burgers with more leftovers. Yesterday we also filled the grill's propane tank, which ran out while my husband had the cast-iron skillet on the grill cooking the bacon. (I would have put the bacon directly on the cold grill grates and started from there, but what do I know about that?)

Tonight's plan for dinner: we've defrosted some chicken thighs and turkey hot Italian sausage. We'll grill those up tonight. We also have celery, onion, and bell pepper (both red and green), as well as oil and flour. Cans of tomatoes. Rice cooker. Some spices including cayenne. I don't know exactly what the proper name for a concoction of these would be, but it should be yummy.

And it's Thursday, our Farmer's Market night. We didn't go last week because it was pretty dreary here. The week before, the only thing worth buying was asparagus. I'm hoping that this week we might start to see something else, maybe peas or strawberries? Or maybe I'll just make a point of going to the strawberry farm and pick some of my own...except that I have no oven to make biscuits to go with. Anyone ever tried doing biscuits on the grill?

MelissaH

Edited June 15, 2006 by MelissaH (log)

[Kouign Aman]

It sounds like its going great guns! your planned concoction: jambalaya?

(We've Xed out the spots for the ceiling cans, and we'll just be sure to paint around the Xes so we know where to put the lights.)

If you make those Xs with tape, and turn one end of the tape down on itself to make a tag, you wouldnt have to worry if you point <err..paint>over the Xs, because you could simply remove the tape and the Xs would be there loud and clear.

Edited June 15, 2006 by Kouign Aman (log)