Kitchen Planning

Around the furnace work and getting Hapy operational again, Boo and I have been trying to move forward on having a viable kitchen as well. Today, I will post briefly about that progress.

Cabinets

rough kitchen thought

It probably makes sense to start somewhere near the beginning. Shortly after getting this house, Boo and I hit the rebuilding center looking for all kinds of things. What we were NOT looking for were kitchen cabinets. The old ones were still in there, the kitchen needed serious cleaning and fixing, we didn't have a place to put new ones, etc. Well, there was a full set from an old house that had rounded corners and such that they looked perfect. At $420 for an entire kitchen's worth of cabinets (plus a bathroom vanity and a couple cabinets for a laundry, we think), we pulled the trigger. Through the help of Boo's ex-husband, and his minivan, we managed to fit all of them into the van and the pickup in 2 trips, and loaded them rather unceremoniously into the garage. Fast forward over a year and they were still there though the kitchen is now getting some focus. Still, they have been safe, undamaged and long-since paid for.

We recently engaged with a contractor to help get things moving more swiftly. Had we not done so, I suspect those cabinets would have sat in the garage for another 6 months while I finished the furnace work and then got going on some kitchen rough-in. Instead, I spent a few hours in the garage freeing the cabinets from the things that had been buried on top of them.

Cleanup

cleaning the line

The old kitchen was somewhere between a cold-room, a tool shed, building supply storage and the pass-through to the laundry and backyard. As a result, it was a mess. Oh, and I did tear down a bunch of drywall when the weather was warm so the whole area was cordoned off with a floor-to-ceiling plastic sheet. It was not exactly welcoming for the holidays. When I removed that non-supporting / secondary wall, I had left extra space below the ceiling. I wanted that line clean before I did anything else. So, I measured again the height of the passage I was mimicking (7'4") and sent in a screw to mark the spot. From beneath that screw, I pushed up with a long section of door trim (knowing it was straight). Atop the trim I set the level and then sent 2 screws through the trim into the drywall so I had a fence to cut along. With a handheld drywall saw I cut the line, knowing it was level. After the fact, I realized that having the cut leveled would have been best done after getting the floor perfectly level... which it isn't. We have moved the floor leveling to the front of this active list and that line will probably need to be fixed with a subsequent cleanup cut or some drywall repairs. Oh well. With the wall pushed up, we can better imagine the kitchen space, so it was not a total waste of effort.

With the line cut, my demo was done; the contractor will be handling the floor and anything else that pops up. So, I could clear everything out... the work table, construction material, the construction waste I just created, etc. leaving just an empty room. A couple hours of sweeping, vacuuming and mopping left us a room that was ready for some imagination. Before we could really do much else, though, the hole through which we lowered the furnace needed to be temporarily covered. Boo picked up a 4-foot-square sheet of 15/32" plywood that more than covered the hole. In fact, it helped us consider the swing-room for the door as we started plopping cabinets.

Try Before You Mount

sink thinking

Boo and I had her sister, her niece and their respective partners over to haul kitchen cabinets from the garage into the demo'd kitchen. One by one, we hauled a cabinet up the 2 steps and thru the doorway. Once the first end fit through, we slapped a moving dolly underneath it. When the other end made it through, it was placed onto another dolly. Once on dollies, the cabinets could roll around the floor. A few weeks ago, we bought a half-dozen moving dollies from Harbor Freight (they were on sale) for this purpose.

Most folks do this in a completely opposite way: hire someone, have that someone take measurements, with those measurements they plan a kitchen, cabinets are built to that plan, and then they are installed. We started with buying a rando-set, so in order to figure out how they could fit, we could have measured things, and gone virtual planning. This felt much more visceral. We moved them around and played house by pretend cooking a meal and using the sink to get a sense for how the space really works for us. 

While we did arrive at some ideas, and at least a couple cabinets set in their probable-permanent locations (sink base and pantry), we are left with unknowns. While the rest of us played with the cabinets, Boo's sister's partner Glenn measured and marked up a sheet of graph paper with the dimensions of the overall space. Boo and I will cut up little pieces of paper reflecting the remaining cabinets so we can arrive at the open working kitchen we are seeking. Ultimately, we will probably cut down at least one of the cabinets. Representing that is much easier by cutting a small piece of paper than actually taking saw-to-cabinet. It's obviously, much easier to undo as well. Before you ask, yes, we absolutely could do this with SketchUp or something similar. I started down that path and the amount of work necessary was considerable when compared to pencil, paper and scissors. While the paper plan is 2-dimensional (versus SketchUp or similar), we can arrive at a 3D experience simply by moving the cabinets around in the actual space. Or, at least, that's the current thinking.

Still Cold, Inside and Out

Progress on the furnace continues. I will post an update next time, but I will say that with every weekend spent working on HVAC, the $10K estimate seems more and more reasonable. Our overnight temperatures have been dipping below freezing with increasing frequency. When coupled with little-to-no insulation and an overtaxed electrical system, we have to pick which areas will have any heat, and those which do get some are not having it consistently. If fear is the ultimate motivator, I think wanting to be warm is a fairly close second. We are also realizing just how important it is to have a considerable part of the house electrical work done when Gary is here for the kitchen and hooking up the furnace. 

NewOldHouse is starting to feel like the house version of the old VW bus: there's always something to work on because there's always multiple things that need to be fixed. And, the answer to the question of "will it ever be done" is also the same: Probably not. Thanks as always, for following along-