Floor

The professional measuring service from Home Depot came and measured our kitchen this morning—we should get an estimate tomorrow or the next day, so we're in a holding pattern on that. The electrician also came today, and will call us back (or so he says) later tonight. Holding pattern—and we can't do the walls until the electrician's done, since he'll need to get into them to make everything code. Lots of outlets.

What did we get done today? One sample Ikea cabinet got fully built so we could test colors and depth from walls (it still has no legs, but the height is a more or less fixed issue. The cabinet wasn't bad.  Ikea directions are always a bit frustrating, since there convinced that the pictures tell a universally comprehensible story for the directions, and they don't. The drawers were a dream to put together, however, and the rest wasn't too bad.

We've decided to eliminate most of the tile, so what will remain I've outlined in red in the image that's not currently available—for the rest, we'll fill in, possibly using tiles of the same size, but in other colors (like white)—this is my idea—or possibly using small blue tiles (Lilya's).  I started removing some, and it's hard. Hard work, hard to remove without breaking everything, and lots of dangerous, incredibly sharp chips flying about. I wore eye protection, of course, but also flip flops. At one point, I looked down to find my foot was wet with blood. Tennis shoes tomorrow, even if it's hot.

Finally, I "floored" the area underneath where the cabinets will go, to make it approximately level with the rest of the floor and to give it a more or less consistent look. Lilya was bothered by it.

What lurks beneath

So one of the reasons we embarked on this project, was to undo the great deal of damage that was done to the kitchen by the previous owners. As our neighbor George pointed out, they really liked to do everything cheaply, and--as it turns out--crudely. 

The original kitchen came with the built-in cabinets, in their lovely jade green color, built well into the walls. The floor cabinets lined up against the east window wall (there are two window walls, about that later), the pantry on the left, as you're facing the window (and the rising sun), then (moving right) cabinet, sink, cabinet. Above them, was tile: two shades of green (it's hard to say now how these worked with the jade green of the cabinets--was it horrible? a kind of green cacophony?)--pale green squares bordered by brighter green trim. The trim was used to make the windowsill as well, and the whole combination matched precisely the tiles in the upstairs bathroom (which remain in place and undisturbed to this day). Moreover, the tiles had special built in shelves for the soap--two of them, which again, match exactly the soap shelves upstairs. The original wall paint was peach (or peaches & cream)--I'm not sure why this was thought to match the greens, but apparently this looked good in 1931. 

So what did the previous owners do? Well, clearly they hated the green & peach combo; and clearly, they needed the kitchen to move into the late 20th cen (my guess is, this work was done in the 1990s, but I don't know enough about kitchen archeology to be able to determine the exact date of the laminate countertop). So, to make improvements they

a) painted all the tile white (because chipping paint is so much better than tile!)

b) removed the cabinet to the left of the sink, put it against the south wall (thus creating an amazingly awkward space in the corner--hard to reach, on the one hand, yet strangely empty)

c) ran the white laminate countertop across the whole thing making an L shape

this made it possible to put a dishwasher where the cabinet used to be next to the sink, thus bringing the kitchen into the modern age. Other, similar improvements were placing a 36 " range and giant refrigerator against the north wall, thereby blocking half of the other window (this window is only 30" of the ground, which makes it impossible to put a cabinet or really anything else in that space). The remodel also necessitated smashing out the edges of the soap shelves, because the white laminate countertop had a back splash that interfered with the original design.

I never loved the old kitchen--the cabinets had nearly 80 years worth of dirt and grime on them that no contact paper could improve; the bottom shelves were on hinges and meant to slide in and out, but were at this point, rusty and difficult to move; their arrangement no longer made any sense because the moved cabinet blocked the remaining cabinet; the dishwasher was not very well secured and though new, was noisy and strangely mobile; in order to get the garbage disposal to work you had to reach under the sink (where something vile had spilled long ago) for the cord to plug it in by hand via extension cord, etc. But if I could have realized earlier how easy it was to get paint off tile (evil Jasco, you did us proud!), that all these years--five now?--we could've been looking at pretty green tile, instead of chipping white paint--I don't know, maybe the whole remodel wouldn't've happened, or seemed so urgent and necessary.

So, now the question is, how much of the original tile can we keep, and how much must go? The tops are cut to make room for top cabinets (which we no longer have); the soap dishes are smashed; the left side is unfinished because of the pantry that was; and the whole thing is, as Rob keeps pointing out, asymmetrical. 

Oh yeah, and the new Ikea cabinets are blue.

Flooring

Floor report: having spent a good deal of time at Home Depot and Lowe's, floor options have narrowed to two. Bamboo, installed by the good folks at Home Depot. I'm guessing $500-$1000 to have that done, but the estimate will come on Tuesday or Wednesday. I'd prefer to do it myself, but Lilya really likes the bamboo, and it's very light, which we like. Why not do it ourselves? Well, bamboo does not come in the engineered or laminate variety (at least, not yet), and so requires adhesives (thus necessitating the cleanup of the ancient black goo under the linoleum) or nailing (thus necessitating a very special nail gun precisely calibrated for that particular flooring). However, we also found a light oak engineered hardwood that uses snap together technology (not exactly like the Pergo, but the same idea) that looked workable as well.I want that, since I'm comfortable installing that myself, but the bamboo is probably prettier and possibly more durable (although possibly not). So, tomorrow I think we work on the walls, repairing cracks and holes in the plaster. Also, Home Depot will rent us a van for $20 (75 minute rental), so I can drive home the big sheets of drywall and something we have always needed desperately in this house for other home improvement projects; a ladder. I think we'll buy a lot of dry wall (by a lot I mean six or eight sheets), since we have often talked about finishing the walls in the laundry room downstairs. 

All your base cabinets are belong to us

I didn't actually expect to get through all the base cabinets today, but working nonstop is good for getting a lot done. I learned that the specific name for our cabinet color is "jade green." I learned that there are two layers of linoleum on our floor, and that below the second (historically first) layer is wood flooring. Not exactly hardwoods, since they don't appear to be finished. They are covered with that black glue from whenever linoleum came out, so I have doubts about being able to get it off, and further doubts about being able to refinish the wood if I did. More about that tomorrow. I learned that removing a countertop can be incredibly difficult, especially when the two halves are held together by four stainless steel bolts that are hidden under a layer of particle board. I learned that I'm going to have to learn a lot about repairing walls, putting on plaster and the like. But at the end of the day, the sink was out, the garbage disposal off, the countertop gone and the base cabinets removed. Tomorrow's goals: start looking at the floor situation.

Pantry

The pantry is out, and it did in fact have to be "disassembled" (a polite way of saying that it had to be smashed to pieces). And for very good reason: it was larger than the space it was in. The floor underneath the base cabinets on that side of the kitchen is—well, it's not there. There are just the underlying planks, and you can peer through the cracks into the basement below.

At work

All right—I went to work on the first cabinet to the left of the sink, the smallest one, with my trusty hammer and flat blade screwdriver technique. Eventually I upgraded to a larger hammer and a larger screwdriver.  With a fair amount of coaxing, it came off. Essentially, it was fastened to the pantry, and otherwise held on by old age and a lot of paint. The base coat of paint was green, of course—the whole house was originally green, the tiles in the kitchen, the wall paint, the cabinets. The result?

It's always interesting, in a strictly archaeological way, to peel back the layers of your house. What did we learn? Well, There appear to have been at least three phases of color scheme in our house: the original green, a later peach/flesh (pretty nauseating looking, I have to say), and then multiple layers of white. But of equal interest, we learned that the cabinets were made by (or rather, actually for) the Alexander Lumber Co., which is still right here in Champaign. Not far from our house, either, just up north on Prospect Ave.  That's some awfully nice handwriting people used to have. We also learned just what exactly the green was that our whole house used to be painted.

The second cabinet was a bigger pain, but eventually came free. The pantry, on the other hand, seemed like it would be impossible to remove intact, so I've taken the top half mostly to pieces. Wrists and fingers are hurting, so I also thought it was time to stop. Tomorrow's goals: finish pantry, start on base cabinets—which I suppose will mean starting on the countertop really. Then flooring, and then we can move on to the new cabinets, and the undoubted hell that they will represent.

Oh, and we had one casualty: Lilya's old hammer, which gave way pulling a nail out of cabinet #2.

La démolition commence: degré zéro

Here come the obligatory before pictures.

This is the view facing East, and it's the pertinent one today. I was originally going to start with the base cabinets, and then imagined standing on top of the nonexistent base cabinets to remove the wall cabinets. Notice the part of the ceiling that's just above those wall cabinets—that's the "soffit," or so we're told. I was particularly interested to see what would happen when the wall cabinets came down: would there just be a hole? Bare plaster? Concrete? Gold?

Since the base cabinets will be more of an issue tomorrow or the next day, here's an image of them as well.

Prepare to be destroyed

Tomorrow, the destruction of the kitchen shall begin.  Goals: remove everything from cabinets, and remove floor [wrong!  wall!] cabinets.