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.
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4 comments:
I'd like to propose that you destroy the Lacanian framework of this blog and replace it with a much more appropriate Deleuzo-Guattarian war machine: what we have here is clearly a *kitchen without organs*.
As you know, I don't know jack-shit about the Lazarian Defenestration or whatever pinky-in-the-air elitist philosophical tomfoolery you think you're indulging in here.
What I do know slightly more than jack-shit about is wrecking things. Buildings, reputations, bars and marriages, I've ruined them all. And take it from an expert, you're going about it in a very inefficient way.
The hammer is a good start but in order to render cabinetry into its component parts, free baseboards from the tyranny of being bound to one's walls, or just plain putting some smackdown into a obstinate spouse, you need a pry bar.
Something like this:
http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=productDetail&productId=99056-1431-101&lpage=none
which is a dainty little model suitable for what you're doing. Wedge one end into a crevice, smack the other end with a hammer and watch stuff fall to pieces.
Also, for Christ's sake, get some safety glasses (I'm totally serious, over the last year I've taken a nail to the face about once a week). Chicks no longer dig eyepatches.
And isn't the archeological aspect of this fascinating? The neatly typed work order I found attached to the shattered remains of my bathroom sink gave the clues I needed to find out who was responsible for building this ghetto and when...as it turns out, 1971.
There is hope. I'm tearing up the front room right now, and the last stop after that is the kitchen. You wouldn't recognize the place, at least on the inside.
Hey, bro--
Pry bars (two, of very different profiles) were obtained on loan this evening. Eye protection is on hand, but I think I will be upgrading when I head to Lowe's tomorrow (need: new small hammer, trowel, plaster, wallboard, sandpaper, paint, etc.)
As to lethargic hombre's comments, while the Kitchen Without Organs is interesting, it remains purely theoretical--our Kitchen will maintain its organs and its Oedipally determined identity throughout the project. Or so we delude ourselves with our "alienating armor of kitchen identity."
People--
I've looked beneath the skin of this so-called "kitchen," and I assure you, there is no "Oedipal identity" there; no mommy-daddy-me. It's pure rhizomatic plane of immanence, all lines of flight. If Rob wants to stay stuck in his Imaginary fantasies of wholeness, so be it. But the rest of us know better.
L.H.
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