Start of Construction (Destruction)

We got the kitchen packed up and put away over the weekend. An updated schedule was sent showing completion in mid-April, but we caught a few errors (it shows cabinets installed before flooring) so it's likely to change a bit.

Here's the last word in "before" pictures of the kitchen. The living room now has even more stuff in it, so it's not really picture worthy.






It actually looks pretty darn nice with all the junk out of the way and with the natural light coming in. But I don't think we're going to give up the project just yet... The new design should do an even better job of using the natural light.

Work started in earnest this morning. Questions about material storage locations, port-a-potty location, breaker boxes, water cutoffs, etc. The first minor incident has been resolved pretty easily. The water line for the fridge has always looked a little sketchy to me (the way it was connected to the water pipes under the house). When they went to move the fridge they didn't initially notice the water line, so it may have been stressed a little. It started leaking from upstream of the valve in the kitchen. The good news is that there was another valve for it in the crawl space, and that stopped the leak. Small victories...

So these guys are taking off the old tile countertops and the tile backsplash. It looks like that stuff is a lot tougher to come off than I realized. They can't just pop them off - they pretty much have to smash them to bits. So be it.

At the end of the first day they have removed all of our old appliances, the cabinets, the pocket door that we intend to reuse, and 2 of the 3 layers of flooring. It was pretty crazy to see them pull off a layer of flooring and subfloor, then have another floor underneath it.






The house, in particular the living room and hallway, is covered in a thin sheet of dust. They didn't put up the plastic sheeting to separate the work area until after 1pm, and it's just tacked up loosely in a couple places - not exactly the sort of thing that is likely to contain a whole lot of dust.

This serious demo and framing work should go on for the rest of the week and hopefully be complete on Friday. It was pretty loud in the house today, and the builder tells us it's going to get louder when they start running saws and air compressors and nail guns.

Between that and the fact that we don't have a kitchen, it looks like we'll be spending the next few nights with family.