The Kitchen Project

This morning I began dismantling our old fridge in preparation for our next appliance delivery. The plan was to have the guys from Yale carry the old fridge down the stairs, so we could use it for overflow and parties. I took out the shelves, drawers, and started washing the inside of both fridge and freezer to be totally ready. I even took the door off its hinges so I could make the whole job easier.

Then, on a hunch, I thought I’d measure the door and the fridge to make sure we’d fit. Getting it through the first door was going to be no problem. The door to the basement however, was too narrow by an inch! Frustrated, I remeasured both, and while doing so, Phoebe managed to escape into the basement. I ran down after her (in my socks) and lost her in a pile of boxes. (I got her out after a while, with some treats. I always find it funny how they stare at you when you find them like “Oh, were you looking for me? I’ve been here the whole time!”)

I did measure our other door to the basement, which is under the porch. The fridge would fit through that door, but we couldn’t get the fridge under the porch in a way that it would ever fit down there. So I guess the idea of an overflow fridge will have to be put off for another day.

P.S. Thanks to Mark for putting up with an overly frustrated Greg, especially when we realized we didn’t have enough gas to start the car, and I had to get the spare can from under the porch to give me enough to make it to the station around the corner.

Note: The food contained within this refrigerator is intended for human consumption. This sign was placed at nose hight for your convenience.

The floor is to be finished today. Sanding will take place. We have sheets hung up and doors closed. The cats are on 48-hour lockdown in the bedroom because the floor must not be walked on.

We’re hoping to get our camera fixed (and/or borrow a friend’s while that’s happening) so today’s construction update will be pictureless. Just like those radio shows of yore.

Billy arrived this morning with two doors and some moulding. The doors will replace the really cheap door leading to the dining room and the door to the basement. With a new door to the basement we’ll no longer have to lock each other down there to keep Phoebe from getting down there. It will be the end of an era, but she’ll still sit in front of it and meow for access. She must have gone down yesterday and come back up on her own volition, since Mark realized he’d left it open for a good while after doing some more priming.

We talked through the week’s construction plans: crown moulding, new windows arriving, moulding around those, and most importantly, the floor. Billy was off to pick the flooring up after unloading his truck. That will be a really big change for us, and mean that we can clean up the basement. We’ve had a near constant rain of dust between the cracks in the subflooring, so we can get down there and sweep up. After the floor goes in, they’ll sand it, and then finish it. That should be the last of the big dust plumes, since installing the cabinets won’t be nearly as messy.

Billy called us last night to let us know they’d see us Monday. The plaster is all done (and looks great) and we can start priming the walls on Sunday. In the mean time, we just let the plaster dry. I was sure the plaster process was going to be one of much more dust. I’ve always heard it was the worst part, since sanding it down can create clouds of the stuff. We seem to be in much better shape than I’d imagined.

As Mark mentioned, there was only one area of the floor with a little plaster dust on it. We should have hung sheets up earlier to contain the demolition dust. Lesson learned. Putting in the oak floor may raise some sawdust, but I don’t expect it will be nearly as bad as what we’ve been through.

One weird consequence of the new plaster: the kitchen echoes. Phoebe’s meows to get into the basement are amplified by bouncing off of the newly smooth walls, and my recent sneeze had a short follow-up a la echo canyon.

The walls have been plastered. The entry to the hallway, which was shredded when we left this morning, has been squared off and smoothed over.

Greg hung sheets to contain the dust this morning and we closed all of the doors we could close. There’s only a bit of a plume on the floor by the entry, and that was an actual workspace, so what else would you expect?

Another good day.

The poor girl is built like a feather duster.

Okay, so the story we all know has that on day 1. Billy and John didn’t have the blank canvas to start with like the more famous version of that utterance, so we’ll give them a few days slack. I came home after the gym to find Mark typing away (see On the Surface, below) and was eager to poke around and look for progress. The exterior light was fading, but it was clear, the drain pipe in the center of the room was gone! I looked around for the switches controlling bare bulbs we’d had the previous days, and they were gone. I turned around and flipped a switch. We have LIGHTS!

Most of our cans (or hats, or recessed lights) have power and bulbs in them now. The room finally has a sense of some progress away from demolition and towards build. The pipe was indeed gone, and more outlets had been placed around the room, including one for the stove, the fridge, and our network cable. The plumbers had run the line for the fridge’s water supply, and again, that big pipe was gone.

Our basement door doesn’t close well. We have to latch it. So i had Mark hold the door shut while I peeked downstairs. It was a little reminiscent of the King Tut discovery, but I grew up on that story, so “What do you see?” “Marvelous things!” is one of my favorite exchanges. Mark came down to look at things, but Phoebe managed to get the door open a few times. (The photo was her fourth trip in, since I wanted to film it.)

The second post hole had been filled in, and two temporary beams were in place. They’re just 2×4s, one buckling slightly with the jack underneath it. (That was that contraption we’d seen before that looked like a brass megaphone) The real lally columns are on the ground and will be put in place when the concrete has cured.

The plumbers have finished hooking up our drains, and have moved a few lines around to accommodate the new beam and remove some old brass pipes. We did find an old closet under the stairs. It had always had stuff in front of it, so I have stayed away from it. It’s a rather sizable closet, so we’ll have to figure out what we can store there.

The exterior work is all done with replacement shingles up. We’ll still have to paint, naturally.

Tomorrow: probably electrical and plumbing inspections. Those are both big steps, and will mean we can start to move forward with some other significant things, like floors and walls. We do have to get the floor level first.

If you know me and Greg, you probably know we have cats. You’re nodding. Yes, you know we have cats.

Our cats do not go outside. Not ever. Traffic is crazy and neither of us has ever owned an indoor-outdoor cat. We do worry when people come to our house for work or for a large party that the perimeter will be breached and one of them will escape.

They’re spending each day locked up in our bedroom with a bowl of water, a litter box, and an open window for fresh breezes. When we get home, we check the exits, and if everything is safe, we let them out to eat and socialize. Phoebe, the brave one, sits on top of the bed all day and then ventures out into the kitchen to see what’s new and sniff the basement. Ginny prefers to hide under the bed and then dash past the kitchen to the safe spaces. It’s really not much different from their normal routine.

So far, so good. If they were unhappy, believe me, they have ways of letting us know.