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.

On Friday, we painted the trim a subtle white called White Chocolate. The arrival and installation of the cabinets before all of the crown molding had been installed meant that Greg had to do some stretching, craning, and awkward weight balancing on sills and cabinets to reach every corner of the room. I stuck to the windows and door frames. We did two coats one after the other and are happy with the results.

Although the kitchen is far from functional, we are now eating out of the new refrigerator and freezer. It beeps when the door isn’t fully shut and we have learned when it is closed and when it isn’t.

Yesterday, we turned our attention to the hallway. The replastering of the entrance to the kitchen required the hallway to be touched up, and since we lacked the paint we’d used in the rest of the hallway and had never finished the ceiling the last time, we decided to finish the work started years ago while moving in a slightly different direction in color. The ceiling was repainted white over the existing patchy single coat of gray. Greg chose a slightly greener tone for the walls, which he loves and I’m learning to appreciate. I don’t think we’ll need to redo the white trim around the doors, but the crown molding bears the scars of both ceiling and wall paint and needs to be done. We may replace it to match the kitchen depending on the cost.

Sunday was also devoted to working in the backyard. Our garden has been out of sight, out of mind since we handed over the back porch to construction. We’ve kept it under some control with basic weeding and mowing, but the most successful shrubs needed clipping, the tomatoes had yet to be put in the ground, and wildflowers had swarmed our perennials and needed to be pulled out in large clumps. I also removed several years’ worth of dead blackberry canes. The blackberries always ripen the week we’re away at the beach, and the birds get to them before we do; let’s hope this year is different.

Our countertop template was done today, and I asked the guy when we’d be ready to put it in. “It usually takes about two weeks. Call us Monday or Tuesday and we’ll have an exact date.” TWO WEEKS? I had always heard one week. Our tiles have also been ordered, and those will be a two week wait. Plus, they’re so heavy, they’re coming by freight truck from somewhere in southern California or Mexico. Apparently, UPS “throws boxes” and we don’t want boxes of glass thrown around.

The countertop template is done with corrugated plastic strips, built out into grids with notes and measurements on them so they can cut the countertops easily from them.

In the mean time, Mark and I have been looking at cabinet hardware and anticipating the installation of our appliances. Billy had said the plumber and electrician would be back once the countertop was in, so everything could be done at once, but that’s a long way away, now. I guess my dreams of getting out of our makeshift kitchen and cooking on a real stove are dashed again.

Today was a day off from construction. It is just as well, because the temperature hit nearly 100 and the humidity was high enough to match.

I skipped the gym after work because of the heat. When we got home, I started making salad while Greg tackled the built-up dust in the front rooms and hung sheets against the plaster expected tomorrow. Everything was going well in the “kitchen” until I reached into the vegetable drawer for the cabbage and found that zucchini from God-only-knows-when had liquified into a pulpy mess inside its plastic bag, and that bag began to drip into the drawer as I tried to get it out of the fridge and SOMEWHERE ELSE as quickly as possible. Vegetables of use only in a working kitchen will not be ignored.

This was not a major crisis, and I regret that I did not rise to the occasion. I was already feeling cramped by the hot plate taking up much of our countertop and the piles of newspapers, office supplies, and plastic bags on the table behind me which I hadn’t bothered to clear off before starting to cook, and faced with a new variable, I crumpled. I dropped the bag into our small compost holder along with some reasonably sound celery and radishes that had been too close to it in the drawer and, when Greg returned from the basement laundry room, explained that he had to take care of it somehow. I took the drawer into the bathroom and washed it out in the bathtub. After that was done, I finished the rest of the salad, told Greg to please assemble the rest of the meal (leftover hamburger patties), and retreated into the bedroom with the a/c.

To his credit, he not only got out the hamburger patties but made them into cheeseburgers and retrieved a bottle of wine from the basement. It was perfect.

He’s off shopping for breakfast supplies. It wasn’t a terrible day, but we’re glad to put it behind us.

This is our countertop as of Sunday when I cooked the hamburgers.

Overly dramatic, I know. But the dust levels are getting pretty bad. After being away at my college reunion, I noticed quickly that I’m coughing again and my eyes are not happy with all this dust. Some dark surfaces are nearly white, and we have a few big days of dust ahead: The plasterers come tomorrow. We have a day off from construction, so I think tonight I’ll do a bit of a blitz in our main living areas, and then work to seal things off with sheets, to at least cut down on dust flow.

Our cleaners come next week. We’ve been pushing them off since the project just re-dirties the whole house every day. After next week, we should have a bit of a break until the cabinets arrive.

It’s going to hit the 90s today and I have closed all of the windows and shades. This is the one bright side of Somerville law requiring all windows facing on construction dumpsters to be boarded up with plywood in case of fire. Our front rooms are half cave and it’s keeping yesterday’s cold air in.

I’m up and down stairs doing laundry all morning while Greg enjoys his college reunion in the Berkshires.

Update: Greg, I just remembered. I’ll water the plants.

We lost our laundry room with the demolition of the kitchen. Coincidentally, our tenant’s dryer broke the same day. We’ve been accumulating laundry for over a week.

The dryer has been fixed and whites are washing, all in time for the first heat wave of the year. We won’t have to take advantage of the offers we received to do laundry at friends’ houses. Yay!

Fear Factor and Survivor draw a lot bigger audiences than The New Yankee Workshop. So, enough construction; you want to hear about the ways this beautiful, beautiful kitchen of the future is making our lives a total mess now.

Greg’s still cooking a full breakfast every morning, including an egg, toast, soy sausages, and fruit. We generate a set of dirty dishes by 7:30 AM. When we packed up our kitchen, we set aside a few microwave-safe plates, glasses, bowls, and mugs to use this summer, along with our whole silverware drawer. We could have gone with paper plates and plastic utensils and thrown them out everyday, but we weren’t interested.

Our only option for washing them is the bathroom, and given the lack of space by our sink, we use the bathtub. We’ve dedicated one corner of the bathtub to dishsoap and sponges and the non-shower end to the drying rack. I kneel on the ground and wash everything under the tap.

I’ve learned not to lean in right away when I get started, because when you switch off between a shower and a bath, the showerhead will dribble water on the back of your head.

At night, we empty the dishrack and wash the dinner plates. The next morning, the rack has to be emptied and removed from the bathtub for the showers, and any bits of salsa or sponge that are too big to go down the drain have to be picked up by hand.

It’s so little work, so it’s not the worst thing in the world.

Ironing on my knees on the mini-ironing board in our dining room, however…

Jenn Dussault, our wonderful kitchen designer from Carole Kitchens (kitchenpeople.com), came by the house yesterday to do a final look through and measurement. With the well documented sag in the floor, we weren’t sure if we’d have a similar sag in the ceiling. If the ceiling was sagging, we’d have to install a drywall ceiling below the lowest point, just so we could get something level. This would mean we’d have to use a 36″ upper cabinet instead of the 42″ cabinets we had been planning to use.

Well, we were lucky! We have a nice level ceiling, so we’ll be getting the 42″-ers. Of course, that top shelf may require a step stool, but it will be nice to know we’ll getting all the possible space out of our room.

Okay. So everyone asks the question, “How long is it going to take?” Or “Do you have an end date?” Well, since the cabinets are going to take 4 weeks to arrive, that’ll be the week of July 4th (when nothing happens). So let’s say five weeks. We hope they’ll all be perfect, but we could have a bad door (knock on Honey Spice stained Huntington Maple), which might take a little longer to get a replacement. After the cabinets, the appliances, then counter top, then tiles, then finishes, then punch list (again, knock on wood) and then we can hope.

Let’s say first weekend of August?

We bought a set of new appliances for the kitchen. Over several years of renting and ownership we’d gradually replaced the ancient junk that Greg found when he moved in here in 1994, but we did not invest in more than the basic level of what we needed, and won’t miss them.

We gave our rollaway dishwasher to our tenant, who has none. I first encountered one of these beasts when I was 20 and living in Cambridge for the summer with five or six classmates. It made me feel like an adult then. It doesn’t now.

In the process of offering this, we found out his washing machine was on its last legs, so yesterday we crab-walked the rusty, screechy mess out of his half of the basement and moved in our machine, which had been on our porch since demo. Yale Electric will take away one appliance for every one they deliver.

Our electric dryer is still on the porch. Want it? The local appliance shop didn’t, but they bought our stove.

There’s also a small tube tv with a vcr velcro’d to the top on the porch. No hopes that’s going to walk away.

The fridge is in the dining room. If we’d spent $80 more at Sears in 1999, we might not have spent the intervening years threading the damn cheese drawer into its tracks every week. A lesson learned. I won’t miss this, either.

The microwave? After finding out that no one in the kitchen industry takes AmEx, we’re going to buy one with the Amazon points from everything else. For now, it’s our lifeline, along with the toaster.