Act One - The ... Kitchen?

[This post was written May 18, 2007]

OK... I haven't done one of these before, but I guess this is easier than repeating myself over and over (and over and over) again.

Here's the situation. I bought a house at the end of March (yay!)... no more sending all my money to the abyss that is "rent"... It's a nice enough house - 3 bedrooms, 1 1/2 baths, family room, "dining room" (used to be another family room, but I didn't want an "eat-in kitchen" 'cause I needed the space for, well, cooking!), and a second-story addition that will be used as my brother's "den." Yes, my little brother (who is THIRTY now... yeesh) is moving in with me. It has a 2-car garage and a nice little fenced-in back yard; is located on a cul-de-sac within the same neighborhood as my parents' house (is, in fact, "just down the street," though not on the "same" street). It was built in 1964 and I got it for a very good price because, well, let's just say it needed a lot of work.

Oh, I'll just come out and say it... the place was a wreck. Superficially, it looked nice enough, but press just a little deeper and one finds that the house was never actually "maintained." Everything in the home is either worn-out, or broken, and needs to be repaired or replaced.

To begin with, I live to cook (love to cook?), so the dinky little kitchen had to go. I'm not made of money, but thankfully my dad's *very* handy, so we were able to tackle it pretty much ourselves. First order of business - the cheap particle-board & plywood cabinets had to go. Period. Plus they took up only a very small fraction of the available space. It's a small kitchen as is - no need to make it even smaller with a poor layout. So we hired some guys to put in new cabinets. They've been just great. I can't wait to see my new cabinets... Before they can be installed, though, we had to tear out what was there. This involved removing the soffits above the existing cabinets to open up the space as much as possible. When we did so, we found that the roof had been leaking between the kitchen wall and the addition (previously mentioned - now includes "dining room" and Nick's "den"). The leak had been mended, but that didn't stop the GIANT COLONIES OF MOLD that had taken up residence in the wall. Score one for me - good move to demolish kitchen 'cause now we can get rid of that nasty mold problem...

Anyway, now there are giant holes in the kitchen walls and ceiling, and there are no cabinets... next step is to make drywall repairs and then the new cabinets can come in. Then I can put in my new tile floors and countertops...

Oh, did I mention I have to be out of my apartment in 13 days? And that I've barely started packing? And that I have 32 years of accumulated STUFF to deal with? And that I tore out the bathroom, too?

I'll save that story for another time...