Microsomatous Monday

microsomatous ~ having a small body

Warning! Picture heavy post ahead

Welcome to the chaos that is my life! The kitchen renovation is well under way, so I have lots of pictures to show you. First up, this is what my dining room looks like. This is only what I deemed essential stuff. There are 16 more bins of kitchen stuff in the hubby’s office down the hall.

Next we have the breakfast nook after I just started clearing out:

Followed by the breakfast nook after the cupboards had been ripped out:

Here’s what the sink side of the kitchen looked like before:

And here’s what it looks like now:

Surprisingly, cooking in the kitchen isn’t too big of a problem because the stove is still hooked up. But coffee, tea and toast needed a creative solution:

Cleaning up, however is a royal pain in the butt!

And you think all of the above is bad enough? The very next day the new cabinets were delivered. And even with the old ones torn out, things are pretty tight around here. This is the view from the living room side:

And this is the view from the kitchen side:

The installer is supposed to be back on Wednesday to start installing the new cabinets, so at least we’ll have some space to move around. But the kitchen won’t be finished until the counters are in, and they can’t even order the counters until the cabinets are in. No counters means no sink. If they do their job right and we’re lucky, we might get counters in early December.

Seriously, what were we thinking?

Mofussil Monday

mofussil ~ provincial; rural

It was too beautiful a day on Saturday to spend it inside, so the hubby and I took a road trip to Peterborough. We dropped off a load of kitchen donations and then went down to the park downtown and took a walk along the river. Without our coats on.

Yes, it was that nice outside. It was, in fact, 23C, which is about 73F – in November! No Global warming here, I’m sure.

I think my purple plant is a lost cause. After I took it out of its plastic bag I rinsed it off and repotted it (cleaning out the pot first) and put it back on its isolation table. After a few days it still didn’t look very happy and I’m pretty sure the bugs are coming back. I’ll give it another day or two, but if I’m right the plant is toast. I like it, but not enough to keep this up.

As for the kitchen renovation progress . . . I’ve emptied as much as possible from the kitchen cupboards. What remains is stuff we use on a daily basis and our small appliances (toaster, coffee maker, microwave, toaster oven). I know where most of the stuff is going to go, but I’ll wait until Tuesday night before moving it all.

As you can see, most of it is stacked up in the hubby’s office (my old one) across the hall from my present office. The rest is on and around the dining room table that’s been pushed against the wall in the dining room.

We finally heard from the cabinet people, the cabinets will arrive on Thursday, the day after the old ones are scheduled to be ripped out. At least we’ll have some place to put them.

The wall paper’s been stripped from the walls, and what repairs could be done with the walls not covered by the cupboards. As I sit here typing this in my office, I’m looking at a haze of drywall dust in the hallway and breathing it in.

No, there’s no actual dry-walling going on, but the walls aren’t in the greatest of shape and needed some minor patching. But this means drywall dust, and drywall dust gets everywhere. Cleaning up after it is not just a slap dash with the dust cloth. Everything is going to have to be washed down – floors, walls, windows, plants, knick knacks . . . And it’s not just in the kitchen and dining room. Like I said, I’m breathing it in sitting here in my office. By the time the kitchen’s done it’ll be through the entire house.

Have I ever mentioned how much I loathe dusting? I would rather do anything else in the world than dust.

I feel a headache coming on.

Myosis Monday

myosis ~ excessive contraction of the pupil of the eye

The hubby and I have officially lost our minds. But on the other hand, at least I won’t be lacking for something to talk about on my blog for the foreseeable future.

Our kitchen is small and lacking in counter/storage space, and we’ve been talking for a long time about how some day we’d have something done to fix it. Well, that some day is now. We met with a designer at Home Depot who is unable to use a shoehorn to give us more space in the kitchen, but he did have some good ideas of what/where new cupboards will work to make it more efficient.

I guess I’ve been watching too much HGTV because when I hear “kitchen reno” I think they’re going to do it all – design it, rip out the old cupboards, do the walls, put up the new cupboards. But that is not how it works, apparently. What the designer does is help you pick out the cupboards that will work in the space you have, and order them for you (as well as the countertops and any appliances you may need). Then he’ll put you in touch with the contractor to install them.

I was prepared for having to empty out all the junk from the old cupboards, in fact I’ve been looking forward to it because I figure I’ll be able to get rid of a lot of stuff we don’t use. That alone will help with the storage issue. But I didn’t figure on having to rip the old cupboards/counters out ourselves.

And we were already planning on redoing the flooring in the kitchen, which has to wait until the old cupboards are ripped out, but it never occurred to me we’d have to deal with the walls ourselves too. The old paper has to be stripped off and the walls sanded and repainted before the new cupboards can go up. Which begs the question, just how long are we going to be without cupboards??

The fridge and stove are staying where they are, but the dishwasher is being moved and the sink replaced – also something we need to take care of ourselves. The new cupboards have to be installed before the countertops, but at least the installation for the counters is included in the price of the stone.

But . . . while we’re waiting for the cupboards and counters to arrive, the hubby decided it’s time to do something about our damp, smelly, barely used basement. Which is not going to be nearly the job the kitchen is and it’s something he can do himself.

He started with ripping up the old, disgusting carpet and he’s made arrangements for someone to come and take the furniture away. The cats spent many years having a spraying war down there, so you can imagine what it smells like, despite our efforts at controlling it.

So one of the things hubby is doing is using this special stuff on the cement to kill the odor/bacteria, then he’s installing a special subfloor with vinyl flooring on top of that. The finishing touch will be new furniture.

Once the hubby sinks his teeth into a project it’s full steam ahead until it’s done – he should have the rec room done in no time at all. The kitchen however . . . well, that’s a whole other kettle of fish.