new kitchen, day-one

Over the weekend, the contractor began taking down the old kitchen cabinets – basically dismantling the old kitchen and removing the old microwave. She left the sink, the sink-cabinets and a portion of the old counter. This gave me a usable sink and a somewhat usable kitchen for a couple extra days.

This morning Marty, from M&D Plumbing, came in to take apart the old sink and to cap all the pipes and drains under it. Once he had everything cut, he and I dismantled the last two reaming cabinets and partial counter. Marty then stayed until the carpenters and installers showed; he wanted to make sure that all pipes and drains had been cut and capped to minimize the least amount of holes in the new sink cabinet.

The left image is the spice cabinet. One of the reasons I ended up with a custom cabinet maker is because he proposed options that gave me the largest amount of cabinet space. The other bids, used standard cabinets from the large, home-improvement chains; and their solution for the non-standard space that is my kitchen, was to use fillers – covering any unused space with Sheetrock. Joe Kelley covered the side and back of my dish-shelf with a laminate to match the new cabinets; he extended the height of the dish-shelf to match the new above the counter cabinets; he added the spice cabinet on the left of the stove; and designed an amazing unit for the alcove between the old warming-oven and the back wall.

In the middle image Ross, one of Joe’s people, is starting to cut the cast-iron ring on the side of the warming-oven. He only managed cutting one side before the grinder over-heated and died. Once the ring is cut, a great custom-built unit will fit into this space, giving me additional storage.

The image on the right is of the base cabinets. The push was to get the base-cabinets installed so that the counter measurers can come tomorrow morning. I will have no water or sink until the new pressed-glass counter is installed. And it will take a week from the time of measuring to the installation. As soon as we knew the base-cabinets would be done today, both Joe and I called the counter people and the measuring is rescheduled for tomorrow. (Once the new counter is in, Marty will come back and reconnect all the plumbing. If things work out, I should have a full functioning kitchen by next Wednesday.)