Life Without a Kitchen - Day 3
Friday night, Joe's dad came over and the two of them spent the evening ripping apart our kitchen. Joe's dad was under the delusion that it was going take a couple of hours - his estimate, not ours. It took them more like 4-5 hours, and there was much cursing involved. I had made it clear to Joe that we were planning to reuse the countertops temporarily for the next three weeks while we wait for the Silestone people to grind us some new ones, but somehow they didn't survive - something about being glued down to the cabinets yadda yadda. I had also posted on Freecycle hoping to get rid of the old ones in a useful way without paying for dumpter space and got many responses...but most of the cabinets ended up getting cut and/or torn apart in the removal process. Oh well. We've already filled up four dumpsters from this house, may as well go for two or three more!
But they got the job done. That's the important part. They saved us several thousand dollars that it would have cost us to have the installers take it all out and cart it off. And now, we are left with a half-empty room at the back of our house with bereft-looking appliances and a pile of grocery bags filled with dry goods to get us through the next week and a half or so. The plumber is coming tomorrow to disconnect the sink and the gas stove. The electrician is coming Wednesday to rewire the whole kitchen in a way that makes sense for the modern world. I never thought I would get excited about under-cabinet track lighting and a microwave outlet on its own circuit, but guess what - I am!
A week from today, the cabinet installers are supposed to come and clear out my office room and our dining room, turning all these puzzle pieces into a cohesive kitchen layout as specified on my carefully-planned printouts. Please, if there is a god, let them show up and get the work done and make it as good as the kitchen in my imagination.
Joe has taken Wednesday and Thursday of next week off to install new Pergo flooring...and again, please, whatever diety exists, let it work out okay! Then, I begin the process of begging our plumber - who does great work, but is sometimes hard to track down and get over here - to come and reconnect our sink, stove, and refrigerator. For the first time in my adult life, I will have a fridge that automatically filters water and shoots out crushed ice cubes. The novelty! No more filling Brita pitchers and ice cube trays.
I will still have to wait three more weeks for the countertops, and we will have to figure out SOMETHING to cover the open cabinets in the mean time - probably sheets of plywood - but at least I will be able to perform some semblance of cooking once more.
In the mean time, we are living off the meals in the freezer. Well, okay - I convinced Joe that I needed a cheeseburger Saturday night, so we went out to the Edina Grill where I ended up ordering the Steak Salad Murphy instead, and yesterday I bought us some Lean Cuisines to heat up for dinner. I want to make sure I don't run out of food that Julie can eat. As fun as not having to cook for almost two weeks sounds, it is not all that luxurious when you have to look at a gutted kitchen all day, heat meals up in a microwave sitting on a coffee table, wash the dishes in the basement laundry tub, and generally live in chaos with fingers crossed that everything will happen on time and that we will really have a beautiful kitchen in the forseeable future.
Did I mention the crappy baby gate we have set up in the kitchen doorway, which one has to climb over while carrying all the food and drinks into the dining room? Sunday morning I managed to drop a brand-new jar of jam on the floor as I was crossing the gate, and of course it shattered. That was fun.
But it is really cool to see that the process has started. To know that not only will I have a new kitchen in a couple of weeks, but that my office room will be free of construction debris, the dining room will be open and uncluttered once more. That we will finally be able to clear out our giant new garage, which is now full of construction debris, cardboard moving boxes and old people junk, and park our cars within. I will be able to unpack most, if not all, of the kitchen boxes which are currently cluttering up the basement along with so much of the rest of our junk.
I have survived a summer of upheaval - packing, painting, cleaning, moving, selling our old house, living with the in-laws for two months, more painting, moving again, more painting, and oh-so-much more. I can surely survive another week and a half in the current condition, especially if I can wheedle a way to eat out a few more times from the deal.
But they got the job done. That's the important part. They saved us several thousand dollars that it would have cost us to have the installers take it all out and cart it off. And now, we are left with a half-empty room at the back of our house with bereft-looking appliances and a pile of grocery bags filled with dry goods to get us through the next week and a half or so. The plumber is coming tomorrow to disconnect the sink and the gas stove. The electrician is coming Wednesday to rewire the whole kitchen in a way that makes sense for the modern world. I never thought I would get excited about under-cabinet track lighting and a microwave outlet on its own circuit, but guess what - I am!
A week from today, the cabinet installers are supposed to come and clear out my office room and our dining room, turning all these puzzle pieces into a cohesive kitchen layout as specified on my carefully-planned printouts. Please, if there is a god, let them show up and get the work done and make it as good as the kitchen in my imagination.
Joe has taken Wednesday and Thursday of next week off to install new Pergo flooring...and again, please, whatever diety exists, let it work out okay! Then, I begin the process of begging our plumber - who does great work, but is sometimes hard to track down and get over here - to come and reconnect our sink, stove, and refrigerator. For the first time in my adult life, I will have a fridge that automatically filters water and shoots out crushed ice cubes. The novelty! No more filling Brita pitchers and ice cube trays.
I will still have to wait three more weeks for the countertops, and we will have to figure out SOMETHING to cover the open cabinets in the mean time - probably sheets of plywood - but at least I will be able to perform some semblance of cooking once more.
In the mean time, we are living off the meals in the freezer. Well, okay - I convinced Joe that I needed a cheeseburger Saturday night, so we went out to the Edina Grill where I ended up ordering the Steak Salad Murphy instead, and yesterday I bought us some Lean Cuisines to heat up for dinner. I want to make sure I don't run out of food that Julie can eat. As fun as not having to cook for almost two weeks sounds, it is not all that luxurious when you have to look at a gutted kitchen all day, heat meals up in a microwave sitting on a coffee table, wash the dishes in the basement laundry tub, and generally live in chaos with fingers crossed that everything will happen on time and that we will really have a beautiful kitchen in the forseeable future.
Did I mention the crappy baby gate we have set up in the kitchen doorway, which one has to climb over while carrying all the food and drinks into the dining room? Sunday morning I managed to drop a brand-new jar of jam on the floor as I was crossing the gate, and of course it shattered. That was fun.
But it is really cool to see that the process has started. To know that not only will I have a new kitchen in a couple of weeks, but that my office room will be free of construction debris, the dining room will be open and uncluttered once more. That we will finally be able to clear out our giant new garage, which is now full of construction debris, cardboard moving boxes and old people junk, and park our cars within. I will be able to unpack most, if not all, of the kitchen boxes which are currently cluttering up the basement along with so much of the rest of our junk.
I have survived a summer of upheaval - packing, painting, cleaning, moving, selling our old house, living with the in-laws for two months, more painting, moving again, more painting, and oh-so-much more. I can surely survive another week and a half in the current condition, especially if I can wheedle a way to eat out a few more times from the deal.
posted by Shelly Kang at 5:20 PM
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