Kitchen Completion

In the beginning--that is, after we scraped off the terrible chicken and sponge-art wallpaper and painted it--our kitchen looked like this:

Action shot:  I'm cooking for our 2010 Halloween party.  Jim had already taken out the fluorescent lights (leaving a gaping hole in the ceiling) because a leaky pipe had caused mold.  We had virtually no light in the cooking area for a year and a half.

Picture included in remembrance of my ridiculous attempt at an ice cream cake for Jim's birthday last year.

Demo occurred in the beginning of September 2011.  Here's how it all went down:







Footings for the steel beams.



Jim made a pocket door to replace the old swinging-like-a-saloon-door door that separated the kitchen from the formal dining room.

 

Our view for months looked like this:



We had a makeshift kitchen under the stairs.

We later moved the fridge out to the garage and stuck a little cooktop and convection oven that were lent to us under here.



At its peak, our temporary living/dining/kitchen space looked like this:

The obstacle-course passageway.  The washer and dryer were in the entryway at this point because Jim was simultaneously working on the garage.




Eventually, we got it cleaned up to look like this:

At long last, the kitchen finally looks like this: 

It was a painful, frustrating, and incredibly long process.  I'm still trying to clean up the living room and finish moving things back into the kitchen.  The other side of the room, where the T.V. and fireplace are, is still unfinished.   Jim's going to build that out - cabinetry, a table, etc.  Then there's the living room.  And the master bathroom.  And the loft above the garage that we want to enclose.  Years of fun await us.  But for now, let's rejoice in the fact that I have a functioning kitchen, and it's really pretty.