Kitchen Rehab, week 3

Steve is a neat, methodical rehabber, and every day when I come home from work, visible progress has been made. Once the cabinets were painted, he put them back to make room for painting the island. He even put the sink back! They will come out again when the new sink and countertops are installed, but while the floor rehab happens, we have water, our stove, and even a nice little eating area!

Last night we moved the hutch. It is no exaggeration to say the house was built around the hutch. It was brought in through holes in the wall where the windows would go and put in its place, where it has stayed for 23 years. It's not actually a hutch, but a vestment cabinet, bought from the monastery back in 1987 for $75 when Steve and his first wife were building out here on the Sisters' old pig farm. I like that this cabinet is at the center of our very modern house, acknowledgement of the place's origin.

With the hutch out, the kitchen is empty. Today Steve rips out the old floor-- two layers of linoleum and backer board, nailed and stapled down seemingly at every 3 inches or so, requiring that it basically be sawed out and torn up in chunks.

The good side to that awful news is that, because there are two layers, there is fully 7/8 inches to the subfloor, enough room for the concrete floor to be poured without requiring dropping the floor more or lifting the level of the doors! The concrete floor is scheduled to be poured next Thursday. That will include carrying buckets of cement up one level from the driveway.

I'd like to say I have other topics to post on, but the rehab has kind of taken over everything else! So thank you for indulging me!