Our kitchen remodel started yesterday, and I am KICKING myself for not taking a Day One photo. Fart! Jack, our contractor, called today and said that the soffits are now gone, but that he found a wastewater pipe behind one of them. He said we should check it out and let him know what we think. (Um, what we think? Do we have any options available to us now that the soffits are down?) Since I don't have a photo of yesterday's progress, I'll do my best to describe it:

The refrigerator was moved from the kitchen into its temporary quarters in the dining room. Since it's only a year old, according to the old owners, we'll probably try to donate it to Habitat for Humanity or another charity. For now we're leaving it plugged in because we have a (very) few items in there that need to be kept cold, and our new fridge hasn't arrived yet. I know it seems silly to replace a practically-brand-new fridge, but (a) as a tall person, I hate bottom-door fridges, and (b) it's too deep and partially blocks the door to the dining room. We're getting a counter-depth side-by-side fridge to replace it.

The counter from the fridge to the sink was removed, as was the sink itself. I couldn't tell for sure, but the dishwasher might have been disconnected; this would make sense, as they had to turn off the water anyway to move the fridge (it has an automatic ice maker). Might as well cap the water line to the dishwasher, too.

That's about it for Day One. Doesn't sound like much progress, but we were so excited to see *anything* done that we were practically beside ourselves. I can't wait to get home and see what happened on Day Two. This time, I'm taking photos!

The photos below show the kitchen and dining room before we moved in (so the photos on the fridge, the stuff on the counter, and the dining room furniture belong to the old owners). It should be pretty clear why we wanted to remodel.

Having so recently lamented that I'd forgotten to take photos of Day 1, the first thing I did upon arriving home tonight was whip out the camera and start documenting. The main things to see today are that the soffits are down in most of the room, the appliances and cabinets are piled willy-nilly, the upside-down sink tops another pile, a few tiles have been pried up, and (from yesterday) the fridge is in the dining room. There's also the matter of the wastewater pipe, which you can't really see in the photos (it's in the corner where the soffit was in the appliance jumble photo, but since it's black, it blends in with the shadows). We've decided to just work around it for now, and decide what, if anything, needs to be done to it later. We might paint it or otherwise camoflage it, but we're not going to move it.

I was home today when Jack and another guy drove up in a panel truck and started clearing out all the appliances and cabinets. The whole process took about an hour, with lots of swearing and arguing over what would fit through the door and what wouldn't, and constituted the work for the day.

The photos below show the kitchen sans cabinets and appliances; the dining room, which is currently a staging area for our Toss and Sell piles as well as Jack's tools; and the wastewater pipe. In the last photo, you can also see Annie walking down the stairs.

Nothing happened today, probably on account of the snow, sleet, and freezing rain we were getting all day.

Today the ceiling came down and the tile came up. I imagine the ceiling was removed to make way for the new recessed lighting; why the tile came up is obvious. A bunch of bags of rice also appeared (or at least they're rice sacks—I didn't look inside to see if they actually contained rice); what those are for I can't imagine. A tarp was already covering the pantry door, but some new, heavier canvas drapes are now hanging from both kitchen entryways. Oh, and the remaining cabinets also came down.

Jack and his partner/assistant/worker bee arrived fairly early this morning, around 10am. I was upstairs in my room, quietly writing a few Christmas cards while they argued loudly downstairs. Lots of "fuck off!" and "don't you tell ME to fuck off!" and so on. After about 10 minutes of this I got up to do my morning step workout, and they must've realized I was home, because the arguing ceased. Or at least, I couldn't hear it over the music.

By the time I finished my post-workout shower, they were gone, and the rice and the drywall went with them. I don't think we were expecting the drywall to come down; maybe it was too icky to keep?

Today's photos show, from left to right, the area where the fridge will go, the plywood subfloor, the wall with the chimney flue (i.e., the fireplace is on the other side, in the living room), and the wall adjacent to the stairwell.

Called Gerhard's this morning and paid the balance on our appliance order; the new fridge, microwave, oven, cooktop, dishwasher, and compactor will arrive on Tuesday the 16th. We have to take delivery by then in order to get a bunch of rebates that will make the appliances a heck of a lot more affordable.

Today was the day the cabinets were supposed to come; at least, this is what we remembered from our conversation with Jack about the start date, which was based on the cabinet delivery date. I was kinda glad they didn't come, since we're obviously not ready for them yet—the tile has yet to be laid, and there's no drywall up. There's probably other stuff that needs to be done that's less obvious to me, as well.

So, no cabinets... and no Jack. It was a quiet day of Christmas card writing for me.

Something electrical was going on today. I arrived home from a quick trip to Home Depot (I removed the built-into-the-wall towel and tp holders from the upstairs bathroom, and I needed drywall patches to cover the holes) to find the garage blocked by Jack's Nissan Frontier. He moved it so I could get the car in, but I still had to do the limbo under a piece of PVC propped across the door into the house.

I introduced myself to the guy on the ladder in the kitchen, since he seemed to be a recurring character. He informed me that his name was Rylan, and he was Jack's "angry, 24 year-old son." That explains all the arguing.

Jack pointed out to me that the shaft with the fireplace flue in it was now open, so if I wanted him to run coax through the bedroom floor, he could do it. (We've been running a cable up the staircase from the living room until we can arrange for a "wall fish," as the cable installer called it, and it's totally sucked. We keep tripping over the cable, and it looks horrible.) I said I thought it sounded like a good idea, but I'd check with Al to make sure he didn't have something else in mind. Al OKed the idea too, and Jack ran the cable.

Some of the electrical/cable running work involved taking off the wall plates on either side of the fireplace in the living room, and in the process, a couple tiny pieces of metal—square with a hole in the center—ended up in Annie's bowl, which was under one of the plates. I caught her trying to eat one of them around 4:00; I hope there weren't more that she actually got down.

Jack also mentioned that the cabinets had shipped; "they have to go to a distribution center first," he said. So maybe we'd misunderstood about the date—I guess 12/10 was the shipping date rather than the arrival date. I told him that the appliances would be coming on Tuesday, and he said fine. I hope there'll be somewhere to put them, because surely we won't be at the appliance-installation stage by Tuesday...

The photos from today show the PVC pipe (now in the kitchen); Jack's bags of electrical tools; some new lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling; and more wires, probably associated with the phone and cable. (Jack asked if he could move the phone jack from the not-very-useful spot next to the stove/cooktop over to the dining room wall, which made sense to me. I also asked him to run some cable over there, in case I want to have a TV in the kitchen while I'm cooking.)

Jack and Rylan were here for most of the day today. They had the water turned off for a few hours, and there was lots of hammering and the smell of burning wood and metal, but I had to ask what the main accomplishments of the day were. It's all inner guts work right now—nothing so obvious as new tile or cabinets—so it's hard to tell what's different from one day to the next.

Rylan pointed out the "disaster in the corner" for me to photograph, but it was Jack who explained what said disaster consisted of. Basically the plumbing and some of the electrical had been in the soffit, outside the framing timbers, and since the soffits aren't coming back to hide all this conduitry, it had to be re-routed. (Now that I know what I'm looking at, I can plainly see what he's talking about in the third photo from Day 6.) It's also now clear why they removed the drywall—it wasn't because it was icky, but rather so that they could get access to the framing, pipes, and wires. (This also explains why some of the drywall is still up on the walls that didn't need major pipe or wire work.) They finished running the cable up to my room, and added some CAT-5 while they were at it. The cable I need right away, but the CAT-5 is just in case. We might be able to use it to hook up the second airport base station up here.

While working on the disaster in the corner, the moulding on the staircase to our bedroom popped off the wall, and several pieces of plaster and/or paint chipped off. Jack said these will be repaired later, once they're done banging around in the walls.

They also got some plumbing work done (which is why the water was turned off), but it's leaking a bit, so they've got to re-do some of the work on Monday. (Again, I can see now why they had to do the plumbing work in this photo from Day 8—the bendy white pipe is outside the framing and needed to be moved inside.) We're also to keep our eyes peeled for a leak in the wastewater pipe; apparently it's significant but intermittent, so we'll have to try some tests in our bathroom this weekend.

Jack says the tile goes in once they're done with all the wiring and plumbing; I'm hoping for Tuesday, since that's when the appliances arrive. The cabinets are apparently coming on Wednesday. I had to give Jack another check to pay for them, which means we've now put up more than half the estimated cost of the remodel. (Each check after the deposit covers a "progess billing", though the first one was due when we handed over the keys, before any progress was made.) Welcome to the world of residential construction.

The photos today show the "disaster in the corner" (the re-routing of some copper pipes and electrical wires); the coax and CAT5 running through the wall and up the chimney column; Rylan putting away some tools below the re-routed PVC off the wastewater pipe; and the new phone and cable jack. This last photo also shows how the temporary lighting plugs in (!).

I was here for most of the work today, but I didn't ask what was going on. As a consequence, taking photos tonight was a Myst-like experience in puzzle-solving. Here are the clues:

Lots more electrical work today. Oh, and I found out the reason for all the holes in the basement ceiling: Jack added some new circuits (too many things were on too few circuits previously), and to wire them, he had to get from the circuit box in the front closet to the kitchen. He did this by going through the basement ceiling—and to snake through all the duct work and other wiring in the soffits down there, he had to drill access holes. You can see in the photos below the orange cord in one of the ceiling holes; it emerges in the kitchen and passes through some holes in the framing. I believe it's going to the cooktop, and possibly the oven as well.

The yellow cord, which was added yesterday in a similar manner, goes to a couple new GFCI outlets (code requires that kitchen outlets be GFCI now; it didn't when the house was built). The receptacles will probably go on tomorrow. One went on today, on the short dining room wall—and at the same time, the drywall on that wall came off, presumably so a new light switch could be installed (it's the blue box in the photo of that wall). We'll now have switches at both entries to the kitchen, which makes sense, don't you think?

I know Jack was in the laundry room a lot today, presumably snaking wire; it's possible that the bit of copper pipe in the third-to-last photo is also his handiwork.

The other big news of the day is that the appliances arrived. Well, all except the trash compactor, which is apparently coming next week. They're currently piled up in the dining room, awaiting drywall, tile, and cabinets...and of course the completion of the electrical work. Jack said they should be done with that tomorrow, and that he hopes they'll start re-drywalling tomorrow afternoon. The tile guy is supposed to come tomorrow and verify that everything is good to go; my assumption was that the tile would go in on Thursday, but I didn't actually hear Jack say that, now that I think of it. He just said that the tile goes in once the drywall is done. He also said that the cabinets are coming tomorrow, but they, like the appliances, will have to cool their jets for a while. Theoretically we could store them in the garage, since I'm taking the car to my sister's tomorrow, but if they're not installed by Sunday, we couldn't get the car in the garage upon our return. Given that the tile won't be finished until Friday at the earliest, I'd say chances are slim that the cabinets will be installed before next week. I hope they fit in the dining or storage room, or we'll have to park at an odd angle in the alley out back.

I'm in Maryland at my sister's house, so Al is in charge of taking progress photos tonight. I'll add them to this post when I get back on Sunday. He says they finished wiring the outlets today, and that—drumroll, please—the cabinets arrived. I told Jack before I left this morning to go ahead and put them in the garage if they came; it won't be a big deal to park the car behind the garage for a few days when we return. (The cabinets probably won't be installed until next week.)

Today's update is again via Al, who was home in the evening to see the results of the day's work. The biggest development is that the drywall (and some plywood) is back up. This marks a turning point for us, as we'll be able to see things going in from now on, rather than coming out. (To be fair, the days of wiring constituted new, constructive work, but wiring is not as easy to appreciate as drywall, tile or cabinets—and the wiring work often required some extra demolition.)

In other news, a few days ago I came up with a theory as to why the wastewater pipe was leaking intermittently (which I won't share here). Al related it to Jack, Jack concurred, and it was agreed that we would have the plumber come in to repair the leaky flange. Al and I discussed changing out the toilet at the same time, since Al didn't like the existing toilet, and it doesn't match the new green paint anyway. (The bathroom used to be painted the same color as the toilet, but now that the walls are green, it makes more sense for the toilet to match the white tub.) He has searched the web and picked out a new toilet, and it will be installed tomorrow when the plumber comes.

Al gave me today's update in person; he arrived here in Maryland tonight on the train. He didn't have time to take photos before he left (and Jack was still working anyway), so we'll take some when we get home on Sunday and add them to the bottom of this post. The main thing on Al's mind is that the wastewater pipe, which we dealt with on Day 2 by not dealing with it (we'd decided to do nothing for now and either paint it or box it later if necessary), is sticking out of the plywood far enough that it will overhang the cabinets.

It turns out that leaving the pipe as-is and painting it if necessary was never an option. I'm not sure how we failed to understand this point; perhaps we didn't accurately communicate our intentions to Jack, which caused him to think it not necessary to mention that boxing or moving were the ONLY choices. While it would certainly be preferable to move the pipe rather than box it, given that the box will overhang the cabinets even more than the pipe itself, moving it will likely be expensive, and it could set us back a day or more now that the drywall/plywood is up. (The time to do this work, if we'd wanted to, was while the walls and ceiling were open.) In any case, we spent the ride from the train station talking about what to do. We finally resolved to box it, even though it would probably look weird. I lamented that leaving it as-is wasn't an option, and Al lamented that we hadn't moved it before—or even today, since the plumber was already there fixing the flange and installing the new toilet.

On a more positive note, the tile arrived, and Jack said that the tile guys will be coming on Monday to lay it. He apparently picked out a grout in a color called Pewter, which I think ought to be a good match for our Seaspray tile (which isn't as green as it sounds—in fact, it's gray with a bit of brown streaked through). The new toilet went in without a hitch, the flange is fixed, and Al also had the plumber install a new drain in our shower (the old one was badly rusted). There's also a new drywall ceiling.

Al looked at the pipe again when we got home tonight, and he's decided that he wants to move it. Even though he asked me specifically to dissuade him from changing his mind about boxing it, I know that this is the right thing to do, so I'm OK with the decision.

Al just called Jack, and the call confirmed that we've done the right thing: Moving the pipe won't set us back more than 1/2 a day at most, so our #1 concern is not an issue. And the cost, while nothing to sneeze at, isn't huge in the grand scheme of things. Having to look at that boxed pipe—especially for Al, who's a "buyer's remorse" kind of guy—would be a lot worse.

Jack said the plumbers will come out on Tuesday morning, and if he has time once they're done, he'll start hanging cabinets. Yeah, baby!

Ya-HOO! The tile guys are downstairs laying the new tile in the kitchen as we speak. They arrived at about 7:45 this morning, I let them in, and they got to work. Very exciting. I just went down to take some progress photos, and about six tiles are now down; the first hour or so of banging was the Wonderboard PermaShield going in.

Man, I thought it was exciting when things were moving *out*. How much more exciting it is to see stuff going *in*!

I did my step workout upstairs in my office/workroom and then went down to take photos of the tiling midpoint, and I found that I'd missed it. These guys work fast! I think there's still the grout left to go after they get all the tiles down, so hopefully I'll get one more set of in-progress photos before they finish completely.

I came down for the grout stage and stayed until they were finished; the whole process didn't take long at all, and I'm really thrilled with the results. This is all the work that will be done today, as the tile needs to set overnight.

Dennis and Fred, the plumbers, are here, moving the wastewater pipe behind the framing. We're not positive, but we think it's costing us a bit more to move it now that the drywall and plywood are up than it would have if they were still down.

The good news is that the plywood they removed to get to the pipe exposed some duct work that we hadn't photographed before. It must have been done on Thursday or Friday, while I was gone and Al was at work. (You can see the duct, and the marking on the plywood that I'm assuming indicates where the vent should go, in the last photo.)

While the plumbers were working, a new workmate of Jack's (name unknown) was patching and sanding the circular holes in the basement soffit. There's lots of banging and drilling noises coming from the kitchen now, so I'm assuming that the soffit work is done and the cabinet hanging has started. I'm going to go take a peek.

Nope, no hanging yet—just getting ready to hang. The unidentified guy is putting up some metal trim on the dining room doorway, and Jack has re-hung the plywood and is adding some insulation around the ductwork, I believe.

Jack and Rylan were here for a couple hours this morning, during which time they moved the lower cabinets into the kitchen and polyurethaned the wood floor transitions. The cabinets look GREAT, but the kitchen just shrank to about half its previous size. I have to keep reminding myself that it was a tiny kitchen before anyway; any illusion I had that it was larger was caused by the removal of the old cabinets, appliances, wall, and ceiling.

My cousin M asked this weekend how big our kitchen was, and I said it was about the size of my parents' sunroom, where we happened to be sitting at the time. My dad said, "oh, no, it's bigger than this. *With* the cabinets in you probably have as much floor space as this room." I looked at the kitchen after it was tiled, and I was pretty sure I was right about the size. Now that the cabinets are in, I'm more sure than ever that I was right. The table we were sitting around in the sunroom would fit in the center of our kitchen, but the chairs likely would not.

Actually, since we used 13x13 tiles, it's pretty easy to figure out the size of the room. By counting tiles from the Day 15 photos, I'd say it's about 9' x 11'. Definitely small—but boy, will it be beautiful when it's done.

Al and I left early this morning to do some day-after-Christmas shopping at the three C's—Crane's, Crate & Barrel, and Cloggenhoggen (Al's name for Conshohoken, where there's an IKEA)—and by the time we returned home, Jack had been and gone. The lower cabinets are actually installed flush against the walls now, the lightbulbs are sticking out of newly-cut ceiling holes, and the lightswitch on the hall wall is hooked up (no more plugging in bare wires or extension cords in the dining room). The combination of a few more inches of floorspace and the brighter lighting give the kitchen a more spacious feel than it had on Tuesday.

I had suggested to Al last week that we unpack the kitchen boxes *before* the kitchen was finished, so we would have time to sort through all the stuff before we put it away. Our movers were shocked to find that the kitchen in Mountain View yielded 14 dishpack boxes (the estimate for a kitchen that size was 7 or 8), which means we have too many dishes, glasses, silverware, and gadgets.

Tonight is the night we're starting the unpacking process—Al is downstairs working on it right now—and I can already tell we're going to run out of garbage bags. Not for the dishes, which we'll set aside for donation, but for all that packing paper. Our movers double- and triple-wrapped everything we have!

Jack, Rylan, and Unidentified Guy arrived early today (actually, I think Rylan and U.G. were here first) and worked until about 5:00. I was busy painting the master bedroom the same color as the master bath, so I didn't go down much, but boy, was it LOUD. Al called in the middle of some serious powertooling, and I couldn't hear him.

When all the noise was over and I heard Jack leave, I went down to see what they'd been up to. The fridge box and the cabinets above it are up, as are the upper cabinets along the sink wall. The oven and cooktop are also in place.

I was feeling a bit depressed in general tonight, and while moping in my chair, I suddenly thought, "what if we've gotten so used to not having a kitchen that we don't use the new one once it's done?" I mentioned this to Al, and he said he'd had the same worry. I think the reason it'd popped into my head is that I was thinking about washing my hands in the kitchen, and that reminded me of washing my hands in the OLD kitchen. What a gloomy place it was! Dark and cold and grungy. Our new kitchen will be so different... and I'm sure when I'm in a cheerier mood I'll go back to thinking about all the wonderful dinners and baked goods I'll be able to make.

Bonus before-and-after photos of the master bedroom:

Jack & co. didn't come today, and I can't say it bothered me. He's really been so attentive to us that I began to worry that his other clients might be wondering where he was. Al said he thought he remembered Jack saying that he had to do some electrical work on another project; sounds good to me!

THE MICROWAVE WENT IN TODAY!!! Ok, that's not the only thing that happened, but after living with just a coffee pot (for the first two weeks) and an electric kettle (for the past week), it's practically a technological revolution to have a microwave at our disposal. So far we've only opened and closed the door a few times; we haven't actually cooked anything in there yet, though we've discussed making popcorn tonight.

The rest of the upper cabinets were also installed today, including the one open cabinet we asked for on the dining room wall. We were planning to use it for cookbooks and a wine rack, but now we're thinking we might store wine above the cabinets, where the soffits used to be.

I asked Jack about whether the compactor and dishwasher had to be installed before the template for the countertops could be made; he said no. (Now that I've looked at what *has* been installed, I can see that the dependent items were the lower cabinets, the cooktop, and the open cabinet.) He also said that the countertop guys would be coming on Friday to make the template. Hopefully the actual countertops will be installed in about a week.