Ready to work on the floor this week!

As much as we wanted to do more last weekend, we had out of town company and so we had to do the fun things like visit the Getty Villa and drive around Hollywood and visit the LaBrea Tar Pits (one of my favorite places!). 

We got an interesting tour about the gardens at the Getty.

So last weekend we got NOTHING done!  so much for progress....
But we jumped into action during the rest of the week.  First off, getting the rest of the electrical and the ceiling done.  Our ceiling was covered in ceiling tiles and furring strips.  Taking all this down left a lot of holes, and we also had to remove a huge old ventilation fan from the ceiling.  So that left us with a lot of work to do on the ceiling.

Originally, I had hoped we could patch/sand/fill, but with the sum of all the work, Dale decided it would be better to skim coat the whole thing.  Which would be a huge amount of work for me, but luckily, he's a plasterer, and so he had no problem.  you can see how nasty it was before above...

 this was after a scratch coat, and the ceiling patching...

Then he did a finish coat, nice and smooth, and we sanded and finished last night, and I primed this morning:

And all the recessed lights are in. We aren't going to install the pendants over the island until we get it in place, but you can see the two boxes for those above.

By the way, that large section of purple drywall on the wall above is covering a hole that will be a pantry coming up in the near future.  We just put the drywall there temporarily to keep it looking better.  Dale did a veneer plaster coat on the wall to the left of the door because there was a ridge where the old cabinets were, and the layers and layers of paint over the past 50 years left a mark that was super defined.  We will be replacing this door, too, maybe with a slightly narrower door (this one is 32 inches wide, and it just barely clears the island.  30 inches would be better, and we want a french door there).  So that wall has a lot of changes coming, but for now, it's just going to stay a little bit neat.

We also finished getting all the old plumbing taken out, and connected to our new island plumbing -

We are also going to lower the bottom of the window about 7 or 8 inches, but we want to get the cabinets roughed in first, so we have a better idea of where the best height would be.  Today we are going to install the plywood and backerboard, so I hope to spend the rest of the week installing the tile floor.  We do still have some drywall to finish up as you can see above, but rather than put it in and then cut it, we are fine with just holding off a bit to be sure everything is where we want it before we finish that off.  While we were at it, we added an outside spigot so I could water the plants on that side of the house, and wash the car without dragging the hose all around the house from the other side.  We are also going to add an exterior outlet in the opening on the bottom left, so we didn't close that up yet either.

With any luck, we can get the tile done this week, and then we'll have the weekend to install some cabinets.  Since they've been taking up all the space in the garage all summer, it'll be great to have some workshop space in there again, too!

Kitchen remodel resumes...

Time to get back to business!  We psyched ourselves up to get this remodel back on track, and yesterday morning, we packed up the remaining things left in our half-destroyed kitchen and ripped the rest of the cabinets and sink out.

It's kind of looked this like since April:

 Except that the stove was also over there along the wall.  But, yea, no progress.  I did lace in the floor boards with some new ones back in May, but they are all covered up with plastic right now.  Here's how it looks this morning:

Temporary kitchen in the living room.  No sink anymore.  That's committment!

 

Our cooking station!  

Here is how it looked after we got everything cleared out and ready for demo stage II:

Goodbye sink and dishes (all packed in boxes).  

Goodbye upper cabinets (hello full trash bins)--

 

Goodbye sink and countertop.  hello plumbing and electrical that needs changing out....

And now, a nice clean canvas.  So, today we hope to get the plumbing and wiring all finished up, then we can drywall over the gaping hole.  Hello blocked door to the studio:

We do have a few interesting things we've been up to --
recessed lights installed (mostly, gotta fix the gap as we patch up the ceiling):

 and we picked up a greenhouse window to replace the window over what used to be the sink.  We got it free on CL - it was mounted flush on the outside of a house in Santa Monica, and I like the way it was mounted, so rather than enlarge the opening to fit the new window, we will just remove the existing window, enlarge a little, then trim it out.  I think it'll be nice!  I don't have a picture of that right now, it's sitting on it's side in the garage, covered with plumeria starts.

We have visitors coming out in October, and we'd love to have our kitchen functioning by then!  Once we get this last remaining bit of plumbing/wiring done, we should be able to motor through a bunch of it rather quickly!  By removing our last bit of functioning kitchen, we hope to make this all a little more urgent.  Doing dishes in the shower is NOT going to be fun!