Catching Up

Well, much has happened since our last blog entry, so let's try to get caught up.

In sum, the flooring, appliances, countertops, and cabinets are all out, and the floor is fixed.

The toughest part of preparing for cabinet tearout was getting the old refrigerator out of the way. That joker just did not want to move. We later found that that was because both of the old coasters had broken off underneath. To make matters worse, we soon learned that the old fridge was too big to fit through either of the doorways into the kitchen (see pics). So, we had to remove the doors. To make sure we didn't lose any food, this had to be carefully orchestrated, much like a pit stop in motor racing. I carefully planned our every move. Two bolts out on top, bracket off, freezer door off handoff to Tally, remove pin, zip-zip two screws, bracket off, fridge door off and handoff to Tally. Then we squeezed the fridge through the narrow door opening and reversed the process. Fridge door in bottom hinge, bracket, zip zip, insert pin, freezer door in bottom hinge, bracket on, two bolts back in on top. Too bad we don't have any action pics of this. It was awesome. And it didn't take that long, either. (The big butt-shaped hole in the drywall is where I was trying to push the fridge out.)

Lonnie, our cabinet guy from Lowe's, is great. He came to do the tearout and left everything nice and neat, and even hauled away our earlier demo debris. With the cabinets out, our kitchen suddenly feels large. But all of the drywall is scarred beyond repair and is going to need replaced (see photos). There are random holes everywhere!

Now, on to the water problems. When the cabinets were removed, the full extent of the damage could be seen for the first time. Yes, friends, I have seen the very heart of evil, and it is sort of soggy and musty. Yesterday, we cut away all the old rotten subflooring, installed a new floor joist, and cut and installed the new subflooring. It's not that hard of a job, just messy and awkward. We don't have any action shots of me cutting out the old flooring, which is a shame, because my hoss DeWalt DW 364 15-Amp Circular Saw and I make a heck of a team. I just set the depth of cut to 3/4", marked the joist centers, and went to town. I didn't worry about cutting through nails, as they were rusty anyway. The carbide toothed blade went right through them and doesn't seem to be any worse off for wear. Tally got a lot of good shots of the new joist install. Luckily, the house has a nice concrete block pier support in the kitchen area, so I only needed a 7' length of 2x8 joist from the rim joist to the pier. Any longer and it would have been a real pain to manouvre into place. The 2x8 joist had to be ripped by 1/8" to fit into place. Again, the DW 364 (with optional rip fence) stepped up to the plate and made another of its consistent base hits. Once ripped to the right dimenstions and manouvred around the plumbing and wiring, the new joist slipped right into place up against the old one. Then I cut custom shims (yep, DW 364), tapped them into place, and trimmed off the excess with the sawzall. Nailing the new joist into place was a chore, with less than 16" clearance between joists, on my back in the aptly named "crawl space," but we got it done.

From there, it was pretty easy to measure and cut pieces of 23/32" plywood and nail them in.

Now our floor is safe and sound, and one day we'll be able to sell our house with clear consciences, knowing that the new homeowners won't be busting through the floor.

Next, all the drywall is coming down, and the electrician is coming out to wire everything up (including el bano, too) and install our recessed lighting. I'm also thinking of removing the existing plumbing and re-doing it, but that will depend on time and energy, since there's nothing really "wrong" with it, 'cept that it's very ugly. Then, I'll hang and mud all new drywall, and we'll be ready for the new gabinetas to arrive.

Be sure to check out our pictures!! You won't believe your eyeballs.