Moving right along

Red oak acclimating

The built-in cabinet is gone.

The cabinets have arrived!

Closing up the recessed area where the refrigerator once stood.

Ahh... the cabinets. We lived this way for about 5 days.

The built-in area is closed up.

The old refrigerator area is now closed up and the new wall is in place.

Fir floors

If you looked at the previous post you know that when the contractor took up the old floor we found fir floors! Our plan all along was to put in red oak to match the rest of the house. But finding the fir made us reconsider. We both started googling pictures and trying to decide (quickly!) what we wanted to do. Fir is soft and not always a good option for a kitchen. Plus it's a different look than red oak. It wouldn't necessarily go with our new kitchen. It's more of a rustic look. The more we looked around online we also discovered that the black stuff covering the floors may contain asbestos. It was probably the old glue used to lay down linoleum years ago and the glue often contained asbestos. Now I was worried! Dave scraped up a sample and dropped it off the next day at a lab that tests for asbestos. We paid a little more to get our results in an hour and it came back negative! I was shocked! So now we were back to making the decision to keep the fir or pull it up and go with our original plan and lay red oak in the kitchen. Ultimately we decided to get rid of the fir. I felt terrible getting rid of the old, original floor. They kept telling me that you can't find wood like that anymore. If we had decided to keep it the contractor told us he wasn't scraping off the layer of black glue. He said the floor guy could do it with his sander. The floor guy said he wouldn't do it because it would ruin his sander. So basically if we wanted to keep the original fir floors Dave and I would have had to scrape off the layer of black glue. That just wasn't happening. It was hard for Dave to scrape a small sample for the asbestos test.

Let the demo begin

All of these photos were taken in the evening at the end of day 1. (minus the last one)

 

This picture is sideways and I don't have time now to figure out how to fix it - sorry.

Our contractor, Gordon, showing us the fir floors that they found.

What we've been up to

In case you've been wondering where we've been and why there haven't been many posts from me (is anyone really reading this blog, by the way?!) I'm going to attach some photos to show you what we've been up to. These are the before photos of our kitchen. (please ignore the mess! I took photos one evening while making dinner and the kitchen is a disaster.) It had original cabinets (house built in 1941) with a few updates along the way.

 

Original built-in (a few thought it was added later but in the end they said it was original). It was quaint but not practical.

Notice the little shelf between the fridge and range. That's all we had as there were no counters near the range.

The refrigerator was recessed back into the wall.

This was an eat-in nook area originally. And we have a very slight peek view from these windows.

Demo starts today!

She'll never remember the yellow kitchen.

First day of FIRST grade

Growing up

Big girl in the bathtub now!

LOVE

 



Exersaucer (thanks Carter!)

Let's bounce!

First time playing soccer and his team is orange just like Dad's!

Harrison and Christian

Month 5 and 6

September 8



October 8