Month: May 2016

Kitchen renovation phase 3: We can rebuild it. We have the technology.

We’re in the fourth week of kitchen renovations, and I think it’s safe to say we’re in the home stretch. I think it’s also safe to say that the build phase was fraught with more peril than I expected. (Note, I wrote this a week ago – it’s been THAT kind of week!)

In our last update, we had torn out the entire original kitchen to the drywall and beyond. Over the course of the next week and a half, the kitchen was gradually rebuilt on the same footprint. First, walls and paint and the upper cabinet boxes:

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Then, new floors. Have I mentioned the new floors? We’re replacing cheap and boring ceramic tile with lovely warm wood-coloured tile that looks like knotty pine boards.

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Willie approves of the new cabinets.

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I have to admit to being fairly ambivalent about a lot of the choices we had to make. I knew we wanted light coloured cabinets, for example, and warm accent colours. I knew we were maintaining the same basic footprint. I loved the idea of an oversized farmhouse sink and butcher block counters, both of which were incorporated into the design. The one thing I coveted above all other things, though, were pot drawers. And now we have them – everywhere!

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Along the way, there have been a few mistakes, miscommunications and mis-steps. The wrong sink, for example, and the wrong drawer pulls ordered. Hidden drawers overlooked. I have to say, though, with each and every one of these things, whether the miscommunication was on our side or not, the construction and design team have immediately rectified or rebuilt or otherwise worked really hard to ensure that we had exactly the kitchen we wanted. I really can’t say enough nice things about Justin Linden and his team – they have been beyond awesome at every bend in the road.

When we got home from a few days out of town to find that the new microwave had been installed much higher than I had expected, I was worried about safety. The kids use the microwave regularly, and the idea of them reaching up over their heads to pull hot food out of it made my stomach clench up. All I had to do was mention it, and they pulled out the installed cupboard to insert one that fit the space better and brought the microwave down to a safer height.

I’m wretchedly behind in my bloggy updates, and truth be told, the kitchen is actually already done. Stay tuned and maybe I’ll get photos of the whole thing in the next couple of days. Spoiler alert: it’s AWESOME! I also have a post or two to write about things we learned about executing and surviving a kitchen remodel.

Bonus question: Anybody recognize the quote in the headline? It has absolutely nothing to do with kitchens, and there was no extraordinary technology involved in the renovation – but suddenly, out of the 1970s, that quote was in my head as I wrote this post.

Lucas and the dandelion bouquet

Lucas and I are walking home from school on a brilliant, warm late spring afternoon that feels more like mid-summer. As we come up the hill to our house, I notice the elderly lady from down the street and think that in the nearly six years we’ve lived on the street, this is the first time I’ve ever seen her by herself.

She’s quite elderly, probably over eighty. I often see her walking carefully on her husband’s arm as they make their way patiently to the stop sign at the end of the street and back again. I watch her as we approach from behind, and she is slowly walking the length of our lawn, picking yellow dandelions. I feel a mild tremor of concern, seeing her by herself. I know she is frail, and I wonder where her husband is.

I don’t want to startle her as we come up behind her, so I speak softly as we approach. “Did you find any good ones?” I ask with a smile, nodding toward the straggly handful of dandelions she is holding.

“Oh, you probably think I’m crazy,” she replies with a sheepish shrug, and I can see that she’s older even than I expected, her blue eyes slightly red and rheumy.

“Of course not!” I assure her with a smile. “We pick dandelions all the time, right Luke?”

I cast a quick glance up the street, hoping to see her husband standing at the end of their driveway, but I don’t see him. She seems to be okay, though, and after a moment of pleasant small talk I’d just decided to turn up our driveway and leave her to make her way home when Lucas pipes up.

“Here you go!” he says with a smile, and my heart sings with pride. He’s handing her a big bouquet of quickly-picked dandelions from our yard. Tears come immediately to my eyes. My sweet, sweet baby boy. He holds the dandelions out unselfconsciously, and she takes them carefully, like the treasure they are.

dandelion seed head

Photo of the day: Tumbling on the sand dunes at Port Franks

Remember when you were a kid, how fun it was to hurl yourself down a hill and try to outrun your momentum?

Today’s lesson was “gravity always wins.”

Sand dune fun

Lucky for us, the day’s other lessons included “cousins are awesome” and “it’s finally summer” and “there’s nothing better than family, even when they’re howling with laughter as you face-plant in the sand.”

Photo of the day: Catching a falling star

We have driven past this monument in the Half Moon Bay section of Barrhaven many times, and I’ve always been curious about it. Last night after swimming lessons, Lucas and I decided to head over to check it out up close.

There’s a placard that explains that what I thought might have been a starfish is actually a falling star, and the monument is one to whimsey and astronomy – two of my favourite things! So I told Lucas: “Go catch that falling star!”

Catch a falling star

Today’s lesson is that if you have the chance to chase a falling star with a lively eight-year-old at sunset on a pretty late spring evening, you should absolutely do it!

Kitchen renovation phase two: Destruction and chaos

We’ve arrived at the end of the first week of the great kitchen renovation project with sanity (barely) intact. In case you were wondering, it takes about a full week to adapt to the idea of not having a kitchen, and apparently longer to the idea of not having a sink, because I still catch myself moving toward where the sink used to be with the dregs of a can of soda or snack bowl to be rinsed or an apple to be washed.

We seem to be making good progress. We have passed through the destruction and discovery part of the remodel, which was definitely the most fraught with peril. We discovered several code violations in the wiring and a few outright fire hazards that added another chunk of change to the final bill for some electrical work, including no less than five (FIVE!) issues with the oven outlet alone. The previous owner’s habit of playing fast and loose with structural and electrical issues continues to haunt us six years after the fact, but at least the microwave hood fan will no longer vent to the gap between the walls (sigh) and we know that the household wiring is safer than it was before.

Here’s how we progressed each day of the renovation.

Day one was destruction and discovery day. Greasy stained drywall was removed, subfloor pulled up, mystery pipes were revealed, and electrical hazards became apparent.

Kitchen Day 1

Day two comprised more prep work, and the delivery of the bulk of the new cabinets and cupboards. Our dining room became a storage / staging area. Nerves frazzles and frayed.

Kitchen day 2

Day three was dedicated to electrical work. 15 amp wires that ran into 30 amp breakers were updated, dangling outlet boxes were secured, blatant code violations were remediated, and blessed routine was reclaimed from the chaos.

kitchen day 3

Day four brought fresh drywall and approved permits for the electrical, and a sea change from destruction to construction. Yay progress!

kitchen day 4

The one thing that the last week has illustrated is that we were insane to even consider taking on the kitchen renovation as a DIY project. There is no way we could have even identified, let alone dealt with, the issues that have come up so far. They weren’t devastating, and they were easily addressed by the contractors, but from tearing up the subfloor to the safety issues with the electrical, I have been grateful to have someone who knows what they are doing. Even if we did manage to install the cupboards and cabinets ourselves, it would have been putting lipstick on a pig because there were so many small but important structural issues that needed to be addressed so we could build upon a strong foundation.

I’m full of optimism for next week, which should bring subfloors and tile floors and fresh paint. I’m also relieved that the last of the major decisions has probably been nailed down, and I will no longer be frantically Googling various faucet models, ceiling fans and over-the-range microwave reviews. Trying to decide whether the drawer pulls need to harmonize with the sink fixtures may have been the nadir in decision-making “who really cares about this sort of thing?” hell, but we’ve made it through to the other side.

We’re managing meals with a mixture of takeout and sandwiches, and I bought more pre-packaged and processed foods in the grocery store today than I’ve probably bought in the last year. I honestly can’t remember the last time I bought packaged cookies, but hey, there were PC Points for Oreos today so I stocked up. An hour later, they’re already mostly gone, of course.

TL;DR? Week one was long and stressful, but could have been far worse. Having a team we trust doing the work has made all the difference in the world. And doing the dishes in the bathroom sink is far from ideal, but at least manageable. With the backdrop of the situation in Fort MacMurray playing out this weekend, I’m grateful to have my house intact and in one piece.

Stay tuned, the adventure continues on Monday!

Kitchen remodel phase one: In which the schedule gets accelerated

We’d just paid the deposit and signed the contract on our kitchen renovation, with work scheduled to begin in late May, when the contractor sent me an email. “We’ve had an opening and our next client wants to delay construction until June. How do you feel about starting on Monday?”

Um, Monday? Five days hence Monday, you mean? I looked up at the broken cupboards full of stuff that would need to be packed away, the clutter in the living room that would need to be removed to make way for a temporary kitchen, the dining room teeming with art projects and various paperwork that would need to be filed or recycled, and tried to wrap my head around the idea of having no kitchen to make meals or clean dishes for three to four weeks starting in five days. We’d have one weekend to finalize the last of the design plan (we need to pick flooring, a faucet, paint colour, counters and handles for the drawers and cupboards), pack the kitchen cupboards and drawers, empty most of the dining room, clear space in the garage for the delivery of the new cupboards, make a temporary kitchen, and plan a minimum of a week’s worth of no-stove meals.

“Sure,” I replied, because I have no sense of self preservation whatsoever. Carpe that diem, right?

We met with the contractor on Saturday to do a crash session on the remaining details: floors, counters, paint, faucet, and drawer and cupboard pulls. In other words, all the things that I thought were inconsequential. “I am more concerned with the fact of having a floor than what it looks like,” I told the contractor the last day we met to sign the contract. The contractor, who has gotten to know us fairly well by now, pointed at Beloved and said, “So, you’re coming with me to the tile store?” Meh, floors. Whatever.

To my surprise, though, picking out these finishing touches made me almost as excited as the idea of my coveted pot drawers. Since we are building on exactly the same footprint, with no new appliances, and on a very tight budget, I was really beginning to feel like the new kitchen might not be tens of thousands of dollars better than the old kitchen. Then I found out you can get ceramic tile floor that looks like knotty pine, and vintagey-cool drawer pulls that look like they might have come out of an old library. I am really happy now that I don’t have to wait for months to see it all come together, because for the first time I’m feeling really excited about the renovation, instead of just enduring it and grumbling about the cost.

Having said that, I am not looking forward to the next few weeks without a kitchen. We have our BBQ, which has a side burner for pots that I’ve never actually used but I checked and still works. We’ll have the microwave, although it will be displaced from its usual perch above the oven. And we’ll just roll the fridge into the dining room for the duration, so it will be accessible and functioning. I’ve picked up some big plastic bins to store food like cereal and snacks that might smell appealing to the dog, and I invested in a whackload of compostable paper plates. I think it is the dishwasher that we will miss most of all, and I am trying to decide whether washing dishes will work better in the (tiny) bathroom sink or the (awkwardly positioned and not incredibly clean) basement laundry sink or the bathtub is the least painful option.

Saturday and Sunday were a marathon of sorting and packing and discarding and wondering why the heck we have so many packages of yeast in the cupboard, and cursing the multitude of snack bags with less than six pretzels in each. I mostly stayed true to my inner environmentalist, filling the compost and cardboard recycling bins to capacity, but by late in the day Sunday I had abandoned any pretense of careful sorting and packing and was simply cramming stuff into any nearby container with capacity. And I swore to myself that we will never, ever move, because just packing the kitchen was enough to last me another decade.

Here’s the empty kitchen on Sunday evening, waiting for the destruction crew to arrive at 7 am on Monday morning. Before:

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After a full day of packing, trying to cook dinner on Sunday night in an empty kitchen was a bit of a disaster. You don’t realize how much muscle memory is involved in a familiar meal until you try to cook it when none of the tools or ingredients are where they are supposed to be! I can’t tell you how many times I opened a drawer or cupboard to find it empty – not unlike when the power goes out and you walk from room to room automatically hitting light switches and thinking “okay, I’ll watch TV – no wait, I’ll vacuum, no wait, I’ll….” Not to even mention the fun of meal planning for dinners that do not require a stove or much clean-up to execute. I’m seeing a lot of takeout and a lot of living room picnics in our future!

So tell me, bloggy peeps, what’s your favourite no-cook meal?