Day 14: Garbage be gone!

Yeah!  We got the dumpster, hired the teenager next door and got all the garbage removed!  Yeah!  Now are garage is clean to make way for our delivery of IKEA cabinets.  Of course the other half of our garage is still a terrible jumble.  Oh well, it'll get cleaned eventually.  My DH also spent some time putting up some of the old kitchen cabinets into the garage to make a workbench area.  They look pretty good!  We've also been doing lots of gardening this week...check out my other blog!  The rest of our long weekend will be dedicated to patching up the drywall and maybe doing something fun with the kids!

Day 10: Rest

So we have been working on the kitchen for just over a week.  The plan this week is to hire the dumpster, so that we can empty out the garage, which is where we are currently keeping all the debris.  Then we need to arrange for the delivery of the cabinets.  And my DH is going to start on repairing some of the destroyed drywall.  But for the most part the kids and I need a break from living in the basement for the last few days, so we plan on taking it easy.  I'll keep you posted!

Day 5: Flooring

So on May 11, the guy to do the hardwood floors arrived.  The plan was to patch some holes and then refinish the kitchen, living room, dining room, front and rear entrances.  And I must say that the guys from Artwood Floors did a great job! The whole job took about four days.  They spent about a day repairing the holes, a day sanding and then two days with the finishing.

Before:

After (we've even managed to move back in some of the furniture):

Day 1: Demolition

So we'd been planning on starting the kitchen demolition on the May long weekend, but then we go a call from the guy we wanted to do our floors.  We have hardwood in the kitchen, installed by a previous owner, but they hadn't put in under the existing cabinets.  Since we are planning on changing the layout of the kitchen, we had to get the floor patched and re-finished.  We were also planning on getting the hardwood in the rest of the living space refinished as well.  We had planned on getting this all done in June, but the flooring guy called and said that some other jobs he had already committed to were delayed and now he was no longer free in June.  But he was free in May!  So last Saturday, May 7, 2011 was day 1 of the kitchen renovation.

Day 1:

Of course, the first thing that had to be done was clearing out the cabinets, telephone, etc. from the kitchen.  Then my DH began the demolition.  It was very satisfying to see it all torn down.  It took about three days to get the whole kitchen cleared out and another two days to take down all of the cabinets.  We also decided to take out a built-in cabinet in the living room (since we were going to be getting a dumpster anyway...).

Here's what it looks like so far:
Kitchen Before:

Here are some pictures of the built-in:

And now for the after picture:

 

And since we are getting the floors refinished, all of our belongings as well as our kids have been moved to the basement.  Crazy!

Because we just weren't busy enough...

we decided to renovate our kitchen!  And so far it is ahead of schedule!  Though we are only on day 10.  I thought I'd put some pictures up to track the progress and share our experiences.  Have fun reading!