Construction chaos!

We interrupt this IF blog, to bring you progress reports on our kitchen.  Our contractor called last Monday to say he was ready to show up this Monday (yesterday) as opposed to two weeks later (like he first estimated).  Yay for getting started early, but cue a minor freakout as we realized we needed to empty the kitchen before they showed up.  Cue a larger freakout as we realized that I was about to be down for the count recovering from my lap.  

I spent most of my recovery feeling incredibly guilty that I had to just sit on the sofa watching my DH as he diligently packed up everything in the kitchen.  My sole contributions were wrapping a few boxes of breakables, emptying three drawers while sitting on a stool, taking all the pictures off the fridge and emptying the fridge.  I know there was nothing that could be done about it and it was just bad timing.  But, seriously, could there be anything that causes you more guilt than listening to your husband toiling away while you lie on the sofa in a vicodin haze watching Top Chef All Stars on your laptop because it is the only thing your brain can handle at the moment?  It doesn't help that my DH's "I'm stressed and anxious" attitude is the same as his "I'm annoyed at you" attitude.  So, while I know he understood and he told me to go lie back down when I tried to do anything, it was hard not to feel like he was frustrated with me.  He wasn't, though I'm sure he was frustrated with the situation.  Anyway, I owe him big time when all this is done.

We have a small-ish closed-in kitchen with about two feet total of counter space and original 1950's plywood cabinets.  Honestly, it's in decent shape (though incredibly unattractive with most of the storage really difficult to access) and we could have just painted.  But... I desperately want a dishwasher and the only way to do that and not lose all of our storage was a major overhaul.  So, we decided to save up and just go for it and tear the whole thing out and start over again  My DH designed and re-designed the layout.  We spent about a year watching prices and gathering appliances on clearance so we've ended up with some really nice appliances for about half of their original prices (they've been hanging out in our dining room).  We went through about five different possibilities of cabinets before we found ones that we liked that were vaguely affordable.  We're losing the "eat-in" part of our kitchen by adding a wall oven and two pantry cabinets (YAYAYAYAY!!!) so we're putting in a look-through into the dining room, and adding a bar. We thought about cutting out the wall altogether and putting in a peninsula but we decided we didn't want to lose the upper cabinets and we're adding some on the other side of the wall, too.

I don't have the pictures on this computer of our kitchen when we were actually using it, but here's a shot of the clean-up in progress. 

Here's the kitchen in the morning before the reno crew showed up yesterday with the fridge moved out to the sun-porch.  I can't believe how much my DH did.  His back is killing him.

It looks so much bigger with nothing on the countertops and with the fridge gone.  The black thing on the lower left is the bane of my cooking existence -- a stove with only two working burners.  My DH has never understood why that was so annoying. 

I went to work to teach my first class yesterday and spent about 3 hours working afterward before I realized I couldn't sit up straight at my desk anymore.  So, having no labs this first week, I decided to work at home for the rest of the day.  When I came home, this is what I saw:

Isn't that incredible?  Guess there's no turning back, now!!

Here's the beginning of the look-through.  They've since cut out the studs and are working on electrical today.

The stove is going to be in front of the look-through.  While there will be a microwave at eye level above the stove, the fact that we'll have light coming in through the windows in the dining room into the kitchen is just making me go "yippee!"  

Here's our temporary "kitchenette" in the corner of the living room:

Man, I really hope this does only take the 2-3 weeks they're estimating.  There's only so much take-out and washing dishes in the bathtub and paper plates I can handle... 

My house is utter chaos, but I'm so excited!!  Can't wait!

Oh, and an update on me while we're at it -- I'm feeling pretty good.  Still flashes of pain occasionally, and I still need to take ibuprofen and waddle when I walk, but I'm doing pretty well.  Today I didn't have classes or labs and there's 5 inches of snow on the ground so I decided to work from home. (At the moment I appear to be blogging from home...)  I'm hiding in the downstairs den listening to the saw behind me.  Tomorrow will be my first "full" day back.  Thursday is my follow-up appointment, so I'll have more details about the lap then.  Thanks to all of you for the comments the past few posts!!  You make me smile when I'm feeling down.