GroupWBench

We really got rolling in the kitchen. I built a cabinet to replace the hanging ones over the bar. It looked kinda ugly, but the plan was to cover it and the rest of the cabinets with a veneer.

The operative word there is ‘was’. That old saying ‘No plan survives contact with the enemy’ is as true in remodeling as it is in war. The more we worked with the cabinets, the more we realized that there was no way to give the cabinets a face lift. Being site built, they are not standard sized and they are nasty and worn. We couldn’t pull off the counters without pretty much destroying the cabinets.

So, we decided to go ahead and rip them out and replace them with some decent quality inexpensive cabinets. We knew this would be a lot of work, but c’mon, it is just popping out some old cabinets and screwing in new ones. Right? Ivy spent the day with sledgehammer and crowbar banging and prying and pulling. She was a demolition demon up there yesterday. I’m just grateful that she didn’t think to go grab one of her chainsaws.

Notice the paneling. You can see the dark area that used to be exposed and the lighter area that was hidden under the cabinets. What you don’t see are the nail holes and scars on the old pine paneling where the cabinets were attached.

In keeping with the idea we learned rebuilding the bathrooms, you really can’t do anything without doing something else first. Once we got the cabinets out, we realized that the paneling would also have to go.

If you think pulling out 50 year old site built cabinets is fun, just try pulling old pine paneling with electrical wiring and gas lines behind and through it. Once we pulled everything out, we had to carry it out to the back of the truck, drive it down to the other end of the yard and put it in the big trash container we rented. We filled it to capacity. Whee!

With my shoulder surgery coming up next Tuesday, I think Ivy will be doing even more work on this than ever. I will be exercising my supervisory skills and acting as foreman on this job.