Moving Day

Yes, I know, you thought all the moving was done. We moved into the shop a few weeks ago. (Thanks again, David and Wendy.) We enjoyed all the space in the living room and an empty dining room, entertained some guests in them, and now are filling them up again. :sigh: That's how it goes.

So this moving "day" (because it'll take more than one) refers to moving the kitchen into the dining room. I moved the "food shelf" the other day. Then I dissembled the shelf and set it up in sections under our makeshift counter:

  Doesn't that look handy?

Today I got a good portion of the cupboards empty. Troy is threatening to move them into the shop any day now. I'm going to miss them, crappy as they may be.

The water to the sink was disconnected last night. That is what I'm going to miss the most. Goodbye handy double sink. Goodbye tall faucet that can fill pots. Goodbye separation of bathroom and food prep/cleanup.

Troy discovered that the supply line to the sink has been dripping for a long time, presumably since before we moved here. There's a lot of water damage in the floor and the walls, and in fact there's a nice line of algae on the concrete steps outside too. In short, there's been steady water flow over a long time. It's a good thing we're fixing it up; it really needs it. (Part of me thinks it's a good thing Troy didn't discover this sooner or I might have lost my sink sooner!)

Meanwhile, a lot of the stuff from the cupboards got moved to the closet in the dining room:

I spent a good deal of time and energy moving a bunch of stuff from the closet into Isaac's room. (Remember all that extra room I made in the Great Cleanup of 2010? All being put to use again now.) It was also a chance to get rid of a couple boxes full of VHS tapes.

Other stuff from the cupboards is going to be boxed up and stored. Like, for instance, baking supplies. I don't do much of that normally, and I'm pretty sure I'll be doing even less now. Plus, I'm not even sure I'll have a stove. So that seemed like a no-brainer.

The counter we have set up in the dining room is a few 2x10s on sawhorses. (What else?) It is, of course, sturdy enough to walk on. Isn't that the first criteria for any counter?

Anyway, I did say I would prefer a nicer surface so that I could actually wipe it down and have some hope of it seeming clean. (These boards were used as forms for the shop's foundation, after all. And then they were stored outside for three years. Would you have a problem with that??)

Troy brought home a piece of melamine shelving. He's using it for a desk upstairs and we thought I may work for a counter.

But it's nice and smooth and it meets my criteria: it can be wiped down.

Now that I see how little of my "counter" it covers, however, I'm going to also get a piece of cheery vinyl to cover the whole mess. It will make me feel better.

My plan right now--as soon as we have electricity in the dining room--is to line up all the small appliances along the back of the counter. It's way too wide to use the whole thing, and I think that will use the space nicely.

Even though I don't like change, and am really going to miss having a kitchen sink (or any water close to my counter/work area) I realize that this is a pretty sweet setup for people who are redoing their kitchen. Certainly, a lot of people don't have anywhere to go with their kitchen stuff and end up setting up on the front porch, or the camper.

What does seem a little crazy is that we are, apparently, still trying to can this season. I'm going to run a batch of tomatoes tomorrow before I lose the counter and stove. (I just can't imagine two burners on a hot plate would do it.)

Tonight I washed all the tomatoes and laid them out to dry:

The most logical place seemed to be on the bathroom floor. I told myself that couldn't be right because food doesn't belong on a bathroom floor, but that's all I could come up with. I mean, they were being washed in the sink in the bathroom. It's not a big leap to letting them dry there. But that doesn't make it any more right.

Remember that feeling you got while watching Seinfield and you heard Kramer say, "I prepared all the food for this dinner in the shower."? That's about the feeling I have about my tomatoes in the bathroom. But I will carry on. For as long as I can.

And I'll keep in mind that a good run in the pressure cooker will kill all.