Turning a Corner

If I were still in math classes, I'd say that the slope of the function of our kitchen progress just turned from negative to positive. We have switched directions. In plainer English, we have exchanged demolition for new construction.

Wait? You didn't hear me? NEW CONSTRUCTION!

It wasn't the most exciting new construction, but I'm not going to let that dampen my mood. It was the first.

The two of us dug out half of the gravel in the kitchen. Once the grunt work was done, I left the fine leveling and raking to Troy.

I also left him to himself as he was figuring and calculating and muttering while trying to figure exactly how far down he had to go to make the slab thick enough and make the subfloor line up with the eastern half of the floor. (Or whatever part of that he decided to pick as "the" height. It's not like it is very level.)

There is a 3 inch drop from the level of the floor in the main part of the kitchen to the western edge of the porch. That was good when it was a porch and rain needed to drain away from the house. It's not so good when you want to make it into a kitchen floor. Unlike the people who did the original remodel, we plan to deal with this slope and have a kitchen floor that doesn't make you feel like you're sailing the high seas.

Troy was hoping to have the concrete ready to pour with me this weekend. Bad news? I am gone this weekend. :( So that may be a bit of a delay. In the meantime he got exactly one stake in the floor for the forms.

Kitchen Gravel Pit

Yup, the "strip mining"'s done and the gravel pit's been completely revealed. All of the concrete slab is removed.

Troy's been working hard and without any help from me. I got a cold soon after the one work night I did put in and it rendered me quite useless.

I did put in my time on Saturday, however, when I spend two hours at Lowe's putting together a cabinet package. I now have an idea of what the cabinets are going to cost and some nice printouts of what it could look like. (My graph paper drawings were gratifyingly accurate, but the new printouts have actual door styles drawn in, etc.)

I also have something new to obsess about. I finally fell asleep going over every detail of our conversation/plan. And I woke up this morning still thinking about it. Little details to add; things he put in that I don't think we need. The fact that I made no provision of where to put outlets in the island. You know, things like that.

We are still a long ways from cabinets, but that hasn't sunk in. In a day or two I will crash on that realization. In the meantime I am happily obsessed with the idea of actually having cabinets in the kitchen. Wow. That will be amazing.

While I'm writing, why don't I share a few pictures from the "Blizzard of 2011," as it was so quickly dubbed.

We had snow blown in the cracks of two doors and a window. Here's the front door:

We knew this door was bad, but this was the first time we had anything like this. It was a very strong wind. And very small pellet-y snow.

I don't think we got huge amounts of snow from the storm, but we did get very large drifts.

One day I ploughed my way through a drift in the driveway when I came home but by the time Troy came home a couple hours later, he couldn't make it through. It had to be over the hood of his car.

Thank you, snow blower. (I had to shovel a path to get wood before he got home--that was some heavy snow!)

All for now. Half time's over and I'm going to get back to the game...