Monday and Tuesday saw the upper cabinets being hung, and a lot of trim and cleanup work! All the major stuff is in now, and we have been told that all the doors, detail work, and other fiddly bits will be done on Friday. Yay! The new upper cabinets have the odd and wonderful capability of appearing smaller than the old ones yet actually being a bit larger.

A late update covering the progress from last week. The big news is that counter tops have started going on, and the drawers are in! We are really pleased with the textured laminate we picked for the counter tops. The doors and drawers are looking good too.

More cabinets went in on the stove side yesterday. The hole in the middle is where the gas range will be. The tall wood panel towards the left is the frame for the refrigerator. The really tall thing in the far left back, only somewhat visible, is a full height pull out set of spice/can drawers! The window side got some of the counter top applied.

As of the end of last week, the mud and drywall are nearly done! Looks like some sanding and painting and we are ready for cabinets!

The drywall is nearly all hung! I’m told I can do a little painting in a couple days, if I can squeeze it in between finishing drywall and cabinet installation. Speaking of which, I’m also told that our custom cabinetry is now completely constructed and should be arriving in the next day or two. It’s going to start looking like a kitchen from here on!

Ok, so it’s not a “real” use of the new kitchen, but it’s a big deal to us. Over the weekend we made some polenta in the rice cooker to go with some crock pot stew. Unfortunately, running too many things on the same circuit in the room where our temp kitchen is will blow the breaker. So we set up a little table for the rice cooker so we could use one of the new outlets from the kitchen. Small things go a long way when you are in the middle of a remodel!

This week saw a lot of electrical and carpentry work. All the outlets are in, and we have several circuits in the kitchen now rather than the two we had before. The south door (middle-back of the above image) was widened a few inches, and raised in height. Drywall is coming soon!

The end of the first week feels great! The kitchen is much more open with the walls gone/lowered, and the drop ceiling removed. Now we can see the new design start coming together as outlets and switches are moved, new lights installed, and drywall is added. Not much else to say at this point, as we are heading into Christmas this weekend. I’ll post again next week when things start hopping.

Still a lot going on, but the strokes don’t seem so broad. The drop ceiling is gone, and it’s clear how much bigger the space is going to feel. The framing for the removed wall areas is also coming out. It was a great feeling this morning to walk into the living room and see the light coming in from the kitchen window. A lot of new building materials showed up this morning, so it looks like we will see new things going in soon!