Kitchen progress

My sister Carolyn took down the first cabinet weeks ago. Now it's all cleared out.

I thought it would be hard to see something you spend so much money on torn apart, but it feels good. I'm so excited to make it better.
This is a rough sketch from Ikea of what it will look like. It's a similar layout to the old kitchen but the cooktop moved to the left and became a range. We didn't have to move plumbing or gas lines.

We think it will be another week before we can install the cabinets. First is drywall and paint.

This is a kitchen that we have always liked. Unfortunately it's a little bit cost prohibitive. We will be getting white cabinets but we hope to warm up the space with flooring and paint.

Hall cabinets

The house has these cabinets in the hall, main bath, and laundry room. They are all stinky and I'm concerned about the hallway ones especially because there will be linens in there. I have to clean it, prime it, then paint it. And hope that it smells good. Any thoughts on how to keep a linen closet smelling fresh?

I think the walls in the hall will be kept white and the cabinet I'd like to pop. I'm thinking orange or a celery color, light blue maybe?

Main bath coming along

The gray tub had to go. We bought a new cast iron tub Friday night and Rick met the plumber Saturday morning to install it. We also had to decide what type of shower system we were going to use. The old tub had the hot and cold knobs with a third knob in the middle to turn on the shower. These days it seems most common for people to use the single knob that turns the water on full pressure and then you can adjust the temperature. This is a lot easier for kids to use.

I thought it was odd that you have no control over volume. The house we are in now is like this, and it feels like pin pricks. Out of 20-30 showers at home depot there was only one that had a secondary dial for volume, but it was in that oil rubbed bronze stuff. We had to special order one in chrome.

It's odd to me that in California where we are constantly asked to conserve water...why are there no choices to do so in your shower? Am I missing an option here? Can you have one handle in the middle and then buy a shower head that controls volume? If you know, please leave me a comment.

Comments

I forgot that Rick and I elected to moderate comments. I just noticed that I had 18 to moderate, I kept wondering why Rick was the only one leaving a comment. Ha. Rookie move on my part. Fellow bloggers, is it common to moderate? What do you recommend?

Day 11

This was demo weekend. The whole kitchen came out and half the bath. This is the main bathroom. The tile is really stubborn because it's got a wire mesh thing behind it holding it all together. The tub is a light gray and we're hoping to salvage it and then put in white tiles around it up to the ceiling. I'll try to post on the kitchen in the next day or so.

Location

Many have asked where is this house? It's in Westminster, the city with the street signs in Old English. We bought this house as a for-sale-by-owner. We bought it for several reasons:
It was the right price
In mostly original condition
had a 4th bedroom to make into a studio
across the street from a really nice elementary school
near the beach
near Rick's work

The downsides are:
on a busy street
previous owner smoked

We've owned this house for 7 days. We wanted to be in there April 1st. I thought I'd do a count down to the day, but that would kill me. Too much stress. However I would like to know how many days it takes to make it move-in ready. Hopefully not too many.

Naughty knotty pine

This is the existing kitchen. It has some problem spots, but all in all it's in pretty good condition. I've been having some anxiety about getting all this renovating done so we can move in April 1st. The main thing that has to happen is pulling out this kitchen so we can get the area prepped for the new one. So on Monday morning I listed this knotty pine kitchen on craigslist as FREE, thinking maybe some kind person would want it so badly that they'd come take it out for me. 2 minutes after I posted a guy called and wanted the cooktop. Then the calls wouldn't stop until after the 6th one in 20 minutes I changed the posting to email only and after 35 emails, I deleted the post. I thought I had the man, he wanted it but then of course (in craigslist fashion) decided he didn't. Several people wanted it for their cabin in big bear.

The first reason it's going is because this house was occupied by a smoker the second is it's organized badly. It's all got to go. It's leaving this friday and saturday. If anyone wants it I can hold off on the new posting on craigslist that will go up as soon as we have it down. Just let me know.

Chocolate treasure

Rick and Jorge pulled out all the carpet on Saturday and look what was underneath. It is riddled with staples and of course the tack strips but, we're going to try a salvage something. Maybe just the entry or pull them up and put them in the 4th bedroom (the studio office). In doing some research we've come across a lot of great blogs and websites devoted to renovating your postwar tract home. This one takes the cake so far. Her kitchen is really amazing. But I'm getting way ahead of myself. The kitchen will come later.

It's officially ours

We got the keys to our new home yesterday. It's a 1600 square foot, 4 bed 2 bath home. We'll be spending any spare moment cleaning and prepping for all the fixing that needs to be done before we move in. Here's a rough list:

1. acoustic ceilings removed (even the stuff in the closets, why is it there?)
2. painting
3. new moldings
4. new carpeting and flooring
5. main bath re-do
6. kitchen re-do

We are attempting most of it ourselves, and when it gets tricky we'll call in the professionals. But we are in need of advice too, so I'll be posting questions here and there. keep watch for a "which kitchen" posting soon.

First question which doesn't even need to be asked...Do we keep the keychain?

Isn't she lovely...

one day she will be. We are closing soon.