Big Day

And by big day, I mean HUGE. Today we passed the point of no return by pulling the cabinets off of the wall. For some time now, we've been on the fence about this whole "re-doing the kitchen" idea. Despite finally buying cabinets at IKEA last week, we knew we could always return them and nix the plan. As you'll see from the photos, we're now in pretty deep and although we had a few scary moments, we're feeling excited about moving forward.

Here I am unloading the contents of the cabinets. Poor things knew nothing of what was to come.







We had a naive understanding of what it would take to remove these things, as evidenced by the very DIY support structures beneath them and me bracing them against the wall, you know, just in case. In reality, it took another 2+ hours and a lot of sawing and hammering to get them down.


Hands off, ladies (and fellas)! He's handy as hell and he's mine. Andrew Dan-Jumbo's got nothing on Seth. Well, maybe a little something on him -- but really just a little.

Before beginning this little venture, we guessed that the cabinets were original. Halfway through, we surmised that the house was built around them. We couldn't get all three out in one piece, so Seth used every tool he had to cut one off. I should add that everything was balanced on a stack of books at the time.


And, finally, the finished product. Looks better and feels bigger and brighter already!









Don't be fooled by this photo: Seymour did absolutely nothing to help our effort.

But we do need to give a shout out to the two playful guys at the Berkeley Tool Lending Library who rescued us by finding us a circular saw in all of five minutes. Our property taxes at work, folks.

We had a number of surprises today -- too many to go into on a blog post. We stressed a little, learned a lot, and even got a few jokes in. Bottom line: we're a kick-ass team and happy to join forces to fight that stubborn kitchen every step of the way.

(Click here for more photos of the nitty-gritty details.)