Blah Blah Blog: The Bend: Begin Again

Now that all the walls were down and our little house had been stripped down to its bare bones, we were able to start fresh. I think that our sad story was really a blessing in disguise, because now the walls and ceilings are so straight and fresh and new. Our contractor for this project is Kane Overstreet Construction. The brawn and unbelievable talents (and patience) of his crew, especially master carpenter Buddy, are amazing. Whenever I say, "we did" in this post, what I mean is "they did". And they have done an awesome, awesome job.

We were pleased with the decision to take out half the wall between the living room and kitchen. It was an adventure finding appliances that would fit and our dear contractors have been so patient through our many decisions and re-decisions. They are storing up crowns in heaven.

One decision was where to put the fridge. The original place was on that small wall between the pantry (left) and laundry room (right). But I didn't want the refrigerator to be stuck out into the already small kitchen. So the second place was in that corner between the laundry room and cabinets, where the old water heater used to be. But that would have required a New-Zealand made counter-depth refrigerator which was the ONLY one that was shallow enough and narrow enough to fit in that space. And it cost about half a zillion dollars. The third option was in the corner cater-cornered (is that redundant?) to option 2. But seeing as how Kenneth had moved the electrical and Carpenter Buddy had moved the ice-maker plumbing from option 1 to option 2 and back to option 1, AND because Buddy had taken down the upper cabinets to make room for a refrigerator and put them back up when we decided against option 2, I decided I better nix option 3. So we are back to option 1, original location between the laundry and pantry.

Another do-over was the half-wall. The first height of the half-wall was about 4 inches lower than it is now. We went to pick out appliances and no-one makes electric ranges with the knobs not on a really high thingy in the back. So the oven would have come up above the wall height, so Buddy put the four inches back on top so we wouldn't have to special-order a range.

Here's Kenneth pulling up the rest of the yucky kitchen tile. Since so many cabinets were torn down when the half-wall was made in the kitchen, I am so thankful for this little odd-closet-turned-cool-pantry.