The Saga Continues

I bet you thought I'd be done with the kitchen by now. I know I did.

This was such a limited excursion into remodeling. We had to replace the (original, cast-iron, ca. 1920) pipes, but why install the replacements in the same place, the middle of the room?

 As long as we were putting new in, why not put them in in someplace that makes sense? Like an existing perimeter wall. Then just put things back. That's all. No big deal.  I figured 3, maybe 4 weeks, tops. Yet here I am and the carpenters are only just getting here to re-install the last of the cabinets, fit the last of the counters, oh, and fix that 8" by 30" hole in my floor, the one left when the pipes got pulled out.

It's all compromises at this point. Not being a big enough project to demand the full time and attention of any given contractor on any given day -- well, except for the plumbers who got to play with all that brand new copper pipe -- the whole take apart and reassemble bit has been fit in between other, bigger projects from other crankier more demanding, less tolerant clients than I am.  I'm holding hard to the knowledge that once this round is finished, I'll only have to get the drywall people back in to paint and we'll be done, at least as done as I'm willing to take the project for now.

Because there will be more. The floor looks awful.  That's the kindest thing that can be said for it.  It's all going to have to come out, if for no other reason than that it's higher than the rest of the floors. And while we do now know that there is actual hardwood flooring (probably maple, possibly oak) under the ½"+ layers of linoleum tile and sub-flooring, it's damaged and I don't know if it will be salvageable. Even if it is, the floor itself waves like a child's drawing of the ocean, partly due to the steel beam that runs beneath the middle of it.

In order to take the floor out, we have to uninstall the cabinets. The few that we removed amply demonstrated that even heavy duty carpenter's glue does not last forever.  It doesn't even last 30 years.  I'm quite sure that trying to shift the cabinets so we could get all the way down to the original floor would mean I wouldn't have any cabinets left. Since I have no idea what I want to replace them with, this would not be good.

So, all in all, I suppose it's not a bad thing to live with this new floor plan for a while.  I had been thinking we'd shrink the kitchen by a few feet and build in yarn storage a closet.  Their Father, however, has decided he likes the feel of a kitchen this size.

I'll just have to knit faster.

Which reminds me. There has indeed been knitting through all this. In addition to the Grown-up Walt, I have finished a Churchmouse Before and After Scarf in Handmaiden Sea Silk, and a Vitamin D Sweater in Cascade Hertiage Silk and I am two-thirds of the way through the Fine Sand Sweater in Madelintosh Worsted (yes, the original stuff, before it was called Tosh DK), in Tart. The sky has been so uncooperative that I haven't bothered with pictures.That, and I have no idea where the camera is.

Maybe I'll have found it by next time. Maybe next time I'll even talk about knitting.