Back off (at least a bit)!

Demo begins in earnest this week starting today as workers removed the siding on the back of the house where the new framing will attach to the existing structure. Friday, workers will gut the kitchen and remove the current exterior wall and second back door.

The new back wall extend from what is now on the left of the second back door (the blue one, covered by plastic because it’s supposed to rain tonight, in the left-hand photo) squared into the area right next to the main back door (the white screen door, in the right-hand photo). Tomorrow, the builders will construct this new frame. On Friday, the rest of the back wall, the door, and everything else in the kitchen will be gutted. (In case you haven’t seen a previous post, the dark blue tarp is protecting the new, and still open, foundation.) With interior demo imminent, it’s time to document the kitchen! You can see what it looks like here.

The current kitchen cabinets and doors, which are quite old (although we have no idea HOW old), have many distinctive squeaks and squeals such that sitting in rooms far away, we can tell which door or drawer is in use. Those will go away with the demo Friday, so I’m documenting them here. This is the signal that the utensil door is being opened or closed:

And this is the pantry door opened and closed:

We also have a new electrical box–and tower!?!–moved from the back of the house to the side. This monstrosity (below) is because we have to increase the power to the house. Even if we were not extending the back, this new power source could not have remained hidden in there because of the structure of the second floor and roofline. It’s unsightly, but what can one do? Perhaps we’ll find a way to mitigate the ugly. Suggestions welcome in the comments!

To get ready for all of this work, we have to–pronto–get the basement ready to serve as our kitchen (AND laundry room), and pack up everything in the kitchen and powder room. Dan is also moving our teak patio furniture from the basement to the garage to free up space to store antique doors and windows. Unfortunately, we can’t put it on the patio because that is now a construction zone.

And as he pulls out the first chair, the basement gets another water backup.

Isn’t this fun? (Yes!)