A day in our life...: Re-constructing the destruction

It's official! The demolition is complete and we have moved in to the "reconstruction" phase! The rough-in wiring and plumbing are done - and all of the sheetrock is hung with two coats of "mud" on. The grand plan is to have the last coat of mud on this afternoon, sand tomorrow morning and paint tomorrow afternoon! It's possible that they will start on the flooring tomorrow afternoon as well. The cabinets should start going in Thursday and they can measure for the counter tops on Friday. We'll see how closely reality follows the schedule...

And I had some minor construction of my own to do this past weekend. After extending the wall for the kitchen, we decided that the opening between the new wall and the pony wall (behind the TV) was a little too narrow. Not to mention the fact that the pony wall didn't align with the new wall (a product of where the old kitchen tile ended...). So - I decided to move and shorten the pony wall. It wasn't too bad - just remove the drywall from one side - undo the screws holding it in (why did I use so many of those 4 inch screws?), cut off 18 inches, slide it back and screw it down. I had to make a trip under the house to move the electrical wire, and I'll need to make one more trip to finish running the new speaker wire.

But the new drywall is up on the pony wall, and it also has its second coat of mud. We are on the downhill side now! As long as there are no snags...

And when conversation turns to remodeling projects, I'm sure many of you have heard me say, "you wouldn't believe the things I've found" and I'll break into some story (my favorite is the floor joist that was cut and left hanging so that the toilet would fit...). Well - now I have another one to add to the rapidly growing list. Once upon a time, before the microwave was installed (by the previous owners) over the stove, there was a typical range hood. You've seen them - they have nice lights to light up the stove, and a nice fan to get rid of the smoke. Well, except for this one. The vent pipe was nicely ran up the wall where it magically stopped! I can see it now - someone frying up some bacon and the smoke gets started - they turn on the fan - and smoke starts rising up in the second story bathroom! Genius!

Of course, we never had that problem since the range hood had been replaced by an "over-the-stove" microwave. But that has its own issues - they don't get vented outside either. There is a fan in the bottom, and it blows it through a charcoal filter then out the top front (right in your face).

Needless to say - the venting issue was one of our top priorities (along with being able to open the fridge doors all the way - a whole different story...). So now we have a dual blower vent that can move 800 cubic feet of air per minute through a beautiful 8 inch pipe that goes all the way outside. No more smoke in this house!