The Hidden Treasures (and/or problems) of Rehabbing

See the cabinet to the left of the stove?  It's GONE.  

We found things when we pulled the cabinet out.  We found a spatula!

What appears to be a flattened penny:

And a perfectly preserved prayer card.

So, here's the problem, or problemzzz.

When our current cabinets were installed, they didn't install the hardwood flooring all the way to the wall.  So the floor isn't level.  Thanks geniuses!  

I mean, it's cool seeing the original hardwoods underneath our current flooring, but why did they do this?  What were they thinking?  As a temporary solution, we cut pieces of the old cabinets to fit and make the floor a *little* more level.  

There's also the problem of the window that used to be in the kitchen:

It's a bit of a mess, and will need to be re-sealed.  Also, it appears the current walls in the kitchen are plaster (our house was built in 1911, so this is not surprising), and we're not sure what to do about that. Do we knock down the plaster and replace the drywall?  Do we dry wall over the plaster?  

Also you'll see an outlet to the right of the old window.  It's too far for the new oven to plug in.  So that will have to be addressed as well.  Thank goodness my brother is an electrician.

Finally, the gas line is too tall for our new oven.  The main line will need to be turned off, and the current pipe replaced with a shorter one (as well as a new shut off and flex line put on).  Thankfully my dad know how to do this.  

Yesterday I had some time to kill so I worked on removing the tile from the backsplash:

Some of it came up very easily, and others were one-tiny-tile-at-a-time, hand-cramping sticklers.  I made a small dent.

I also poked around the soffit.  I've been very curious to see if they drywalled over the woodwork of the door to the upstairs, or the other way around.

Disappointingly, they chose to cut the wood to fit the soffit.  Dammit.

This can be fixed, we can have a piece cut to fit the part that's missing, and stain and secure it to the wall, but still.  It's a bummer.

But it's not ALL bad news, guys!  We made progress, which is good.  We identified problems, which is good.  We are devising solutions, which is good.  Aaaand, we bought another cabinet--this time the big pantry cabinet from Ikea, which will go right next to the stove.  Yay!  We only have one cabinet left to buy, the small one that will fit over the microwave.  We have just about all of our major purchases complete...although I should probably look into how much drywall costs...and figure out how to install it.