Our garden. It is HUGE.

It's Getting Real, Real Fast

On the morning of July 5th, our kitchen looked like this:

By the end of the day, it looked like this:

That's my brother with Ryan.  Not only did we rip out the upper cabinets, my brother installed new wiring and outlets for the stove and microwave.

In an ideal world, we would have salvaged the upper cabinets and used them in the basement to upgrade our tools/work area.  But, the cabinets were installed not with screws, but with 3" long nails.  That didn't make it easy at all to take the cabinets down.  So, it was a pipe dream, ha!

The next day, with the very able help of our friend Mike, we did this:

Goodbye, Soffit!

Guess what year the kitchen was last remodeled?  We found out when the countertop backsplash was removed, and there was newspaper stuffed behind it.

March, 1972.

So, our cabinets, and that old oven and stove, were installed when Nixon was president.  You know what else happened in March 1972?

The Godfather was released in theaters.

Mayor Richard J. Daley was Boss.

According to Wikipedia, 1972 was a leap year and "Within the context of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) it was the longest year ever, as two leap seconds were added during this 366-day year, an event which has not since been repeated."

But, back to our kitchen.

We have removed the upper cabinets, soffit, and gotten some very important electrical work done.  Next steps: finish said electrical work, and put up drywall over the plaster from the countertop up. 

It was messy, hugely satisfying work.