The Evolution of Our Kitchen

Here's a little story in pictures of our kitchen progress.
Todd started the day after Christmas by preparing to take the soffit out above the cupboards. Here's what it looked like before.


Now he's getting ready to go for it.



It was during the process of removing the soffits with Mike Hales' favorite tool, the Sawzall that we learned that it is named for what it does. It went right through the water pipes hidden behind the soffits like a hot knife through butter.
This is after that little episode. Fortunately it went through right near a joint and was quickly repaired.



Notice the single light in the middle-ish part of the kitchen. These pictures look remarkably bright and light. It is a bright day outside, and the white cupboards bring such a brightness to the room, actually a big seller of the house for me, all the brightness. But, when the sun went down and the kitchen light was the only source of light, it was frustratingly shadowy, so I made a request. I asked Todd to give me more light. May I take this opportunity to say, he delivered! Later pictures will bring that story.


Then Todd invited some very dear, and patient friends over to help put in the can lights and to work the electrical for several other uses. It was a long day, and I don't think I took a single picture. But this is how it looked when they were done.

Thank you shout out to Mike Hales, Daymon Leonhardt, David Hirschi and Paul Schramm.

Then it was my turn to help a little bit. With the help of sweet friends, I painted the kitchen and hallways. Here's Miss Steady-Hand Suzanne Leonhardt with her son "Love-I" (Levi) the day we painted the kitchen.


Time to tear out the floors and cupboards.





Time to start putting in the floors, but the day that was supposed to happen, this is where Todd was, very sick!


So a couple of days later...

We learned we had to tear out the subfloor and replace it as well. The reason for that was that wood floors should have plywood, not partical board under them due to the threat of moisture getting in there and them basically exploding the floor out. This added a few days that we hadn't planned, and a lot of effort.

Then we finally got to the beautiful stuff. I wish I had a picture of the big group of men who came over all day Friday and Friday night, the men who came back on Saturday and continued to help evenings throughout the next week. What a blessing they are to us!

Thank you shout out to Mike Hales (resident expert!) Bishop Workman (who just must not have had enough to do at work and Church!), Monte Searle, Paul Larsen, Val Jones,

In the nick of time the floors were ready in the kitchen for our Amish friends to bring in the newly constructed custom cupboards. Irvin Bylar (center) was our builder, and I cannot remember the names of the young men who are on his team, but they came in on a Tuesday morning at 8:00 a.m. and worked all day,


leaving us with beautiful new cupboards by 4:00 p.m.



A WONDERFULLY NOISY DAY
Now here is an eventful day I wanted to document. It was a Saturday in early March, as I recall, and the activity in the home was unbelievable. At one given time we had Todd putting the final pieces of the floor in the front hall, using a very big and noisy air compressor that kept kicking on, and every time he would hit a nail it would blast a big bang.



He would run from doing that out to the garage where he would use the saw to cut a piece of flooring to fit a small space. That was a very noisey saw.


In the living room (right next to the noisy front hall) Carley was taking a voice lesson with our sweet friend Julie Schindler. They were working on some great, loud, peppy songs, so lots of fun sound coming from there.



In the basement Brigham was practicing with his friends from his percussion group "Resonators" for a talent show, so the three of them are banging away on their snair drums.



And behind them Grant is playing on the Wii, I'm sure full volume.



I noticed all of this as I was sitting in the family room folding laundry, and loving the activity and productivity and noise going on all over the place!


Granted, I wouldn't want it to last all day, but what a joyful and hilarious hour!

We enjoyed (okay, endured) three weeks without a kitchen sink or countertops. And then the quartz countertop installers came.


Just one last step remains in this project: the tile backsplash. But we just ran out of steam. So I hired it out. It should be in next week or so, and I will blog a picture of the new kitchen then.

I can honestly say that I have much more appreciation for every feature, nook and corner of this kitchen than if someone else would have come and done it for us. I absolutely love it, and am so grateful that we could do this!!! I am especially humbled and grateful for such good, true, hard working friends and the huge support we have had for the past four months!