A little history

We've been thinking about renovating for several years now but just never got it off the ground.  We particularly hated our kitchen.  The wallpaper in there is absolutely horrendous and there is severe lack of counter and cabinet space.  In addition, the wall oven was really, really small as you can see in this pic.

Hate the wallpaper and kitchen configuration!!

So back in the Feb/Mar timeframe, we decided to do something to the kitchen.  Andy had already been playing around with the IKEA kitchen planner to get ideas for the layout of the kitchen so we had a good idea what we wanted to do there.  Basically we wanted to combine the kitchen and breakfast room into one larger kitchen with a lot more cabinets and counter space.

This will be absorbed into the kitchen moving the sink and adding a line of cabinets along the wall to the right.

We have also been purchasing new appliances over the last couple of years.  Replaced the fridge and dishwasher a year or so ago.  We purchased a new free-standing duel fuel, two-oven, 42-inch range in anticipation of remodeling the kitchen.  That went where the big hole is between the pantry and wall oven.  Andy had to remove some cabinets to fit it in. 

We really liked the IKEA cabinets for the price.  So during the spring IKEA 20% off sale, we purchased all of the kitchen cabinets as well as the granite countertops saving a couple thousand dollars.  Unfortunately the cabinets have been sitting in their flat packs taking up half of the garage (or as Andy calls it, his workshop) since then.  The granite folks have been patiently waiting for our call to measure and install the granite.  At least we knew what we wanted to do with the kitchen.

However, we also wanted to add more space and open up some of the area a little bit.  So, we figured to explore what could be done with the house to get it to where we really wanted.
We hired an architect, made many iterations of the plans, had several rounds of bidding from contractors and finally hired the contractor.  More on all of this in other posts.

In essence, we are gutting the middle of the house, reconfiguring those rooms, enclosing the patio and adding a second story where we will have an exercise room, a large storage area and a 300 square foot office overlooking the backyard and pool.

The "party patio" will be enclosed and opened up to the kitchen and the new dining room.

The second story will be above the patio extending to the center ridgeline.

Months later, we are finally getting the project underway.  We have cleared out all of the affected rooms, moved the boxes and furniture to storage, set up a temporary kitchen in the current office and re-routed coax and ethernet lines in the attic.  Monica needs her TV and Andy needs his internet connection!!

The not-yet-organized temporary kitchen in a corner of the current office.

Today is the first day of demolition with the electrician coming out to turn off electricity to the areas, removing fixtures and re-routing electrical lines to make sure we don't lose electricity in the few rooms that we have left to occupy.