01 May 2008

Kitchen: dismantled

Empty kitchen cabinets with most doors off now

This is the time we have been looking forward to and dreading at the same time. Over the past couple of days, we have taken a lot of the kitchen apart in preparation for repainting the room. Repainting is a euphemism. First, we have to wash the walls, patch some cracks in the plaster, scrape off the old paint, and then sand walls and ceiling. Only then will we be able to paint.

Our temporary kitchen

We've set up some essential kitchen items in the salle de séjour, which is the dining area + the sitting room. Essential appliances include the coffee maker and the microwave. We'll be eating dinners out of the freezer and zapping our food all next week. I've been saving leftovers for a while now: some lasagne, cassoulet, choucroute garnie, chili con carne, and so on.

Those red maple trees off the front deck

The weather is supposed to be really nice for the next couple of days, so we'll probably spend time working out in the yard and garden. The kitchen will have to wait. And maybe we'll be able to do some barbecuing for the first time this year.

View on a gray day from my favorite chair in the living room

Company is coming May 14, so we will do our level best to finish at least the major scraping, patching, sanding, and painting work before then. We can do touch up and detail work in June, when things settle down again. Over the past five years, we have refurbished two bedrooms, two bathrooms, our big living room, and the downstairs entryhall of this house. We have become experts at it. But we dreaded doing the kitchen because cooking is such an important thing in our daily life.

A year ago we had a major leak in the kitchen ceiling
during a heavy rainstorm. Nice color, eh?


The dreary institutional greyish beige paint will be gone soon, replaced by bright yellow on the walls and white on the ceiling. That's a nice prospect.

7 comments:

  1. I wish you a lot of energy for the job to come! You're lucky to have nice weather. This morning doesn't look too bad here but I haven't watched the weather report, maybe we're in for a nice day!

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  2. Hope you'll enjoy your work...just keep your eye on the goal!

    Have fun!

    Meilleurs voeux!!

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  3. It's going to be beautiful! I'm looking forward to the pictures of your completed Mexican Yellow kitchen.

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  4. My mother always said that the travelling is as good as the arriving. I hope it applies to redoing one's kitchen! Bon courage!

    Us, Canadians, are rightly proud of our maple trees. Your photo is splendid.

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  5. That combination of the lime coloured weeping ?poplar and the cherry coloured maples is gorgeous. It looks like a Chelsea Show Garden! Good luck with the kitchen renovations.
    Susan

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  6. Wow, I'm really impressed with all the renov work you've done. There's no way I'd be able to do even half of that (not to mention I'm really bad at decorating). I hope you'll put some pics up once it's finished!

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  7. Susan, thanks for the ID work on flowers. I'm learning a lot.

    Sam, you can be sure I or Walt will be posting some pictures.

    BV, Claude, we are trying to be energetic and organized. But it's more fun to be outdoors right now rather than in the kitchen breathing dust.

    Chrissou, I think the color is going to look good. And we have actually started working! Amazing, no?

    Claudia, we love those maple trees more than about any others on the property. Maybe we have some Canadian blood in us. Walt's from Albany NY, after all, and I think there are a lot of Broadhursts like me in Ontario.

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