Remodel Underway...what a mess!!

Alistair eating his breakfast in a new seat...a VERY special occasion!

For those of you who don't know, we have decided to gut our kitchen and remodel it into something we like. Our existing kitchen is small, poorly lit, has very little counter space for working on and has bad storage options. To get right to the point it sucks and we have hated it since the first time we ever tried to do anything on a large scale, like a party or open house. We thought about selling the house now and getting into something larger. Eventually we are going to out grow this house and will need more space, so it made sense. However the market sucks right now and trying to unload a house would be very difficult and a financial strain. So we thought we would fix what we didn't like, namely the kitchen, and get a few more years out of the place while waiting for the market to get better. In addition to gutting the kitchen and getting new appliances, countertops and cabinets, we are doing new and MORE lighting as well as putting in hardwood floors throughtout the entire main floor. We are very excited that this project we have been talking about for so long is underway. The walls between the dining room and kitchen are gone, the cabinets are all down and the wiring has been completed for all the new lights. Right now Bill, our contractor, is patching and texturing all the holes so that we can get the kitchen painted over the weekend. We are leaving a week from tomorrow to go see the Sandholms (yippee!!) in Minnesota for a week and our goal is to have everything torn out and have the space ready to go so when we return we are ready to install and put everything back together again! Here are a few before and during shots to give you an idea of what is going on: