ANATOMY OF A KITCHEN RENOVATION

 

As you can see, the track lighting on the ceiling still hasn't been installed yet. (Maybe next week?) Nor do you see how the rest of the one-bedroom apartment looked, where the new appliances were parked in the living room, and everything was covered in plastic like a haunted house attraction at a particularly cheesy amusement park.

Here's a close-up of the floor when the boards were pulled up.

The previous renovation was done in 1932. We know this because of what the workers found down there.

The pack of Twenty Grand was copyrighted 1932; the cap from the bottle of Ruppert Knickerbocker Beer was right next to it. Cork is glued on to the inside of the cap, a technique still used when I was growing up. These two items might explain way our subfloors had been slightly crooked. The workers 90 years ago were too busy smoking and drinking to do the job right. 

When the cabinets were brought in, I opened the door as far as I could. Due to the covering on the floor in the entryway, I really had to pull hard. So hard, the bottom hinge came off.

As Fred Mertz would growl, "Oh, swell!" Luckily, our superintendent knew a fixit guy who came over within a half hour. He are the original 1880s screws he pulled out.

The guy was kind of blown away by their size; screws in door hinges are no longer this small. In fact, he replaced these four with five of these monsters:

A guy could get hurt handling these things. At least I could. 

I hope to resume semi-regular blogging when my mind has fully returned to life as it now is: a clean kitchen with new appliances, cabinets, and a solid floor that doesn't squeak and creak like it does in the rest of the apartment. 

Does that mean there's another renovation for the living room and bedroom in our future? Only if you pry this six-inch screw from my cold, dead hand first. 

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