Kitchen Demolition

Today was the first day of full fledged kitchen demolition and the last day with a working sink/counter space. We spent the weekend clearing out cabinets, packing boxes, and figuring out how to convert the laundry room to a temporary kitchen of sorts. There are several things to consider when you are without a kitchen. Here are the lessons so far.

First, it is very challenging to get Anna to wear her shoes when she is at home. Thanks to the construction, barefoot is not an option. Shoes are a must.

Second, it is important to make the Halloween cookies while you still have counter space. That mission was accomplished tonight when the frosting/decorating was completed.

Third, you should really think about the layout of your satellite kitchen. We spent a large portion of the evening running between the laundry room, the basement, and the kitchen trying to make simple things like a sandwich (the lettuce was upstairs, the bread was in the basement, and the meat was in the laundry room). We have decided that there is a good chance there will be some weightloss experienced during the renovation due to the fact that we are constantly running up and down stairs or that we can't locate where we packed the food. Joe put up some temporary shelves and a table, making things a bit more functional.

Fourth, make sure your propane tank on your gas grill is full before the renovation begins. In the case tonight, the propane was leaking and we were forced to use the oven. Of course we turned on the oven forgetting that we had stored our pans in there and then could not find where we packed the hot pads or dishtowels to pull the now hot pans out of the oven.

Fifth, check the location of the smoke alarm. This is especially important if your old kitchen had doors and the new one does not. For tonight's dinner, the smoke alarm went off four times due to steam coming from the oven. Anna, who happened to recently have fire safety lessons at school, was worried the house was catching on fire.

After 1.5 hours, we were finally able to enjoy dinner on the porch surrounded by construction equipment. Tomorrow we look forward to dining in the laundry room using the microwave. Maybe we will even multi-task and do a load of laundry while having dinner.

At least the pumpkin cookies are done.....