Can this be the catastrophe?

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So, almost every single home renovation project I’ve ever had has had something go very wrong.

In this one, everything’s been going quite smoothly, except:

  1. The flooring was supposed to arrive on Thursday, then it got delayed to today, now it’s delayed to tomorrow, and the contractors can’t move forward until the flooring is in hand (and they’re getting restless) EDIT: Oh right they did get some painting done (specifically applying a primer coat everywhere)
  2. On Friday I tripped over some of my stored clutter and injured myself worse than I’d realized at first (although not nearly as badly as it could have been!), so now I have impaired mobility and also a rather nasty scrape on my left shin which seems to be slightly infected (which is painful but doesn’t seem like it needs direct medical attention just yet)

Basically, if this can be the worst that happens on this project, I’ll be pretty happy. Thankfully it doesn’t seem like much else can go wrong, unless there’s some awful secret lurking in the laundry room (which is quite possible).

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My kitchen before this mess

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Oh yeah, I neglected to actually take photos of my kitchen in operation before I’d cleared everything out on day 0 (where it didn’t look so bad), but I did just go back through my photos to find some examples of what the kitchen was like under normal circumstances.

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Kitchen Remodel II, day 1

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I’m not sure why I’m calling this “Remodel II” because this is neither the second kitchen remodel I’ve gone through (it’s the fourth) nor the second I’ve had in this house. But it is the second one on this incarnation of my blog, so that’s probably it.

Anyway, today was demolition day.

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Kitchen Remodel II, day 0

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Today I finished clearing out my kitchen getting ready for tomorrow’s demolition. Thankfully I actually had a few days to get it done this time, unlike last time when the contractor only let me know the demolition was going to happen at 5 PM the day before.

Because I had time to prepare it meant I could also actually do it in a semi-organized way. Which is good, because I have way less space for “staging” stuff in this house than I did in my last place.

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Bracing for impact

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My kitchen renovation starts on Wednesday. Thankfully I have plenty of advance warning this time and have started to pack up the stuff in my kitchen; I need to spend a lot more time finishing that up tomorrow, though. I’ve only put a dent in things.

I hope that the end result of this is I’ll finally get rid of a lot of stuff I’m not using actively, or at least figure out a better way of storing the stuff I rarely use.

The new kitchen design is going to be the same basic layout, but there’s a few nice changes that are going to happen. The lower cabinet next to the refrigerator is going to be replaced with a drawer unit, which will be much more useful for me (I’ll probably move my pots and pans in there, and the rarely-used stuff that currently lives in there goes into the sideboard where those were kept). The weird, awkward storage cabinets that flank the stove will become less-weird storage cabinets, with a utility drawer on top (but still a door down below).

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Yet another kitchen remodel

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Very soon I will be remodeling my kitchen.

Why yes, it does seem like just yesterday that I did the last one, but that was actually two years and one house ago! That kitchen was mostly-completed right before the pandemic started, and then finally actually-completed a year later, just before I moved out to my new home. Which is a really stupid pattern, where three times in a row I’ve put off a kitchen remodel until it became unavoidable, and then ended up moving out soon after.

I’m hoping that this will not continue the pattern!

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Kitchen stuff

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While cooking dinner tonight I got a surprising electrical shock off of the handle of one of my pots, which was sitting on a burner which was on but was weirdly not getting hot. So, there’s clearly some awful short circuit in my stove. So it’s time to replace that.

As usual I’ve been wanting an induction stove anyway, but I was hoping to hold off until I could properly redo my kitchen. I sort of had the idea that I’d be reconfiguring it to have a built-in oven and a smaller cooktop in order to have more prep space, since my kitchen is pretty tiny. But I guess it isn’t the worst thing to upgrade the stove before everything else, right?

More importantly, I was hoping to hold off until my condo sold and I had, y'know, plenty of money for this. All the induction ranges I’m interested in cost considerably more than I feel comfortable paying right now. Although there’s one Samsung model that I like and is fairly affordable, but also it has about a 6-week wait right now.

It seems like it’s only one burner that’s shorting out, but that’s one too many for my comfort.

I’m sure I could tear the stove down and find where the electrical fault is, but, jeeze, I’m not all that interested in messing with 240V stuff.

Update: Home Depot had the Samsung in stock and ready for delivery/installation August 10, so I just went ahead and ordered it. Ugh.

Update 2: Oh right August 10 is a busy day for me, I should see if I can reschedule it to the 11th

Update 3: It is rescheduled, yay. Home Depot works, sometimes.

The kitchen remodel curse

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Seattle, 2007: Redid my kitchen, ended up getting a job in San Francisco a month later

San Francisco, 2012: Redid my kitchen, ended up getting a job back in Seattle a month later

Seattle, 2020: got a kitchen remodel mostly done, last little project kept on getting pushed back for a year, and finally got scheduled… for the day before my move to White Center

At least I was able to enjoy (most of) my new kitchen for a whole year this time.

Given the state of the kitchen in my new place I think that will be one of the first things I do once my condo sells, just so that I can possibly experience a whole new form of my life being upended as soon as it’s completed.