Preparations for the Demolition

Packing

I packed all the contents of kitchen cabinets while sifting through things I haven't used in years. Those items went to Salvation Army. The rest, we put in the Dining room.

We put pantry items in coolers to safeguard from ants. We live in an area that makes me feel as if we live on an ant hill. We may not see ants inside the house for months, then something will trigger the ant invasion. Too much rain, too much heat, an ant scout made it back to the hive, I don't know. So to prevent ant terrorism while we are in the throes of remodeling anxiety, we try to protect pantry food items.

The microwave, utensils and paper plates were moved to the bar near the family room as our little temporary kitchen.

Then to make me feel like I was on business travel, I moved my coffee pot to the upstairs bathroom.

We moved as much as possible out of the way of construction crew traffic and put plastic over the living room furniture.


We are now ready. No turning back.

Point of No Return

Demolition-Day 1, Monday

Doug and His crew showed up right on time, 9am Monday morning, July 25th. They were pleasantly surprised that we had done some prep work ourselves. I had already removed all the pots, pans, dishes and utensils from the cabinets along with the food from the pantry. There is a door between the kitchen and dining room. Max closed and sealed that door with good ole duct tape, then wrapped our iron railing with plastic and we both covered all our living room furniture with plastic tarp.

We have travertine floors (Max installed himself!) which they covered with Ram Board. Looks like heavy duty cardboard and solid enough to prevent nicks and damage.

A plastic divider was taped between the work area and the family room. During the construction and for the next 2 months, we have to ease through a zippered opening in the plastic divider to go from the kitchen into the family room. Let’s just say that going through the zippered opening with a basket of laundry was a bit awkward and funny in a way.

When they started with the demolition, I was taking all sorts of pictures of the crew and work in progress. Lauren can understand a little bit of Spanish thanks to a couple of semesters of high school Spanish. She heard them say to each other that they have to be careful because Max is watching and knows his stuff. She also heard them say I was “Senora Photo Loco” aka “Crazy Picture Lady”.

Here’s Doug and Max.

Then here’s the main crew. The main guys are Armando and Edgar. The crew seems to be related. One is the nephew, another is the brother-in-law…you get the picture. Missing from the picture is “Little Gordito”, a short and stout older man who is probably 5 ft tall, 5 ft wide and real a hard worker.

After the preparation, demolition was done in less than a day and the appliances were placed in the garage for Habitat for Humanity to pick up. See album for other pictures of the Demolition.

It is a good thing we both work from home. It is also a bad thing, but I will get to that later. Max periodically checked on them and pointed out that they tore down the wrong wall. They will of course have to put it back up.

It is a bad thing we are home during the construction because the noise and cantina music interferes with my telecom meetings. My desk on the second floor is directly over the kitchen. Thank heavens for the mute button. Besides the noise, the hammering, drilling, and sawing shakes the foundation beneath me. I imagine myself falling through the ceiling if it gets out of hand.

At the end of the first day when they were done, the demolition crew cleaned up and even vacuumed. Under Max’s watchful eyes, he was pleased with the work. I think we are going to really like it.

We wandered through the empty gaping room. It is so much more open than before. We are definitely at the "Point of No Return".

Our alarm system was out of commission because while the crew was tearing out the pantry, one of the lines had to be cut. So we have to call our alarm guy to get that fixed.

Tomorrow the plumber and electrician will be checking the job with our contractor, Doug.