And the demo begins!

Last week was a whirlwind of activity! Escrow closed on Tuesday and I got one set of keys, we got permits from the city for ALL our work (we hadn't provided the electrical plans, so this was a nice bonus), and started demo yesterday!

Here's a before photo of the kitchen. The only improvement in this image is that there are no rotting bananas on the counter!

As the guys started wielding their hammers, dust started floating around the kitchen, as you can see by the white blurry specs in the after image here.

They took out the fridge and cabinets above first, then worked their way around the room.



Soon the sink was coming out. This was time stamped on my camera at 11:45...they started at 8:30! It's amazing how quickly and easily things come out.

Here lie the remains of the appliances...(in the background you can see the Budget truck we rented to pick up Pete's stuff and the Ikea cabinets, which I'll get to later).

The fridge is sitting in front of the washer and dryer in the soon-to-be former laundry area.

So, after all the fun at the house, we still had to go to Pete's to pick up his mattress and other items that couldn't fit in my car. And while we had this truck we were planning on getting all the kitchen cabinets from Ikea. So off we went to Ikea.

On our last visit to Ikea a couple of weeks ago, we finalized our cabinet layout and put in a draft order so we thought this pick-up visit would go quickly. For the in-store style we selected, you buy and take-away the items that day. So, down we go to the register, get a huge, long receipt detailing all the items we just bought, and head over to the "Furniture Pick-Up" area. And due to our large order, the nice man said it'll take about a half hour to get everything.

Yeah. TWO hours later they finally call us. Big winner! Our order filled 7 carts full, so one at a time we started loaded the truck.

But we hit a hitch. The first was that they couldn't completely fill the order. Two of our items were not in store and we would either have to come back at a later unknown date or go to another Ikea to get them. So, while Pete diligently loaded the first cart, I sat with the return guy to work out getting the items from the Hayward Ikea.

So on we go with the loading.

Then came the second hitch. On the second cart, I noticed that one of the large pieces looked darker than the Birch cabinets we'd ordered. We reviewed the inventory list and verified that everything indeed said "Birch." But this was definitely not Birch. It was more like an Oak. So, I marched back in to the store. One of the sales women came out to look and agreed that indeed it was their Oak veneer and not the Birch. We realized that the box had actually been damaged and the label had come off, so was incorrectly tagged.

So back to the same return guy to return this one and place the order at the Hayward store.

And back to the truck. This is what the load looked like when we were done. We got to the store at 4 o' clock. We drove out of there at 7:34pm.

And on to Pete's! We filled the rest of the truck with as much stuff from Pete's apartment as we could, then headed down to Sunnyvale to unload. We filled the garage up, loaded some things in to the room above the garage, then returned the truck and headed to my place to crash. We were in bed at 11:45. That was one looooong day.

Construction will commence on Thursday after the tenting is finished. Besides the little bathroom wall, the linoleum in the laundry area will come up and a crawl space access in the closet (soon-to-be washer and dryer closet) relocated to the pantry (soon-to-be coat closet). Then I think the electrical guy and plumber come to do their work.

Here's a link to more demo pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/oliviaryu77/Demo?authkey=j7WFse_oKV4&feat=directlink