Bloomin' Idiots

That'd be and some of the flowers. The flowers for starting the process of blooming a couple weeks ago in the warm days we had before winter returned. Me for deciding to tackle more plumbing work than I needed to today.

space...the kitchen's frontier

This week started off well. With the clock ticking, I got an early start yesterday (thanks to Star; if she can't sleep because of some perceived problem, why should anyone?) K headed off to work and I ran the dishwasher for the last time. While it was running, I hung plastic in the doorways and moved the last items out of kitchen. As soon as it was done, I started removing the cabinets and the remainders of the walls. It was messy but fun work. I alternated between the sawzall and a hammer and prybar. I'd planned to have the mess cleaned up by the time K got home from work, but when I looked at the clock it was 5PM and I still had a lot of debris to remove. I was still hauling stuff when she got home, and did so for a while after. I took a shower and was in bed before 9PM, and asleep not long after.

After 11 hours sleep, I awoke today and got a much slower start. In order to remove the lower cabinets, I needed to remove the plumbing. After K left for lunch, I turned off the water, and started chopping pipes. And now we come to my moment of idiocy. Rather than just sweat some 1/2" caps on the stubs of where the kitchen supply lines had been, I took a look the mess of 3/4" and 1/2" and tees and such where the plumbing for the addition had been tied in and galvanized pipes replaced, I decided it was time to clean it up. So I cut out the mishmash and then spent the rest of the afternoon cutting copper pipes and sweating fittings. I only had one failure, but with plumbing that takes a while. The results are great: no mishmash, 3/4" all the way to the master bath, and I think I fixed the last of the water hammer by securing the new pipes better. But it took me all afternoon instead of the less than an hour that capping the stubs would have. I did get the drain pipe removed and capped, and the old dishwasher pulled, so there was some visible evidence for today's work, but I'm feeling almost as tired tonight as I was last night.

Tomorrow I'll remove the sink and take out the lower cabinets, and remove the last bits of wall. Time permitting, I'll start ripping up the vinyl flooring, too. I did a little test strip, and it shouldn't be too bad. It's glued to 1/4" plywood instead of directly to the subfloor, so it comes up with out leaving adhesive gunk behind. The bad news is that I'll have to replace some of the subfloor, because I've already seen from below what bad shape it's in.