Kitchen work

So...no post for a while. I have been working unnatural hours on dinosaurs, have been pretty worn out. I hate fake rubber dinosaurs sooooo much right now.

As far as the house goes, I think we might be venturing into an unexpected project. Here's the thing: We have some items in our "master plan" (yea, right) that we have planned, many of which involve the kitchen.

Add a door - (there is currently no back door to the house...to get to the back yard one has to leave through the front door, and go around the house.) Off that back door we'd like to put a little deck.

Get rid of the horrible stucco walls - whoever sheetrocked the kitchen decided to take joint compound and "stucco" the walls with it. Yea, great idea for a kitchen, since this makes it IMPOSSIBLE to clean. Grease buildup combined with the occasional floating wad of cat hair. Nice.

Install some real lighting - There's just what feels like a temporary setup in there.

Skylights - the kitchen is very dark. There is a peaked roof overhead, just begging for a skylight or two. Then maybe our plants would live a little longer.

Rearrange the layout - The dishwasher is too far away from the sink. The refrigerator door doesn't open all the way because someone installed window moulding after the fridge was put in.
Our pantry has no lights in it, and I'm sick of accidentally making rigatoni when I thought it was penne.

New countertops and cabinets - the countertops are old, ugly and mismatched. The cabinets smell musty and like somebody else's house. You can taste it in the cereal.

Tile the floor - The linoleum is peeling up and it is...well...just plain gross. Even when it has been cleaned it still looks dirty.

The list goes on, but you get the picture. Most of this stuff we can manage to do ourselves, with the exception of adding a doorway to the backyard.

The electrician has now recommended wiring two new circuits in place of the one that has dropped out. It was overloaded anyway (entire kitchen, upstairs bathroom, 2nd bedroom) and wherever it has dropped out, we can't find. It may be somwhere in the ceiling, or it may be in the crawlspace beneath the kitchen to which there is no access ("In which case, we've been had!" says the electrician).

My feeling is, if we're going to be running that much new wiring, it would make it a heck of a lot easier to take the kitchen apart back down to the studs. We want to replace the stucco wallboard and fake wood paneling anyway, why waste time fishing wires up behind walls were going to replace someday anyway...

And if we're taking the wallboard down, that means we're taking the cabinets down. If we're doing that, we might as well rearrange the layout to fit our needs better.

I'm not sure this is the route we're going to go. The electrician is going to stop by once more, and I will see what he thinks. Maybe rewiring the new circuits will be easy with the kitchen as it is, but somehow I don't think so.

Something for us to ponder. I have to admit, I'm already waking up at all hours of the night getting excited kitchen remodeling. We'll see how it goes...

Off to get ready for Megan's party. Happy 30th Megatron!!!!!!!!!