Kitchen Makeover: Day 6

30 January 2010 (Saturday)
Day 6

Time flies and today is already Day 6 in my kitchen make-over. As my husband is only free during the weekend, we had to leave the workers this morning to go out and buy lightings and fan for the kitchen.

Today, they completed cementing the wet area, whilst the electrician came to do the wiring for all the electrical points.

Looks like they've not made much inroad on the dry area yet as they wanted to complete the wet area first. And tomorrow, Sunday, the workers take a much-needed break.

And it's gonna be a break too not only for me and my family, but the neighbours too from all the din and the noise. Too bad they would still  have to put up with all the racket for at least another week.

Pics from Day 6

 

Kitchen Makeover: Day 5

29 January 2010 (Friday)
Day 5

Today it's Day 5, and I hope work on my kitchen make-over will pick up pace quickly. Now that the cabinets had been dismantled, I presumed they would start tiling the walls and the floor. And true enough, once the workers came, they started drilling the old wall and floor tiles to make way for the new ones.

And boy! the drilling sound just drove me up the wall, not the kitchen wall, though!!! Ohhh my... I could just go bonkers. And who says, being "Site Supervisor" is easy!!! You'd have to put up with not only the dust that's flying around the house, but the noise too.

And as hunger crept in my poor tummy, I boiled water in my bedroom to make a cup of "sumptous" and Extra delicious Laksa Singapura. Hahhh....that's another plus point of being a Site Supervisor. I get to enjoy a cup of Laksa Singapura right from the comfort of my bedroom while working.....

Later in the evening when I went down to check on the make-over progress, I realised that they hadn't started hacking and drilling the walls and floor in the dry kitchen area. All the din and noise actually came from the wet area. Oh boy!!! And I thought the racket from the kitchen was over. How wrong I was!!!

Pics from Day 5

Kitchen Makeover: Day 4

28 January 2010 (Thursday)

Day 4

If I had thought that the MESS would ease up on Day 4, Boy! Was I wrong!!. The mess got messier now that the contractors had dismantled my cabinets to enable the walls and floors to be retiled.

It's really funny that when we first started on the idea of redoing the kitchen, it was because of 2 utmost reasons: 1/ to enlarge the kitchen somewhat as my current kitchen is narrow and small. 2/ to leave no room for any RODENTS to infiltrate my kitchen ever again as the previous layout and design had given them a field day making my kitchen (in particular the backyard area) their home.

And the initial plan was just to break down the wall separating my dry kitchen with the backyard (I was thankful for this wall) as we had managed to stave away the pesky rodents from infiltrating our dry kitchen as well. And there wasn't any plans at all to redo the wall tiles nor the floor tiles. We were just planning to tile the backyard with similar tiles like the ones in the dry kitchen area. And just tile the walls with white tiles so as not to worry about painting them again in time to come.

But after discussing with Jali, we soon realised that it was virtually impossible to get similar designs for both the floor and wall tiles as those designs are easily more than 20 years old and have long been outdated.

So my husband and I deliberated and decided to change the entire tiles in the dry kitchen to match with the ones in the wet area. And because of this turn of event, the contractors had to dismantle the cabinet to lay the tiles on the wall.

And I reached a crossroad in my kitchen makeover decision. Should I, or should I not retain my top kitchen cabinet which had served me well all these years. Afterall, it's still in fairly good condition. However, it'll not jive at all with my new kitchen concept.  The 'seasoned' and weary look will stick out like a sore thumb and would look out of place. I likened it to having a 90's top with a 'vogue' bottom.

After some deliberation again with my husband, we decided to redo the top cabinet as well to ensure the look and feel is strreamlined with our new kitchen concept. And that's another new thing we added to our kitchen makeover that wasn't in our original plan (the first being the tiles in the dry kitchen).

The workers had left for the day and as I went down to survey the progress, BOY!!! The whole house is really a HUGE MESS. If the last couple of days, it looked like the earthquake had hit us, today, it looked as though the tsunami and earthquake had rolled into one and had hit our entire house. Gosh!!! I wish I could just run away from my messy house and hide somewhere....

Pics from Day 4

Kitchen Makeover: Day 3

27 January 2010 (Wednesday)
Day 3

Today, after preparing breakfast for my son and husband in my bedroom as all the other parts of the house are in a total mess, I went down to pack more stuff from my kitchen cabinets to store away in boxes as the contractors will be dismantling the cabinets to redo the wall and floor tiling.

After completing that, I was planning to go back to sleep before the contractors come around 9:00 a.m. As always, my eyes refused to shut. I always have difficulty falling asleep during the day unless I'm absolutely spent.

I had actually been awake since 3:00 a.m. A sudden noise had jolted me from my sleep, and soon after, tried as I might, sleep eluded me. As has always been the case with me, once I'm wide awake, my brain and mind would wreak havoc on me. My mind started wandering to the things I wanted to discuss with the renovation supervisor (Jali) and trying to imagine my completed made-over kitchen.

I finally feel asleep for about 15 minutes only to hear the azan for Subuh prayers and that's time for me to get up to do breakfast for my family.

And despite having only 1 hour of sleep last night, I'm still very alert and wide awake up to noon. I've been working on the last lap of my "Digital Marketing" book translation since 8:00 a.m until 1:00 p.m when I was called by Jali to discuss further my kitchen made-over. There were a couple more things we needed to sort out.

Oh boy, today is only Day 3. It'll be a couple more weeks before the entire make-over is completed. And till then, we have been tapauing food and making do with whatever there is in the house.

And everywhere is a mess and dusty. I couldn't wait for everything to be normal again. I want a semblance of my old life, where everything is in its place, and everywhere is spick and span again. And the mere thought of the cleaning up and the repacking that I've to do sent a shudder and chill down my spine. And that would be a period which I don't really look forward to, for obvious reasons!!!

Pics from Day 3: Makeover slowly taking shape...

Kitchen Makeover: Day 2

26 January 2010 (Tuesday)

 Day 2