Throwing a kitchen off a balcony...

In recent weeks, we've been talking about the demolition and reconstruction of the bathroom. Simultaneously, I'm working on the upstairs kitchen.

I mean, workshop. I mean, master bedroom.

Needless to say, this room has gone through a few lives already since I bought Isthmus House last May. When the house was a duplex, it was a kitchen and when we moved in I made it my workshop almost immediately.

A while back, I had the house looked at by my realtor, Tobi, to get a better idea of how restoration efforts were coming from a value perspective partway through the process. One of the things she felt I should prioritize was removing the kitchen to make it a bedroom. It made sense since, if something did come up, it would probably be challenging to sell a house with three bedrooms, two kitchens and one living space.

Once I made the decision to pull it, we got right to work pulling out the range and gas line and capping off the plumbing.

Plumbing and gas lines gone, we could get to work pulling out the cabinetry. The goal was to salvage them but it turned out that they weren't particularly well built but they were built right in place.

Since they weren't going to leave in one piece, we got to work dismantling them with some friends who agreed with chucking building materials over a balcony sounded like fun.

After much prying and minimal anything else, we ended up with one very, very torn up wall and one partly torn up wall and a giant wood pile in my backyard (because, really, we did throw everything over the balcony).

Now, normal people would probably say, "Great! Cabinet demo's done - let's rebuild!" An old house person might say, "Uh, what's that green tile?" To which I would respond, "Wait 'til next week and you'll find out!"