Spoiler alert.

Here's a photo list of a few things we've already decided on for the kitchen:

IKEA Domsjö double bowl sink.

Barn Light Electric Flush Mount Warehouse Pendant, yellow with galvanized cage.

Found this picture on www.ikeafans.com. That's the sink in action, and just to the right of it, the integrated dishwasher I want from Ikea.

This is the color swatch for the Paperstone counter top we're going to have installed. We want to go with something in the aesthetic family of a biology station from high school.

That wraps up the kitchen teaser... Bathroom teaser to follow soon!

Drywall and Durock.

I think this house will be a home when it has running water and a toilet to flush. We're getting there...

Starting to look like a kitchen.

Drywall went up this weekend. The kitchen is really starting to come together. It's even easier to picture the finished product at this point. I think we both have such peace of mind having seen the new electrical and plumbing and insulation before the drywall went up. But now we have the itch to redo all the walls, thinking that if the kitchen and bath were not insulated, the rest of the house probably isn't either. One step at a time...

(don't mind the creepy eyelashes...)

This is the west wall in the kitchen, there used to be a window straight ahead. I didn't have the lights on in the house, and it was dusk outside, so it seems pretty dark. To combat the cavelike feeling, we're going to replace that door with a half glass door. I think that will really seal the farmhouse style!

Keeping her warm.

The kitchen and bathroom have insulation. The drywall comes next, then the cabinets, toilet and sinks. We're only about 3 weeks out from our move, and it's hard to picture us in this house in just 3 short weeks. Don't think about it...

The drywall is ready to go. Hopefully it goes up this weekend. 

Open floor plan.

We made the decision to open the arch between the kitchen and dining room to 6 feet. If you'll recall from an earlier post, there was an arched 3 foot opening originally. This is going to allow us to connect with the living room and dining room while we're cooking. It's also going to show off the kitchen, which I know is going to be my favorite room in the house for a long time...

Bare bones.

We have the rare and amazing opportunity to see Camp Kimball's structure. It's amazing to me that so much care was put into building houses 100 years ago. So much new technology exists, which does make a lot of homes better, but sometimes you don't need to fix something if it's not broken. We're so thankful that the previous owners didn't decide to make any serious structural changes to the house, because these walls were built to last. The first floor bathroom really shows that off.

We're having the window replaced with vinyl and frosted glass. At the very least we have the resources to put windows in bathrooms that won't rot. There's a sneak peek of some DIY plumbing over there on the left. The PVC pipes are the newer ones that the previous owners must have installed themselves. Our contractor explained that the way it was rigged, there was no proper drainage for the tub, so a good amount of water was draining into the basement bathroom wall. Good thing there used to be a hideous blue tub there, or we may not have wanted to rip it out to find the bad plumbing job.

Here's a close-up of the bathroom wall.

Another amazing new technology we get to add to the gutted rooms is insulation! No wonder this house was frozen solid to the core this winter... No such thing as insulation in 1888...

Here's what met me when I stopped by the house this morning:

That's all the contents of the kitchen and bathroom splayed out all over the living room/dining room. I never thought I could be so excited about such a huge mess! (I suppose it helps that I know I won't be cleaning it up...)

This is the bathroom, as you can see the blue tub is just hanging out for now...

While I was there with the contractor the demo guys moved into taking down the soffits in the bathroom, so I was able to see with my own eyes that they're completely cosmetic. There's no hidden plumbing or electrical, so those puppies were pulled down straight away.

The kitchen was already empty and the guys were working on the tile and drywall.

That wall was stripped in the time I was at the house this morning, and the studs are all in amazing condition; hard to believe they're over 100 years old. That arched door will be squared off and brought to about 4' in width.

They're in the process of sealing off a door that leads from the kitchen to the office, and this is the new door's home. We'll throw in a single french door here, because we're limited on space between the kitchen wall and the bathroom wall. 

We're planning the kitchen out on Monday! Then plumbing and electrical will get a move on, and we'll be that much closer to moving in a month. EEK!

Time to gut.

Today was D day... as in demo. The kitchen and baths both had their fair share of demo time from the contractor today. I'm going to swing by tomorrow morning to get some pictures of everything torn up. Here's the main floor bath before demo. I never imagined us buying a house with a bathroom that looked this way.

We knew we would encounter some surprises... But we're still finding things to add to the list.  A new tub, toilet and vanity will be installed and we'll have to replace the bathroom door. Someone replaced the door, but not the frame, so there's a gap of about 5" at the top of the door. I'm interested in a bit more privacy in the bathroom, so we're going to try to buy a salvaged door from one of the local salvage shops. There's also a seemingly unnecessary soffit above the tub, closing off the top of the window; say goodbye to that strange architectural feature. That hole in the tub is left over from someone stripping the copper pipes at some point while the house was vacant. So once the plumber and electrician are done in here we're going to add a subway tile tub surround and hex tile flooring, in keeping with the bungalow style of the house. 

I think this will be one of my favorite rooms in the house when it's done!

Boiler Maker

We are well on our way to having heat pumping through Camp Kimball's veins...

Here's a better photo with a flash camera.