Thursday, March 20, 2008

Day Two (or dude, where's my kitchen?!)

The Work in Progress, 9am

Day Two of the Great Kitchen Renovation of 2008 dawned cold and windy. Thirsty for my espresso, I stumbled blindly into the kitchen, or where the kitchen had been. Damn, forgot, I'm in the midst of a reconstruction. Luckily, my beloved Francis Francis X5 espresso machine was plugged in, but in the living room.

After a few shots, the General Contractor and his crew returned, and their first question took me by surprise. "You're tearing down the wall today?!" I had been told this wouldn't happen until Tuesday, so I'd have the weekend to evacuate the tiny space I call an office.

So, another round of moving, shoving and dissassembly ensued. The phone, the Wifi modem, the answering machine, the desk, the computer, pretty much anything that has to do with an office was shoved into the living room in the space of a few minutes. I'm not even sure why we call it a "living" room, there's so much stuff in it that one would be hard-pressed to actually "live" in it.


The crew sealed off the space with plastic and supports, to keep the dust out of the rest of the apartment. Supposedly.


There followed a rapid-fire exercise in rewiring, as I struggled to get the Internet and my phones back up and running. As I sat down to work, the hammering started. Rather, the sledgehammering. And the sawing. And the cracking. And breaking. And smashing.

OK, I need some peace and quiet, so I left the house. When I returned, the kitchen and office had merged into one huge space. The fridge and the oven were in the space once occupied by the office.

Kitchen, Day Two, 5pm

Where the wall stood

No more office

So now, as I wend my way through the maze of stuff that my "living" room has become, I wonder, sometimes aloud, "What the Hell did I get myself into????"

And more importantly, where the Hell is my case of Champagne?!
Cheers!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It will be fun reading your prose and seeing the pictures of your living hell!

Anonymous said...

I feel for you, but it already looks like it's going to be worth it. I made beef cheeks today, a tweaked version using the Montfaucon primeur. Too bad I can't email you some!