The plan...

... as we know it...  for now.....

For those of you wondering about our big delivery yesterday.  Yes, we are remodeling our kitchen. Yes, we will be doing this ourselves.  Yes, we are slightly (or more) insane.

So, the plan so far-
I have been slowly working on emptying the kitchen cabinets and organizing my thoughts around feeding us well, with real food, while we have no kitchen.  Oh, we have a few meals planned of things like chinese take-out and pizza from a local restaurant- but mostly we will be cooking.  I've been doing some cooking ahead and freezing things.  We will be eating from the microwave, crockpot and electric skillet.  And we will eat well.

But, you don't want to hear about food- you want to hear about the other craziness!  I will have Friday off this week since I worked last weekend, so this weekend, I will begin packing the cabinets for real.  We will move the antique china cabinet out of the kitchen into its temporary home.  We have a big folding table in the garage that I will bring in and put in the living room- this will become our temporary kitchen (dishwashing will happen in the upstairs bathtub).  The cabinet packing will continue through most of next week.  And we will begin taking off the doors off empty cabinets. On Friday, the 11th, while no one else is home, V plans to hang plastic over the doors and finally sand the North wall of the kitchen- that's our Picasso wall with old adhesive from the really ugly panelling that we ripped off a while ago.
Friday night, after I get off work, we will move the refrigerator from the kitchen to it's temporary home in the dining room.  We may move the stove as well that evening.
The real fun starts bright and early on the 12th.  We will begin gutting the kitchen.  The counters, cabinets and flooring will be removed.  I think we will be getting a construction dumpster for the flooring since it won't be salvageable. We're even removing the subfloor. The cabinets will be deconstructed and the wood salvaged.  The cabinets are original to the house and were built in place by the original owners. They are constructed of 1x12 planks and plywood with some fairly long runs of lumber since there are no dividers between cabinets.
Once the cabinets and subfloor have been removed, we'll replace the subfloors and then paint the entire room before we install the cabinets.  Cabinets and counters will come next.  We will then put down the tile backer boards and lay the ceramic tile floor.  When all that is said and done- all the appliance will come back in (oh, I imagine we will install the new dishwasher when we install the base cabinets).

The big question is- can we do this in 9 days?  The children are all off school the week of the 14th for Spring Break and I have taken the entire week off work.  So, it will be a marathon with all of us pitching in. We have from the 12th through the 20th.  I see some long days but we think it is doable.  We're much more likely to get it done in a timely fashion ourselves than if we hired a contractor!  I know someone who hired out their kitchen remodel and it took nearly 4 months- that is TOTALLY unacceptable in my book.  But then, this particular family ate out most evenings anyway so having their kitchen torn up was merely an inconvenience.  We don't eat that way and have no intention of starting.
I feel we can get this done- at least most of it.  I can live without the tile installed for a few days if necessary but I'm going to be hopeful.

And don't worry- We'll take lots of pictures and I'll post regular updates.  It will be an adventure!!