It Starts.... (day 1)

Every day for the past week I've been putting the cats:
Woody, age 14

 Buzz, age 1

 Pea Pod, age 1

into the master bedroom in the hopes that Bob would arrive and start work.  Today it happened.

The plan is to remove the floor, lay new floor (with heat! did I mention HEATED FLOORS???) in prep for the cabinets which should be here next week!

All the laminate was gone this evening when I arrived home:

 And the original linoleum from 1984 was exposed throughout the entry, sunroom, and kitchen.  The carpet is still in place in the laundry room.

Yep. It's ugly - oddly it's better than the laminate. 

Also, Bob had organized my garage and filled it with tile:

We'll see what tomorrow brings.

In the Beginning....

It started the way every normal renovation starts.

I needed a new floor.  The floor in my townhouse kitchen was a lower end laminate that had, sometime before I moved in, gotten wet and buckled a bit.  So I wanted it repaired....

But....

It would have to be torn out and re-laid and, truth be told, I didn't really like it. 

So I needed a new floor. 

If I was going to do the entire floor, I knew I wanted to extend it into the laundry (currently carpeting and original (1984) linoleum) and bath (1984 vintage linoleum)

And then there were the countertops.  Original to the house, they had bowed where the dishwasher was.  Obviously, I needed new ones. 

Then, if I were going to do the countertops and floors, maybe I should take the two walls down that separate the kitchen from the living room......

If I'm going to do that, then I'll lose the upper cabinets on those walls so ... maybe I should get new cabinets that go to the ceiling.....

If I get new cabinets on the top, the bottom ones will need to match.

Turns out that matching bit is expensive.... So I'm getting it all.

New floors
New cabinets
New counter tops
New bathroom fixtures
New dishwasher
New access to the dining room.

And today, it started.