House Shuffle

Our kitchen remodel, with significant structural input, is about to kickoff.

We’re going to keep four of the eleven rooms ‘sacred’ (read ‘fit for human habitation’) during this process: The living room, our bedroom, the studio, which houses my DH work space, and my office, but not its closet. The other eight rooms will either be used for storage. or be in a rolling state of being disassembled.

An example: This project starts in what most people would call a family room. We call it the billiard room because a billiard table inhabits about half of the space. The first structural work takes place here. The billiard table will be removed from the room (by others!). The room will be emptied, it’s wall-to-wall carpeting taken to the dump. The slab will be cut in the appropriate place in order to insert a footing that will support a post that will hold up one end of the first of three large beams required to transform our kitchen. This room will also serve as a warehouse for the project’s materials.

We will need to engage a storage unit for the billiard room’s furniture. We’ll use extra space in Jane’s storage for smaller things, like perhaps the 1500-2000 books that live in this room. The billiard table, in pieces, will stay onsite. There are two large linen closets in this room, a deep auxiliary pantry, and a 400-pound long-gun safe to manage. This is merely ONE room. And not the kitchen. I confess to feeling a tad overwhelmed.