All from one little Itty Bitty Water Leak

I consider myself a fairly competent housekeeper; not white glove quality, not even Better Homes and Garden, but "cleaned regularly and lived-in tidy" most of the time.  So it still baffles me that we could have had an itty bitty water leak from either the dishwasher or from the water line to the ice maker in the frig and not noticed any water on the floor.  And apparently it had been leaking for some time!  I don't know if we will ever unravel that mystery of which appliance was leaking but my hubby is convinced it was the dishwasher - three years new.

I thought it might be kind of fun to keep a log of our kitchen remodel project. 

On Labor Day weekend we thought we were removing the 25+ year old waffling linoleum floor in preparation for hardwood floors and we found this:

and by the end of the day this:

You can't tell from the picture but the drywall is spongy and we had the sinking feeling that the damage could have seeped under the cabinets in the kitchen and who knows how far beyond that.  Our insurance company called a restoration company and we went from this to:

The ugly truth . . . all the way to the corner and check out that ugly mold on the unpainted drywall.  Before all was said and done two sets of base cabinets, the kitchen sink, dishwasher and garbage disposal were gone and I realized we were in for much much more than just replacing flooring. 

The first step to 'restoring' the kitchen is to dry the floor out.  So for the next week and a half we had a giant tent in our kitchen and several large fans roaring non-stop.

 

Finally the  fans were turned off.  After a day of cleaning, the tent came down.  Can you believe the difference?

 

I don't have any before demo pictures of the kitchen so these will have to do.

View from the island to the sink

 

View looking across island to the pass thru into the dining room.

 

 

View of what I use to think of as the torture chamber (before the frig took possession of the area)

Formerly an "L-shaped" desk used at one time as the 'homework' desk.

 

The desk has nothing to do with the leak issue.  Now that we are beyond monitoring homework, have a recently finished office and our growing family of grandchildren, that desk area was just making the dining area a little too crowded.  The desk had to go before the new floor goes in . . . do you see how this escalates into a bigger and bigger project?

 

I do love my kitchen.  Years ago when we started putting our dream house on paper my hubby asked, "So what do you want in the kitchen?"  Oh my . . . really. I admit it, I'm spoiled!

 



Next post I'll share what we've gotten accomplished since the tent came down.