SMALL REMODEL OF THE KITCHEN AREA.

I GOT BACK TO CORNING just a month back, on the tail end of a winter storm.  I was lucky to make it into the local airport (Elmira, ELM), an hour or so before midnight, on the only flight to get in that day.  How nice it was to trudge through the eight inches of snow to my front door and to be home once more!

It took a week or so to gather in two and a half's months of mail and to become my Corning self.  Snow outdoors most of the time so I found the kitchen area staring me in the face.  Staring back, this is how it looked.  Hidden within the peninsula you see in the foreground was an ancient dishwasher that, with my few dishes to be washed straight after use, I had never used. It had  made strange noises when tested prior to the house purchase but did work.  However, I like to wash dishes by hand.

The plan was to remove the dishwasher, demolish the peninsulate extension, and extend the counter some 15 inches to abut the door jamb.  In fact, the demolition of the cabinet turned out to be first necessary.  The eventual removal of the dishwasher revealed that it had suffered a chronic, small hot water leak, resulting  in serious erosion of the sub-floor.

It was now evident that beneath the top layer of linoleum was a layer of ply covering an earlier layer of linoleum.  This presented some of repairing the floor so as to bring it to an equal level to the rest of the floor.  As the plywood layer immediately above the joists had been eroded, the first step was to use a cement based product to fill in the hollows.  As plywood thickness has altered a little since the construction of the original floor, it took two layers of plywood to effect a good repair.
 
After seeing an "almost-top-of-the-line" Maytag dishwasher marked down by $250 at the local Home Depot, I resiled from my disinterest in replacing the dishwasher, so now you see the new one, not yet installed but in place so I can be sure of the dimensions of the cabinet I will build to use the space towards the door.  I was very heartened by the good result of the floor repair and set about preparing the counter top for its extension over the proposed cabinet work.  This turned out to be technically more difficult than I had first thought and this has made the design and cabinet making rather more difficult.

The cabinet box will have a top drawer and lower door opening to two shelves and will closely match the other cabinets.  The drawer will hold cutlery and the shelves will take crockery to make easy the setting of the table for dinners I plan to have once all this is done.

Already I can see how I will have more useful counter top space and better access to the cupboards you can see above the dishwasher.  Also, the kitchen area is much easier to navigate. 

The construction of the cabinet has got to have been the difficult middle third of the project,  I have been working on it for the best part of a week, one way or another.  It is all ready not to be assembled and put in place with only the top drawer needing construction.  Once it is in place, around mid-week, Daniel will install the dishwasher and attend to some re-plumbing.  It is quite a while since I have taken on cabinet work and I seem to be having to relearn lots of stuff, made and recovered from a few simple errors, but have been able to make use of most of the material from the demolished cabinet.

With this work done, I will tile over the Formica top with linoleum tiles and do the finishing wood work.  I have no be able to make up my mind about colors. This will have to  await the laying of a new floor covering.  I have been excited to discover a floating linoleum covering that avoids pulling up the present layer and will lay very quickly. 

With a little luck and some hard work this week I may get all this done.  The Tuesday following St. Patrick's Day, I have a small operation scheduled for my right hand and that will take me out of kitchen action for almost a week.  This had turned out to be far more than the easy, straight forward task I had envisaged.  How like life!

Watch this space for the next update, which should show the completed cabinet work and the final tiling.