The madness has begun

Since we had the great idea of letting our kitchen wall removal and hardwood floor installation take place while we were in Arkansas this week, we were pretty busy last Saturday. Before we left, we had to completely remove everything from the wall cabinets in our kitchen and make sure everything but the furniture had been removed from the kitchen, dining room, living room, and basement foyer. After this was all done, we had to pack our suitcases and pick Jonathan up at the Louisville airport. As you can imagine, this made for one crazy, hectic day.

But, everything's good now, we finished everything in time to still have a great trip to Arkansas.

I managed to snap a few pictures of the old nasty carpet and kitchen before we left. It was hard to get any good shots because the kitchen and dining room were pretty small, but here are a few "before" shots:






















As expected, the contractor was a tad bit optimistic on how much he could get done while we were gone. But, they did manage to get the kitchen wall, wall cabinets, and soffit removed. Plus, they installed most of the new treads and risers on the stairs and most of the flooring in the living room and hall. It already looks so much better. We can see enough to know that it's going to look really awesome when it's done. Hopefully, that will be enough to sustain us as we live through another few weeks of our house being torn apart.

Here's what it looked like when we got home yesterday:













And, look what we found behind the grape wallpaper:



Proof that the wallpaper in the kitchen used to be even more hideous! Aaaagh!