It’s barely into the New Year and we already have a list of projects a mile long. We have a kitchen to rip out, completely renovate ceiling to floor, and then put back in with new appliances. That is so we have a place to boil down our saps to make syrups this coming spring.
This is turning into a way bigger project then we originally anticipated. When we first talked about getting this done as our next big deal, we figured we had to take out the old appliances, take up ONE floor, tear down the walls and ceiling, replace those with new walls and ceilings, then put in the new floor and appliances.
To even get started, we had a whole lot of cleaning up to do. We moved the fridge, took out all the boards, removed every single nail and screw from said boards, so they could be stacked neatly on some improvised shelves… This in itself was a couple hours of work. Loud, repetitive, blah-type work. But with some tunes playing and a switch off of work detail, we made it thru.
MrGillis also insulated and covered the last window we plan on boarding up.
Then, we brought the fridge over, plugged her in and made plans to start using it for extra food storage the next day….
Just Kidding! About 15 minutes after we plugged her in, and she hummed to life, I started smelling a bad, metal frying odor… from, you guessed it! The fridge is dead. I spent all kinds of time cleaning this thing, for really nothing. Apparently, after MrGillis got rid of it, he detected the cause of the engine malfunction… a mouse had set up house. To bad for them, to bad for us. We were looking forward to a second fridge for eggs and such this summer. I’ve learned a good lesson about putting off icky cleaning projects in the shed tho. Which brings me to my next big deal.
While the hubby worked on his window project, I took to time to get into our chicken room and clean it up and get it organized. I’m sad to say that in the hustle and bustle of moving, especially with having an injured Hen at the same time, it got pretty bad in there for a few weeks. Like, I hesitate to post these pictures, because straight up ashamed. But no chickens were in here while it was like this, so no fowl were fouled, and for the sake of being real with you folks, here it is.
Yep, in all its glory, my mess of a chicken hospital/storage area.
I quickly untrashed the room, reorganized the whole kit and caboodle and was able to fit everything that was already in there, plus their food, treats and shavings. Even with the toilet and old shower stall floor still in the way. My next project was to pull the old shower floor up, but low and behold, that sucker would not budge… The shower drain is attached under the floor and needs to be capped off in the dug out basement in order for the stall floor to be removed.
So we are at a standstill on the particular project, along with the eventual removal of the toilet. We have bigger fish to fry.
I spent a little time switching to keeping our chicken food in bags, to keeping it in big containers. I got this 3 pack from target on sale and it was so totally worth it. They’re huge… like holds a whole bag and a half of feed at once, huge. And they are pretty solid too. I wouldn’t stack them up on top of each other with all the weight of the feed and grains tho. That seems like a recipe for dusty disaster.
With us getting to a point of some time left in the day, but projects quickly hitting walls and such, we decided to bring our two freezers over to the new place from our old home. We had a nice, cold, zero degree day, and knew we could pretty much throw everything onto the back of the truck in bags, load up our two mini freezers, and get everything back in without any of it thawing. This project was a couple hours tops, and now all our food storage is on our slice of earth. This makes life much easier, and me much happier.
That was the end of our day for then tho, because life is life and we had other work type stuff to do…. Like eat peanut butter pie.
So, a few days later, we got back to work in the kitchen. We decided it was really time to hammer down and get the kitchen ripped out. The hubby went to town starting to get the first wall down… He got all the window trim boards off, and went to go take the floor trim off when he realized, the trim boards were behind the floor. So, he gets to work, takes up the vinyl flooring (with my helpful self as well) and when we get that taken up, he gets his screw gun and saw so we can take up the sub floor. VhoopVhoopVhhhhhoooop and all kinds of screws are going everywhere. It seems like we might actually get this floor up, at least to the sink, soonish.
Well, as always, this old shed has thrown us for a loop. Its not one floor. Its not two floors. ITS THREE FRIGGEN LAYERS OF FLOOR WE HAVE TO TEAR UP. It appears, that in the life of this kitchen, when it was being used as a home, that there was at some point, some pretty major water damage to the kitchen floor. Well, from what we can tell, the quick fix for this particular problem was to lay down a new sub floor. And then do it again when the damage got worse. Then they laid down tile.
So, in order to take down the walls, which are built down to the original floor, obviously, we have to rip up all the floors, then rip down the walls and then we can take out the ceiling.
Thankfully, we’re not really afraid of work. But holy old moly. We now have a plumber coming in the disconnect all the water in the kitchen so we can just tear it all out and get it done. He also will be putting in a small spigot for me to get water out of so i can keep our chickens and indoor plants happy. And if he has time, he might be taking care of that shower drain for me too, but I’m just really happy to be getting the kitchen completely torn the heck out.
So that’s about that for right now. We have been doing lots of other stuff, like eating a delicious peanut butter pie(sorry, I really can’t help it, it is really good), and we’re getting ready to make some lotion this weekend, because we’ve had some people place some orders thru my mum. We joined Instagram and I have to say, I love playing with the filters. They make the chickens feathers so vivid.
I’ll have more to post soon, promise, I’ve even got about 10 drafts going.
Until that time tho, have a wicked good night.
Gillis Gardens, LLC 