Kitchen Update: Ready to Pour

This post is dedicated to all of you who have been asking for kitchen updates. It's not pretty yet, but it's progress. Above, you can see the two floor drains that I'm so excited about. (It's awfully nice having a plumber for a father-in-law.) Our sink will go above the white square drain near that left hand wall. The PVC pipe in the middle of the room is a second drain that will allow us to mop spills and water directly down the drain for easy cleanup, restaurant-style!

Note: If you want to see the planned layout for the kitchen to get a better idea of what's what, click here. You can also see our item-by-item "rustic industrial kitchen plan" here. 

And here's the opposite corner of the room. The original stairs will eventually lead to a second floor, which had to be ripped out because the floor joists were so twisted and flimsy that the floor dropped more than 6 inches from one side of the room to the other. (That will happen when you build half your house on no foundation and let 100 years of settling occur!) But once we're done, it'll be strong and sturdy. 

The fireplace desperately needs a very good cleaning and to be repointed and sealed. I think it will be gorgeous, and I'm particularly excited to see how it turns out. We plan to enclose the stairs and build a pantry underneath.

The plastic and wire mesh on the floor are signs that, after much ado and waiting for cooperative weather, we are finally ready for serious concrete action. Above, S and his dad are marking how high the first concrete pour needs to be. I am not making any promises because this was supposed to be done last fall, but they are hoping to have that pour finished early this week. (Please Lord, please!) Then the fun really begins.

Our actual flooring surface will be concrete, and it will look like this. But to get there, it will take two pours. The first is primarily structural, and the second will be the actual flooring surface. In between the two pours, we have a lot of work to do:

• Demo the rest of the lath/plaster (which will take about a day)
• Consult with our electrician about where electric lines will run and where our box will be placed
• Get our favorite carpenters in here to do the structural work for the ceiling/walls and install the new front window (these guys work fast, and all of this will change things dramatically!)
• Install radiant heat so the floor will be heated

As you can see, this first pour is rather a big deal because once that's done, we'll be able to move quickly (in theory) and see noticeable progress. I have no idea how long it will take to finish this kitchen (there's obviously a lot of work to do), but I'm hoping against hope that it'll be done by August! We've already gone almost 3 years without a kitchen so it's not that a big deal to me anymore, but I'd rather not bring a newborn into a dirty, noisy construction zone!

This was a tough post to write because there's so much backstory to this room. I tried to keep it simple, but if you're new around here I'm sure it looks like a big old mess. If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment or shoot me an email to ask!