Kitchen Work Continues

In an attempt to plan for some yummy food that is just as good without being rewarmed for leftovers, I decided today would be grilling day. So I woke up and kicked off the Green Egg to smoke a beef brisket. The yummy smells could keep me motivated through some more work in the kitchen. Woot! ^.^

While it was grilling I tore out the old floor, which revealed the lovely old vinyl flooring. It matches the lovely bathroom, but in yellow not blue.

I spent a lot of the afternoon cleaning. There was a lot of cleaning to do in the kitchen. I’ve been cleaning that water spot with alcohol and that has cleared up most of the moldy mess. The wall seems fine underneath. I also spent a lot of time clearing out other stuff that could go in the dumpster. There was a lot of old stuff in the garage and basement from the last house. Even with all that, the dumpster is still only about half full.

All that took me up to time for dinner. I pulled the brisket off the grill around 4:30 to let it rest, and cranked up the temperature to roast some potatoes. I also kicked off the Instant Pot with some Sweet Potato & Black Bean Chili. It all came together around 6:30 for an amazing dinner.

After dinner I finally got to work on the electrical outlets, but I stalled a lot on it cuz I was worried about what I might find or have to do. As it was getting later though, I finally decided I just had to bite the bullet and do it.

The wires fortunately came down from the attic, so I figured that I could move the outlets directly up, pretty easy. The one on the left was the easy one. The biggest challenge was pulling up the wires which of course were stapled into the wall. That’s what the little holes were for, to unstaple so I could pull them up.

On the right side though, I decided moving the outlet to the left a little would make it more useful. It looked like there was a hole drilled from the outlet through the stud already, so I should just be able to push another wire through, right? Of course not! Pushing the wire through, I hit wood again!!! That hole let a wire through to an outlet on the dining room side, but that box was sitting just in between two studs!.

Fortunately, on my last Home Depot trip I got a power drill, and drill bits. I cut a bigger hole out of the dry wall to make another hole, and after about an hour of swearing got the wire through both and up to my new outlet. That got everything wired up again, and then I just had to start patching up the holes. Fortunately I had a lot of the pieces that got cut out so I could just tape them back in and smooth it over. Not to mention, there will be cabinets over all of that anyway. In the end it was about 3 AM when I finished.

It really wasn’t so bad, but I did end up putting a lot of little holes in the wall.

I woke up to find poor Rosie trapped in the kitchen chaos all out of batteries.