Three and a half weeks down!

During Week 2, the remaining drywall on the ceiling was removed along with all the old plumbing and electrical wiring. Halfway through our East coast trip, we got this picture from our contractor to update us. All those studs are brand new because the old ones were so uneven - not the mention the ceiling was sagging - that the new, level cabinets wouldn't have fit correctly.

By the end of Week 3, new electrical, plumbing, insulation, and drywall were all in. We were told it was time to paint, so we painted...and then we were told it wasn't time to paint yet...we'll be painting again this weekend...

The original wood floors were covered by a subfloor and two layers of linoleum. We removed the linoleum and got it to look like this.

Then, the contractors removed the subfloor and it looked like this (wood with tar on it).

After some sanding and lots of paint thinner, it looked like this. They also had to mill new floor pieces from reclaimed white oak wood (because there were some pieces with large holes from previous plumbing coming up from the basement below), so you can see some of the brand new pieces in this picture (left, middle). Apparently new trees are conditioned to grow faster than trees 80 years ago, and this affects how the wood absorbs stains and finishes. Thus, we went with custom-milled, reclaimed oak (ca-ching, ca-ching, ca-ching) versus using new wood since we were patching the floor.

And at the end of the day today, this is what it looks like.  Three different grits of sandpaper and it's like new...yet 75 years old. Beautiful!