Lots of Good Things Happened Today!

So much happened today.  More than I thought would get accomplished. After fretting about the dishwasher shut off valve, I found my PB Blast and squirted some of that on.  Then got some channel lock pliers and was able to shut it off.  YAY!  And so, after some more disconnections, was able to get the dishwasher out.  I had to get it over two layers of flooring to slide it out.  It was sort of "flooring locked".  There were some electrical issues encountered with the dishwasher, but I'm saving them for the gallery of electrical code violations (separate LONG future post).

With the dishwasher removed, I was able to break my way into the sealed-off corner area.  The "sweet" storage area in any kitchen, and both corners were walled off in this kitchen.  Not anymore.  The only thing to have entered the forbidden zone was a poor little mouse, which was actually not gross to find as I had feared it would be.  It was sort of cute.

The next big surprise was that the tile pretty much fell off the walls.  Only a tap with a chisel and a hammer and it came right off.  Hardly any damage to the walls themselves, and I'm pretty sure they can be repaired instead of replaced.  This will be a huge time saver.  I plan on removing any loose material and then skim-coating the wall surface to make it smooth again.

Another big relief was to find that the current layer of flooring is only held down with a few teeny-tiny staples, and it peels up very easily.  The layer below it, though, might be a bit more difficult to remove.

Late in the afternoon I went on a massive Home Depot plumbing run.  The man in the plumbing section is a retired plumber and he kind of knows me now.  I gave him the list, and within 20 minutes he had everything pulled together, and even gave me a couple alternative (and much better) ways to do things, and a few how-to lessons.

In the evening, our friend stopped by to address the gas line situation.  He had to remove a few base cabinets and part of the counter to trace the lines.  Wouldn't you know, the only way to shut off gas to the cooktop and the oven is to shut off the gas at the meter?  Can I tell you how not safe this was?  I cannot believe this got passed the inspectors who signed off on the occupancy permit when we bought the house.  The requirement there must be a shutoff for EACH gas appliance within 6 feet of the appliance in the same room in which the appliance is located.  No worries, because this will be fixed before the new stove goes in.  These pictures show what it looked like when our friend got donw working tonight around 10:30.

Gas lines in the wall.  The shut off on the left was added so we could turn the gas back on.  The shut off on the right, for the wall oven, was there, but the only way to access it was to remove the wall oven, but you couldn't remove the wall oven without shutting off the gas because there was a gas pipe sticking down from the regulator on the oven which blocked the oven from being slid out of the cabinet (if that makes any sense).  I don't even know why they bothered putting the shutoff back there, because you couldn't use it anyway.



We also did some work in the crawlspace, adding shut offs for the supply lines to the kitchen sink (there weren't any in the crawl space, just under the sink), and capping off the drain line for the dishwasher.  Here's what the drain for the dishwasher used to look like:

And now I'm really tired, and I'm going to bed.  The next thing to do is to break down the cabinets our friend removed and then I can tackle getting out the remaining base cabinets, and exploring the possiblility of salvaging the remaining walls.  Can't do any more work until Monday.......