Bryce the Toolman & the Hippie Kitchen Bye Bye

Meet Bryce the Toolman.

my sidekick.

my right hand man.

Our kitchen cabinetry was delivered a few days ago & since the sheetrock isn't due to go up for about a week-I had the delivery guys put all the boxes in our basement. Needless to say I felt really bad afterwards. These boxes are MONSTROUSLY heavy & our basement & stairs leading to it are awkward. I would NEVER want to be in that line of work. Ugh.

As with everything from IKEA-it is 99% assembly required ;) so each night while Mike is working at CWU, Bryce and I set to work putting together cabinets. He ran and got his little tikes circular saw & was eager to assemble. Boy-this little guy is stuck to me like glue. Absolutely fascinated by anything involving tools. He wanted to help SOOOOOO badly.

He was a great little helper and pleased as punch to be in my employ.

After 9 partly assembled cabinets, we ran out of room in our little basement & things started to look like this:

A quick break for a midnight snack...

 And then my only employee was pooped.

A couple days later....

our contractor, Daniel, came over to fur up our weird ceiling in the kitchen. Bryce was quite interested in the process and didn't leave Daniels side (luckily he has 2 little boys himself, so he understood completely  & didn't mind)

These are some of the images we caught that afternoon:

He went and found Dad's tape measure because he saw Daniel using one....

Then he went & grabbed our step ladder....because he saw that Daniel had one....

Next he discovered that Daniel had a tool belt full of tools....so he ran to my classroom & grabbed one of his own...filled it with toy tools & he was ready to work!

Anything Daniel did-Bryce followed right along. 

CUTEST THING OF MY LIFE!

He couldn't have been happier than if we were at Disneyland. Seriously.

 With his love of legos & tools we told him he could go to college and be a contractor or an architect when he grows up! His eyes were as big as quarters with that news :)

When dad got home that afternoon-he was rip roaring ready to go with this whole kitchen demolition thing we've got goin' on. Which was AWESOME!

He walked through the door with 12 boxes and the kids were all too excited to help fill them with the contents from our cupboards. 

And Dad was all too excited about ripping out the built in-yucky-ugly-nasty wood structures known as: our OLD cabinets!

This was a constant observation on our job site.....Little Tikes tools around every corner. :)

Mike pulled off the trim around the door frame & found this used as "insulation"

Seattle P.I. March 1975....that would be the date of this last kitchen "remodel". Like I said-bye bye Hippie Kitchen!

 Then of course-as with every project with this house-we've found that the previous owners did things in ways that makes demolition MUCH MUCH harder....like nailing AND gorilla gluing on the baseboard trim around the cabinets, as well as glueing in the DISHWASHER! Who does that? Or using 372 nails in a 3x3 space. Ugh. Not to mention labeling the breaker box WRONG! We turned off the electricity to the dishwasher-or so we thought, and then Mike went to cut the wires and let's just say there was a little FIRE and this happened to the utility knife! Ummmmm-not good. So needless to say-ALL the electricity was then turned off until the dishwasher & disposal were out! :)

(in case you didn't notice-that blade-should NOT be serrated! lol)

Chris & Doug-I told you Mike LOVES that headlamp. Comes in super handy!

A ridiculous 6 hours later....another truckload to the dump. We LOVE our handy truck!

We are officially exhausted & still have round 2, 3 and 4 to go on this project. Cant wait for the end result! Stay tuned!