New chandelier and destruction of the kitchen

Sorry for that tease! I hit publish accidentally, and then didn't have the time to actually write the post at that moment (life!).

So here it is for realsies:

I will be documenting our renovation progress here, for the benefit of any who might care (and for our own memories down the road!). As mentioned in the last post, we made some good progress over the weekend.

Here is what the kitchen looked like "before" (with the seller's staging stuff):



And here is the destructive "during." My brother and Peter had a good time taking out all of the appliances and cabinets from the kitchen:



And then put them all in the living room:

Good thing we aren't living here yet! Our sole goal is to get this kitchen done before we have to move in (June 4th is when we need to be out of our current apartment).

We are redoing the floors by putting plank vinyl in that looks like wood, and so needed everything out. I am very happy we did so because we found that the builder (30 years ago!) didn't put the vinyl all the way under the cabinets, which led to some water damage near the sink. Luckily, it wasn't that bad and we just had to replace a patch of drywall . Our hope is that the new flooring extending all the way across the floor will help protect against any possible damage to the floor.

We are thrilled about the plank vinyl because: 1) it's very cheap, but looks decent, which is great for this place as we plan on making it a rental in a couple years; and 2) it is one of the easiest types of flooring to put in yourself. It cost us a little over $100 to replace that god-awful '70s floor (which we found had some pretty damaged spots)!

OK, next exciting thing. The dining "room" (nook?) had an awful, awful chandelier. To wit:

This weekend, Brother and Peter made my heart sing by switching it out for this:

And in context with the framed poster we will hang on the wall in the dining nook (along with construction crap):


SO much better! You may notice a strong theme in our renovations: inexpensive updates. This place is not and will never be a luxury condominium. The people who rent here are largely students and we are mostly hoping to make this place more inviting while we live here, as well as hoping to attract a slightly better renter by having more updated things.

Stay tuned for he next project! Installing the floors! How will the missing vinyl pieces affect our timeline and our budget? Is the plank vinyl as easy as they say? Will it look better than the '70s trip to Mexico vinyl?