Demolition Man

With cabinets ordered, appliances en route, and a countertop selected, my dad and I officially began tearing out the kitchen on Wednesday night. I planned to work Thursday and Friday as well, but both Gina and Nate came down with fevers Thursday afternoon, so that plan was shelved and we opted to tackle most of it on Saturday. A dumpster arrived Friday afternoon, making clean up a cinch, and with two hammers, two prybars, and my trusty Sawzall, we went to work. Here's the kitchen when we moved in; apologies for the the confused gentleman that appears in the center of the frame:

After a few hours, we had a good chunk of the cabinets ripped out.

My dad and I were both amazed at the quality of construction on these cabinets. They weren't overly decorative, but they certainly were constructed to outlive me: motise and tenon joints, spriral 8d nails, and 3/4" plywood in many instances. The base cabinets needed some gentle urging by a 10 lb. sledge hammer to convince them to give up their small piece of kitchen real estate. The one base cabinet had a notation written in pencil underneath: "Oliver Feinhour - March 3, 1959." Gina's dad tells me the guy is still living somewhere in the region.

We also discovered more of a traditional Pennsylvania Dutch painting technique that we first saw on the walls of the dining area.

There's a PA Dutch name for this, but for the life of me I can't recall what it is -- Schtickle Stapf? Diffle Dapf? I've been told two or three times what it's called and for some reason I just can't remember the name. In any event, the technique uses a base color, and then two or three additional colors are applied overtop using a sponge.

Still to do: rip out old ceiling, knock out plaster, run new electric. Time to get to work.