The walls are coming down!

So the brick wall is all cleaned up and the kitchen is just about done!  Finally!  There's a few things left to do, like hook up the appliances and put the finishing touches on the walls & ceiling, but that'll be done soon enough, too.  And after all the trouble with the cabinets, the second round of replacement doors has come in, and the last couple pieces should be in this week.  And I'm now on a first name basis with the manufacturer's rep (yup, they've completely cut out the Lowe's store I bought them from that screwed up so badly now)!  So all in all, the kitchen is in good shape.

The counters came out perfectly, and I'm really happy with how well the granite goes with the cabinets

The dishwasher, sink, and faucet installed

The refrigerator in place

The small corner next to the refrigerator looks good, and the granite against the brick works well, too!

The hole in the back of the granite goes down into the cabinet where there's an electrical outlet, so that we can use this as a charging area for devices!  :-)

So of course, now that the brick wall and kitchen are fairly complete, it's time to start all over again, and tear out the floors and walls on the second floor to do the bathrooms.  All the floors in the house are old, and likely still the original floors, so they're all being replaced.  And the one bathroom upstairs is being split into a master and guest, so a lot of walls have to be removed to make this possible.  This part of the job should be quicker, though, because it has fewer tedious tasks than cleaning the brick wall and doing the kitchen.  Also, they've brought in additional guys to make the work go faster.  So enjoy some pictures below!

The box around the chimney and flimsy shelves in the living room are gone to make room for the fireplace, and the ceiling has been bared to fix the lighting and run some wiring

The new wood for the floors in the living room and 2nd floor

The electric panel is currently in the middle of the living room where the fireplace is going, so it's being moved to the basement where the rest of the utilities are

The first walls upstairs to come down were those around the existing bathroom.  The fixtures and everything were moved to the front bedroom, which isn't changing (other than the floors), until the new walls and tile are in

The walls around the closet holding the HVAC unit were removed, exposing it.  The HVAC unit is being moved to the roof to make a little more room to expand the bathroom into two bathrooms

Once the HVAC system was gone, all the floors could be pulled up to be replaced

In tearing up the floor, we uncovered some old pipes that appear to be part of the original gas lighting from when the house was built!