The joys of remodeling, pt.2

Turns out there's a lot more remodeling than we had hoped for. Actually, we're really "repairing" the damage from years of "stuff."  It seems the previous building owners have just painted or patched over the original walls, fixtures, and trim.

Before I make my FIL out to be a terrible person, I should point out that we do live at the apartment rent-free.  For the past 2 years, we have constantly tried to hire out these repairs, only to receive a liplash from FIL.  He doesn't want us to hire out something we can do ourselves.  I call bullshit.  For me, if it doesn't come with instructions, I don't want to touch it.  We don't really want risk any injuries for R, especially after 2 tours of worker's comp.  My FIL has a myriad of ideas, but he's just cheap and lazy (sorry for the crass description).  He kind of starts things and then stops.  It turns into a waiting game, because we never know if he'll come back like he says. 

But I digress.

After what seems like weeks of removing "stuff." This is how far we are in the kitchen remodeling process.

See that little electrical wire above the stove? My FIL put it there a while ago (It's one of his start-stop things).  It's for our future range hood he says.  We added new plank flooring from Ikea last week.  It'll never replace the original oak (?) like the rest of the apartment.  Apparently the previous owner ripped out the original wood floorboards and replaced it with linoleum.  Imagine old linoleum from the 50s with water and sun damage, that's what we had before.  It was really, really bad.

This is another one of my FIL's start-stop projects.  He did this more than 6 months ago and just left it. There used to be a wooden wall cabinet here with glass doors.  After trying (really hard!) to restore it, R and I decided there was just too many layers of paint and damage to restore.  We had to rip it out.

This is where the sink used to be.  With help from our friend G, we ripped out the sink.  That's an old window behind the pipes there.  It also can't be fixed, so we'll cover the bottom part of the window with the new backsplash.  I'm planning to cover the top part of the window with a curtain like a real window.

To date, we've spent about $500 on materials.  We're planning to dump another $500 on some more materials. Just for the kitchen.  Hopefully, I'll have some nicer pictures next post.