What is the plan for Kitchanistan?

So what's the big deal? Why am I making a big deal out of this project?

Jo-Elle and I bought this 120+ year old greystone rowhouse four years ago. Great space, plenty of character. We like it. A lot...

...except the kitchen.

When we bought the place, we knew that this project was coming. Everything is wrong with the kitchen. It is small. It has a stupid staircase in it that blocks off an entire wall. Bad lighting. No natural light at all...

So this project fixes all those things. As well as most of the other problems in the house. The weed patch that is our backyard, the occassionally flooding basement, and the ugly parking pad in back all get love before we are done with this too. So, here is a full list of the little bits:

Demolish structurally unsound, ugly back poch---CHECK.

Relocate staircase to basement out of kitchen

Gut kitchen

Extend kitchen footprint back, beyond where the porch sat

Reorganize and rebuild kitchen to second millenium standards

Add storage in kitchen with a wall of cabinetry

Add storage to basement by extending it outwards

Build elevated patio

Terminate kitchen addition with glass wall to make it swanky, bridge the gap between inside and outside, and allow light into the kitchen

Add new garage

Click the link to the left for an animated tour of the design (the .mov file works on Firefox, but not Safari for some reason).

In the end, this is more than 1/3 of our lot that is being rennovated. Sounds like a lot, but don't forget that this is a Chicago rowhouse and the lot is only 18 feet wide...

Most of the debris from the demo is gone. Still a mound of insulation and wall board, but the garbage hauler and scavengers got the rest. Apparently one of my neighbors was irked that we threw away so much good wood. I told him he was welcome to all the screw-riddled 2X4s he could carry. Still waiting on the DIGGER/JULEE folks to mark the water and gas lines. If they come tomorrow or over the weekend, excavation starts Monday!