Too Late to Change My Mind?

Ouch -- It's Beginning!

     Well, this isn't the normal post but I have the feeling this will be taking me away from the shop for a while even though my new carving chisels arrived yesterday.  Like many of you, our plans changed due to economy.  Seems like not too long ago the plan was to sell the big house and use the profits from the sale to downsize plus have a good chunk of change to use during retirement.  Since the economy retired about the same time I did in 2008 we are re-doing the house to keep it fresh.  No problem, we're just re-purposing and doing what we want to keep the house perfect for our use.  The project now is keeping the kitchen more current than it was in the 90's when we bought the house.

Oh So  90's

     Like many of the homes built in the mid nineties ours had this huge, dropped fluorescent light fixture and the Oak cabinets.  Part of the plan is to change the cabinets by painting them white.  There is one door I brushed white by the refrigerator that we put there to live with that change.  As much as I don't care for painted cabinets I agree with Di that this will really freshen up the over-all look.  The fixture just had to go!  When I got to the stage of the first picture I really did think that maybe it wasn't such a good idea after all.  Unreal the amount of nails and wood they used to build that monstrosity!  Much of it is solid lengths of 2x6 and the nails --------- bizillions of them!!  When I worked as a carpenter and built my own house, nail guns weren't very common.  If we lowered the ceiling we'd build soffits, almost like a ladder out of 2x4's and attach them to the rafters.  This darn thing had some of the crappiest wood and was nailed with a nail gun from every conceivable angle.  Pretty much impossible to simply pry the boards off so the cat claw I used in the 70's as a carpenter apprentice still came to good use!  It took me much of the day to get to this point:

End of the First Day

     I left the lights there for now and this will be gone by the end of work day #2.   Pretty amazing, the electrician who put these up didn't use a junction box and these lights are barely hanging on.  Guess they figure if it were to fall that awful Oak grid would catch it.  Definitely don't think this structure and electrical would have passed a  HGTV Holmes Inspection!