Which is why during these visits we tend to suggest family trips to troll the IKEA clearance section. This trip we found great deals on large doors for closet and kitchen pantry and Mom surprised us with a gift of a new kitchen island as an early anniversary present.
This would have been the perfect IKEA visit if this hadn't happened:
Did you see it? If not this video gives a better vantage point:
Even though all three of us were hovering over her, Alice still managed to slip and fall face-first into the wheel of our shopping cart. Tony and I were upset that Alice fell, but felt better once we ascertained that she wasn't seriously injured. Grammy however will never recover. My Mom's calls now start and end with worried questions about the status of Alice's sweet eye.
For all concerned parties please know that her eye is almost completely healed
Back to the IKEA-palloza. As we assembled the new kitchen island Mom was eyeballing our low kitchen ceiling (which Tony particularly doesn't enjoy) and she mused out loud that it might be possible to bump up the elevation slightly depending on what was hidden above the drywall.
Then she got that look in her eye that I remember from when I was a kid.
"You want to punch a hole through the ceiling, don't you?"
"Just enough to take a look! Do you think Tony would mind?"
When Tony came into the kitchen he heard about two seconds of Mom's proposal and to my surprise asked if we could take the whole ceiling down this weekend! With all parties consenting Mom sprung into action After cobbling a few cutting implements from the garage...
Viola!
As it turns out we do have quite a bit of space above our kitchen and large beams that can be exposed and painted if we so choose. The only sticking point is the gas pipe and electrical cord you see in the picture. Though Mom had a few solutions for that, the easiest of which was just encasing it in a false beam. Well, in truth the easiest thing would be to leave it exposed "warehouse loft style", but the point is we have options.
Another revelation was that when we opened the ceiling tons of cooled air poured down on us. It turns out we are losing a lot of energy cooling the guts of the house due to leaky ducts. This is a pretty easy fix, and since we are tearing out the drywall anyway we can hit two birds with one remodeling project and save on our energy bills. Hooray!
2 comments:
I myself am a fan of the exposed "warehouse loft style" you speak of. Talk to your mom about that cool air space up there. In some cases they use that area as a air return plenum or return air duct if you will. The large open space usually leads back to the air handling unit and then recycles that cool air back into the system and eventually back into your house.It eliminates the use of more duct work and therefore lowers the cost of supplies and labor.....listen to me, it sounds like I know what I am talking about. I guess I do, hmmm. Hahahaha. Still easy to manipulate into what you want if you go with the exposed option. This is most common in houses or larger buildings with central air not swamp coolers. Not sure what you have. Anywho, happy remodeling!!
In the third picture Alice looks like she just got back from a late night on 6th Street.
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