Kitchen demolition

Yesterday our contractor called to let us know that our water filter under our kitchen sink had sprung a leak and flooded the kitchen. This happened when he was about halfway through the kitchen demolition.

He sent photos:

The leak went undiscovered long enough and the water was deep enough that it saturated the bottom of some of our packed boxes of stuff, ruining our cookbooks and who knows what else.

However, according to our contractor, this had nothing to do with the fact that he was halfway through the kitchen demolition when the leak started. Our 2-year-old water filter just happened to suddenly spring a major leak at the same time as the kitchen demo was going on, quite coincidentally. And in fact, we were very lucky he arrived shortly after the leak started! And moreover we should never leave on a trip without shutting our water off at the main; quite negligent on our part.

I see no purpose in arguing the point. If there’s enough damage that we would need to involve insurance, (his or ours) then maybe we would need to try to determine culpability. But if not, arguing the matter isn’t going to do anything other than annoy everyone involved.

I wish I had a clear idea of what exactly has been ruined, beyond my cookbooks. But I don’t really want my contractor unpacking everything and strewing it all around, and I am not about to interrupt our Seattle vacation to fly back there and check on a few boxes of hopefully replaceable stuff. What’s done is done. We’ll find out later what survived the flood and what didn’t.

Meanwhile, he’s just about got the kitchen demo’d. It looks a fright, and I’m glad I’m not trying to live there right now.

In addition to recent water damage, there’s also evidence of older water damage.

We are opening up the drop ceiling to match the wood ceilings in the rest of the house, which means rerouting the electrical and replacing the 2×4’s with a beam.

I think that’s my contractor’s kid in the next picture, being as helpful as teens usually are. You can see wet boxes next to the sliding glass door.

Apparently our contractor found a lot of electrical no-no’s, like abandoned live wires.

This is the gas line for the stove.

The pipe in middle of the floor (which had been a wall), is a bit of a mystery. It’s either an abandoned water line or gas line. It will need capped and removed.

There were apparently once, quite awhile in the past, raccoons living in the dropped ceiling that we are removing. I’m not going to post the photo of the evidence of that because – eww. At least it was a long time ago.

It’s really disturbing to see photos of the house like this. Hopefully I can set it aside in my mind and continue to enjoy our Seattle vacation – which is already a third of the way through! It’s going by so fast.

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