It all started innocently enough in Washington
DC at the Museum of American History...
Diane and I decided to time a DC/Annapolis
vacation with Sue's PartyLite conference. While we were there, we went to the Smithsonian
where they had moved and re-assembled Julia Childs' kitchen. One feature she had
in her kitchen was pegboard on the walls with her pots, pans, and utensils hanging.
Diane said she'd like to do that too, and I was happy to make it for her. When
we got home, I made a nicely framed®, 4' × 4' pegboard which held most of Diane's
pans.
Well, now we had an empty cabinet, and I offered to build a sliding
shelf for some of her latest gadgets like her new KitchenAid wide-mouth food processor.
And
so it began, September 6, 2005...
I
took up the shelf paper in the empty cabinet, to find that there is quite a bit of
soaked wood in there.
Well, I had recently had a large water spill (gallons)
on the counter, and I thought it had just ran down and soaked inside the cabinets.
So
I put a fan on it overnight...
No luck in drying it out. Diane suggested
that it might be a leak, and it was; the cold-water shutoff
valve was dripping.
So I removed all the stuff from under the sink and got ready to fix the problem...
The
bottom of the cabinet was collapsed, and the wood was ruined and disgusting.
I
could just cover it up and continue, but this looked SO crappy, I didn't feel right
just
patching up garbage, and this is certainly garbage.
So we decided to start the kitchen remodel
project right then!
No plan, no idea on budget, no color scheme, no
time frame, nothing. Most everybody thought we'd gone insane.