Chaos & Destruction

I believe we are approaching week 4 of our house destruction and so far... it is only getting worse. We started by taking out all the kitchen cabinets, all the sheet rock had to come off and then the floor followed. We kept our sink as long was we could because we quickly realized how essential it really was. Once all the walls were down Andi, the contractor, came in. He did all the structural stuff - building new walls, new supports, moving the existing walls and other fun things like that. He was surprisingly fast and once he was done we just had to wait for Rollo and Jose - the electricians - to come in. While we waited we continue to scout surrounding areas for our granite and floors. I must say that almost broke me... how can people build a house from ground up and make all the lil decisions that go into it... and I can't even remodel our kitchen? Nuts. Luckily we found what we both liked. The floor we liked we found in Petaluma - hand scraped hardwood Shaw floor and we end up ordering it from El Sobrante - much cheaper. The granite.. we got an estimate in the city and end up finding it in Emeryville for half the price. It does pay to shop around. We started with Venitian Gold and end up with Owen Gold... not really sure what the difference is.
Jose and Rollo have been working for over a week now... and they are doing a great job. The only problem that everybody warns you about is.... where do you stop. We only wanted to do the kitchen... but now we have moved into the living room too. I guess black melted aluminum wiring was a reason enough to redo all the other wiring in the house. Fun fun. I feel like yesterday we finally reached a turning point when we got our new windows in. We both love them and can't wait to have all the sheet rock back up to see the full effect.
Once the electricty is done we can finally put the sheet rock up and then mud it. But the rest will have to wait until after we come back from Alaska. If you want to see more pics go to: http://monikachris.shutterfly.com/action/