The End of the Beginning

It’s really happening: the demolition for the new kitchen begins on Tuesday next week. And it’s been even more of a mad dash to make sure that happened, and that everything was in place for it to.

As mentioned in the last post, once the contractor got the permit, it was really a race to get everything in place. With no small amount of stress and scrambling, I managed to thread that needle. The movers showed up on time to pick up the larger pieces of furniture, and I spent evenings and the two weekends bringing box after box to my basement storage unit.

It was a lot of work. I told myself that only packing up part of my apartment wouldn’t be as bad as a full-on move, and I’m not sure I was right. I used almost all the boxes I had saved from the last time I moved, and my basement storage unit is pretty full.

There’s an accretion effect: none of the tasks to get my apartment ready for construction was really that onerous, but put together, it was a lot. Going on a brutalist adventure to city hall to get a parking permit — necessary when you need to put the permit up the same day — only took about an hour. But then it also took an hour to pack and transport a few boxes down to the basement. It really adds up.

But it’s done, and a crew will show up on Tuesday.

I still need to drop letters off to all my neighbors. And, assuming I don’t get sucked into any meetings on Monday, I’ll pop in to the project kick off with the architects and contractor’s team.