Two rooms down, one to go

I ran more errands this morning while the crew finished up the last posts for the beam in the front room and the killing room and then added side supports to the posts:

Then matt dug the last hole. It gave him hell, but he won. Mostly it was harder because there were two giant chunks of concrete in the hole, you can see one in the forefront of the second picture. Then he and James mixed and poured the concrete and it is setting as we speak.

While they were doing that, Wayne, Gina and I went to home depot to get some more supplies to put in the butcher block, fix the leaking faucet in the downstairs bathroom, and repair the backsplash (oh yeah, I might have started demoing it so we could fix it before we put in the butcher block).

When we got back, the work on the island began in earnest. First, we knocked off all the tiles:

Then, Wayne took out the screws and he and Matt took the old countertop off:

 

Then, we pulled the dishwasher out and then put in some extra brackets to make the island more stable. While we were doing this, we realized that the previous owner had added a little extender to the kick board under the cabinets. They did this to make room for the tubing for the old dishwasher, but the new one doesn't need it and the non-straightness it caused annoyed us, so Matt took out the little piece, and we put the kick back in its rightful place. 

Then Wayne did quite a bit of work trying to level everything before we realized that the beam under the kitchen is still under construction, and leveling things before the beam was in its final position was kind of pointless. Nevertheless, we couldn't resist see what it will look like. I'm so excited!

Matt also replaced parts of the faucet so that it will stop leaking. You can see how corroded the old parts were in the first picture and how lovely the new (non-leaking) faucet looks in the last one.

With the beams in the front and killing room set, we also took stock of how all this shifting has been affecting our poor house. Turns out, we did cause a couple cracks:

The stairs were the hardest hit, there is a pretty significant bulge in the wall under the railing, and a very large crack at the base of the stairs. as well as one that runs all the way up to the upstairs ceiling
.

 

The upstairs and the closet under the stairs were also hit:

During this time, Leroy was banished to the laundry room and our bedroom. He was distraught, you can tell:

And, we put of the Christmas tree. Leroy loves it and Matt already put the "star" up (you might recognize it from this post):