118 Henry Street

It’s been a busy past month both at home and work. Here in Chester, Halloween, by itself, keeps us busy for a whole week. What with�a school carnival one night, a Halloween carnival at the YMCA the next evening, and then Trick or Treat itself.

Around all this hubbub and my work schedule, we have managed to continue demolition on the kitchen annex. Here is the damage from the roof leak the PO’s (previous owners) had concealed with ceiling tiles:

Kitchen annex ceiling

Looking in the opposite direction from the ceiling is a veritable lesson in the history of home decoration with it’s layers of floor fashion. Note the urine colored 70′s vinyl.

Kitchen annex floor

Finally, a vision of wood minus 4 coats of bubbled, alligatored and sloppily applied paint. Be sure to hold your breath while looking at this one…the lead dust is thick on everything.

Kitchen annex windows

Likely the destruction will continue till after the holidays……

This weekend we officially started on the kitchen remodel. Our design combines the old breakfast nook and the existing kitchen into a kitchen with annex (think: butler’s pantry). Here’s the floorplan for your exploration pleasure. While we are providing links: here’s the kitchen annex task list as of today.

The plan calls for moving everything in the breakfast nook into the existing kitchen space then constructing the annex. When the annex is completed, we will move the existing kitchen into the annex (yes, very small), then construct the kitchen proper.

The annex, when done, will have a sink, the frig, about a third of the total cabinets, and enough counter space for our microwave and convection oven.

One of the first items on the task list was fixing a roof leak directly over the breakfast nook. This leak has been at 118 Henry Street way longer than us but apparently went unbothered until we moved in. The rough hurricane season 2 years ago brought the leak into it’s mighty own. There’s been a bucket in the attic ever since.

Rough hurricane season excerbates roof leak

Roof leak before

Note the, oh so professional, flashing job were the roof lines intersect. Seems that the flashing was actually catching water and running it down into the attic.

Rotted wood under the old flashing

Remediation in progress

At the end of today, we weren’t as far along as we had hoped, but….it ain’t gonna leak there no more.