Outdoor Kitchen, Repairs, and Maintenance.

No, we are not getting one of those neat outdoor kitchens with the built in gas grill, fridge, icemaker, and flat screen television. Instead I thought I would show you what our temporary outdoor kitchen looked like for the month that we were working on the concrete floors. Here we have our refridgerator and freezer, under the porch roof and plugged in via a long extenion cord:

And the 2 dishwashers, the beverage fridge, and the icemaker are stored further down the sidewalk under plastic:

Not only did we have an outdoor kitchen, we also had an outdoor laundry room. Here we have our washing machine hooked up to the garden hose. I bought a "Y" attachment to hook up the hot and cold tubes but of course all our laundry for a month was washed in cold water.  I bought 10 feet of long plastic tubing for the drainage and clamped it to the back of the washing machine so it would drain out into the ivy under the trees. 

We used an environmentally friendly detergent for washing clothes:

Oh.. and the bathrooms... well we were short two during this time:

It turns out that garden snails like porcelain toilets. If you want to know how I know that, ask Sonja.

During this whole renovation process, we discovered some repairs that needed to be made. The ductwork under the house was full of debris and holes (from unnamed critters). It had been patched and repatched through the years and with the many workmen under the house, some of the ductwork was smashed from people crawling over it.  We determined that it should all be replaced.  

After getting a few estsimates, we went with a company recommended to us called Healthy Air (209-529-2394) run by Brian and his son, Brian. They have done an excellent job. Here are some photos of the products being installed under the house:

In addition to replacing all the ruined ductwork, and cleaning out the three HVAC units, we are launching an all out  assault on the critters that were occupying the crawlspaces under the house.  All the openings around pipes, vents, etc. have been closed off and 10 baited traps laid all around the house perimeter and yard. All that work was done by Ruben at AAI Pest Control. Hopefully maintaining the traps will keep our new ductwork working like new!