Say Goodbye to the Kitchen Hydrant

Our home was originally built as a barn, and then transformed into a hunting lodge. While we love our farm and home (for the most part anyway. lol), there were some things that we didn’t love so much. Like the hydrant in the kitchen. Yep there was a hydrant in the kitchen. Oh and some other, well, oddball things like when we moved in the kitchen sink was actually in a small room off the kitchen. That small room was also home to a toilet. You know so if you had to go while washing supper dishes just turn around and sit right down. While the hunting lodge had plenty of bedrooms, it lacked closets. (See why I needed an armoire?) There also was very little (and I mean VERY LITTLE) insulation in our home. The first winter, I thought we might go broke paying the electricity bill for running the baseboard heaters in the bedrooms.

So we have continually worked to make our home, well, our home. The toilet was taken out of the small room, which will eventually be my walk in pantry. The kitchen sink was transitioned out into the kitchen in a very temporary set up. (I built a frame with 2″x4″ lumber and put a countertop on it with a sink in it over the drain in the middle of the kitchen. The water lines were taken out of the little room along the ceiling and then dropped down to the sink. It wasn’t fancy but it’s been serving it’s purpose until we could go deeper on remodeling the kitchen.

One thing that had to go was that hydrant! But we knew that it would be quite an undertaking to take that thing out. After all, hydrants are typically buried 3′-4′ deep. Well November 2018 marked the last days of that hydrant in the kitchen.

We rented a concrete saw and I hung heavy-duty plastic on every doorway in the kitchen. The dust that the saw created though was horrendous! Despite my best attempts to keep the mess in the kitchen, I failed. We are talking epic failure! So half-way through cutting the concrete, Scott abandoned ship and started drilling pilot holes and busting the concrete out with a maul. (Even with the windows open and a mask on, the dust was awful.)

Then after the concrete was busted and hauled out there was still work to be done. He had to hand dig the dirt and sand out of the hole so we could get to the bottom of the hydrant. Finally though, we had succeeded and the hydrant was removed. Thankfully that hole served double duty. I have no desire to have my kitchen sink randomly in the middle of the room forever. So Scott tapped into the existing drainline and put new drains over to where my sink will be. He also stubbed the water line out next to the drainline.

I finally feel like there is hope for my kitchen! We haven’t had much of a budget for a kitchen remodel so we’ve gotten creative. Originally, we had thought we would sell the cabin we built but that hasn’t happened. I tried selling it for 3 years and although we had a lot of interest, no one bought it. So we’ve done the next best thing, we’ve been reusing every possible material from the cabin; insulation, flooring, wiring, the old barn tin on the ceiling, kitchen cabinets, the bathtub…

The insulation from the cabin was taken out and the kitchen is now insulated. Hallelujah!!! The kitchen cabinets from the cabin will be set in our kitchen. (Another thing about our home is that there wasn’t a single kitchen cabinet, there were some shelves but no cabinets.)

I am so looking forward to having a fully functional, kitchen! I was in hopes we would have the kitchen done for Thanksgiving, and while that doesn’t look like that will be the case, I am really excited about the progress we have made. I am thankful for all of Scott’s hardwork making these kitchen improvements!

Blessings,

Jennifer