My kitchen, or something like it

 ... or what's left of it. Let's see if I can post these pictures. These are our lovely new curtains! They do a marvelous job keeping the kitchen climate from encroaching on the rest of the house.

To the right (I think)(not sure about the format here) and below are the cabinets before Superman started tearing things out.

 Superman cut a wedge from the squishiest part of the floor, there next to the A/C vent. It's our first look at the underlayment. She don't look good, boss.

My sexy Superman removes that ugly-ass counter. Ain't he cute?

The sink and counter are gone from this cabinet.

 Superman uses the reciprocating saw (that's fun to type: reciprocating saw)

 and something shiny to break up the cabinet.

He has a small pry bar,

  but not a large crowbar. Here's another good (?) use for a large pipe wrench.

 You can see the water damage to the underlayment underneath the cabinet he just removed.

 Twitch holds a board that shows some rot.

 This dark icky stuff looks like tar paper to me, but it's the wet moldy particle board underlayment beneath the sink cabinet. Yes, it smells bad. 

 These next two shots are more of the underlayment, I think, that extends beyond the sink cabinet.

 And it goes all the way under the stove. That's where the stove was. Superman has it off to the left, blocking the narrow path from the kitchen to our tiny laundry room. I haven't washed clothes in weeks because I can't get to the laundry room. Superman can, though, so I have clean clothes. That's why he's Superman!

 See, there's the back of the stove. And he has a box fan in the window blowing icky air toward the back yard. 

 This is what the floor looked like as Superman broke up the damaged particle board. The orange cat (sometimes called Saratoga, sometimes Caramel, sometimes Marmalade) loves to "help."

 And here the subfloor is revealed. Oh look! It's wet, too! And for some reason it's painted white. I don't know why. And only a portion of it is painted. Weird.

Superman let this dry out for a couple of days, but to no avail. It was still pretty damp.

See, only part of it is painted. And this is the subfloor, which gets covered by the underlayment for the vinyl. No one will ever see it unless the floor gets damaged somehow... Oh, right. 

 What a mess.

 Oh look! Superman went to (only big box home improvement store in town) for supplies!

The subfloor must come out. He had hoped to remove and replace it in one day so our house wouldn't be exposed to the crawl space overnight. No such luck. He did this Monday, if I recall, and it's early Thursday morning now and still looks like this.

 You can see sawdust on the insulation. The insulation is wet, too, no surprise.

 No more insulation! But wait, what's that on the ground? We've got a huge swath of plastic covering the dirt in the crawl space. I forget what that's called, but the plumbers said it's a good idea. It adds to the value of the home, too, a little bit. Maybe. It also captures water that drips from the house. Yep, there's a big puddle of water on the ground under where the sink used to be. Does that mean there is still an active leak? Superman disabled the sink the day after Thanksgiving. Nothing has gone down the drain for a month. Are the supply lines leaking?

 Ah, there are the supply lines. Superman called the plumbers back out here to check their work. They came Wednesday. Nope, it isn't the supply lines. When he talked to the plumbers Tuesday they said that water can sit for a long time, and to give it some air flow. He put the box fan across the joists pointing down, and the puddle was nearly gone Wednesday morning.

Can you see the damage to the wall studs and sill behind the supply lines? He's going to have to replace the sill and studs under the window where the sink was.

I need to take pictures of our makeshift kitchen in the living room. I have some shots of the living room in its Christmas glory, such as it was.

This evening Superman and I went out to one of our favorite date locations: the big box home improvement store! We bought two small heaters which are now set up on either side of the hole in the floor, blowing toward each other. The idea is that the dry heat will help dry the joists, which Superman really doesn't want to replace. He's going to sister the joists anyway, so there will be more substance to the joists when he's done. But he doesn't see the need to remove and replace the ones there. The heaters and the fan are working to dry out what's left.

We also bought a new sink. As shown in one of the above photos, the old sink is a big beige cast iron clunker with bits of enamel chipped off the edges. OK, the photo probably doesn't show that much detail, but trust me. So we got a new 20 gauge stainless steel 8" deep double bowl sink. It was on clearance for a decent price, and Superman wanted to buy it now before it wasn't available anymore. There's no place to put it, but whatever. We also looked at cabinets, and tentatively decided on the prefab unfinished suckers. They're cheaper and quicker than building our own, and we can choose a counter top and then finish the cabinets to match. 

Since we're putting the new kitchen on the (big box home improvement store) credit card, we've decided to add a new refrigerator to the deal. We've needed a new fridge for ages. The one we have isn't big enough for the size of our household, and is old and inefficient and falling apart. So we looked at refrigerators, too. I know which one I really want, and it's come down in price since it first came out half a dozen years ago. It is 22.5 cubic feet and now less than $1000. Barely less, but less is less. Used to be only the 18 cu. ft. fridges were that cheap, and most of the smaller ones don't come in the configuration and with the features that I want. Don't know if that's the one we'll end up with, but I hope so.

My land it's late! I'm tired. And this post is way too long now. It's mostly pictures, though, for what that's worth. I'll be back in a day or so with Christmas pictures (maybe) and more updated shots of the kitchen. Heck, I might add photos of the bathroom that Superman has been remodeling for 2, maybe 3 years. This kitchen best go faster than that!