Renovating The Kitchen Part I: Can't look in the oven

FI owns the studio we're living in now and he's done a lot of great improvements to the place. It was built in the 1960s, so he did a lot of sprucing up before he moved in. He put in a new bathroom sink and painted the bathroom. He also put in a new wood floor (including the closets) and did it all himself (!) after work each day and weekends. It took him about 2 months.

But one thing he hadn't gotten to before I moved in was renovating his kitchen. It hasn't been updated since the apartments were built. There are cabinets but no drawers. The floor is old tile. He did get a new fridge and got rid of the old crappy one.
Here's a shot of the kitchen from our hallway. See his cute fridge? See also his old stove on the left? It's scary. Well, the oven is scary. I love to bake and wanted to bake for FI in his place, but he wouldn't let me open the oven door. He had never turned the oven on or opened the door.

So we finally got to renovating the kitchen. FI got a couple of bids and picked a contractor. The contractor came and got measurements, talked about what we wanted (microwave shelf, lazy susan in the cupboards, etc.), and FI picked out cabinet colors, tiles, and the countertop surface.

We waited for the go-ahead for the renovations to start. Basically the cabinets were being custom made, so we had to wait a few weeks. At that time we also realized the sink was going to be too small and it took some time to make adjustments so we had to wait a little longer.

We spent the night before the renovation started clearing out the kitchen. Our studio became filled with several extra bags and boxes of utensils, plateware, pots and pans, and dry goods. We moved the fridge into the living room and stacked the microwave and toaster on top of it. It was kind of like a dorm room for the last month with the fridge in the living area. :)

The contractor did a ton of work the first day. Not only did he strip everything out in one day, he also put in the top cabinets.
You can see the bare concrete floors and pipes where the sink was. The bare patch along the wall is where the old counter and lower cabinents were.

The 2nd day he came (a few days later) he laid down our beautiful granite tile floor and put in the vent for the stove. He also put in all of the bottom cabinets and drawers. Look at the pretty floor! Yes, those are giant holes in the cabinets. The countertop and sink are not in yet. If you looked in, you could see the old concrete floor.

Here's a picture of the kitchen so far.
At this point, we had to wait for the custom countertop to be cut, so there was a break of about a week and a half.

Mom and Steve visited during this time (to do the Running of the Brides, that's another post) and Mom actually started lining the cabinets for us. She did all of the top cabinet shelves. She liked it, especially the lazy susan we have in the corner cabinet.