Knife Abuse

Hoffritz Knife and Liberated Sink
Portion of Granite Countertop at upper right
Note missing rivet in handle

We got rid of the granite counter tops from the kitchen as well as all the old cabinets today. It took us several days to take everything apart and get the counter tops loose from the cabinets. They had been attached with copious amounts of silicon sealer and getting them apart without breaking the granite or doing too much damage to the cabinets was a bit of a challenge. The last, and possibly most difficult part was separating the counter tops from the sink. This was the last bit to be done so I had the advantage of being able to wedge the far ends of the counter up a fraction of an inch. I drove the knife in between the granite and sink by tapping on the end of the handle with a ball peen hammer. After it had gone in a couple of inches, I was able to cut around the sink by more hammer blows to the back edge of the blade. It was a pretty nice knife, I don't know if it will ever qualify as cutlery again, but it served a useful purpose. It didn't actually suffer much damage, just the one rivet (photo) and it was recovered and reinstalled and seems to be good.

Crew, rig, and trailer full of granite

I put an ad on Craigslist yesterday evening and was promptly inundated with calls and letters. I quickly pulled the plug. E-mails and texts don't cut it. Only phone calls work for this kind of thing. Too much back and forth. In any case one guy showed up at the appointed time, looked over situation, went away and came back with a truck and a crew to haul it all away. Suits me. It took all six of us to move some of these pieces. We had to carry them down a half flight of steps and some of them weighed near 400 pounds. I can't imagine how the guys who do this for a living manage it.

I was originally going to have ReStore take the kitchen apart and cabinets away, but they had to be scheduled. I had a couple guys I needed to put to work, and one day I just reached the tipping point where I said "it's time" and we started deconstruction. Call ReStore a couple of days ago to see about having them pick up the cabinets, and wouldn't you know it, they are shut down because of Corona.

I've never had much luck with selling stuff on Craigslist, probably because I have a poor idea of what kinds of things people want to buy, but giving it away in the Free section works wonders. I might have been able to get some money for this, but compared to overall cost of the project and the amount of hassle and delay involved in selling it didn't make it seem like a worthwhile proposition. I might have been wrong, but I don't really care. The granite is gone and I can move on to the next phase of this project: ripping up the old kitchen flooring.

Update March 2021 replaced missing photos that Blogger apparently lost. First time that has happened.