Kitchen Floor Project, Day 1.

I started bright and early today, mainly because my car was parked on the street downtown and the meters turn on at 8. Xcel still hasn't thrown the switch to get my power going again, but I've been told it should be tomorrow morning. So I went around and opened all the blinds and what not to get as much light as possible, the basement is kind of a cave most of the day but does have a few windows. The basement also has some speakers in the drop-ceiling with cords going to the main floor, I brought my appropriate iPod adapter and gave it a shot and sure enough the music came through perfectly, even with no power.
My buddy Lil' Davey met me at the house after a while and we started demo-ing the rotten kitchen floor. The premise of the kitchen floor project is to replace part of the plywood sub-floor that became rotten from years of sitting beneath a leaky dishwasher. As seen in the bottom right of this picture:
Yeah, the rest of the kitchen is a mess as well, just look at the nasty grease trailing up the ceiling above the stove. Believe me, it's worse than it looks.

The kitchen floor project is one of the few interior tasks that isn't purely cosmetic. You could literally step through the floor where the rotten wood is. To get to all the rotten sub-floor I need to remove the adjacent counter and cabinets (ideally without destroying them or vital plumbing) as well as the entire wood-parquet finished floor.

I started the day with my Target tool set that I bought myself when I first moved into my apartment, it just has basics like screwdrivers, pliers, a hammer, and a crescent wrench. It went something like this:

Soon I had a full blown hole into the basement, letting a little light down:
Next we disconnected the plumbing from the sink and took the counter top w/ sink right out:
The cabinets ended up being the more difficult task to excavate, mostly because they felt pretty fragile and we were afraid if we tried to lift it up over the remaining plumbing it would fall to pieces right in our hands. We made the inaugural trip to Home Depot where I picked up:

• Garden Hose w/ sprayer
• Pry-bar (which I'm very excited to own)
• Channel-lock pliers
  
• A moderate-sized pipe-wrench
• Flashlights
• New locks/deadbolts
• 25' Tape Measure
• Dust Masks

Cabinet Solution: remove as much of the plumbing as I felt comfortable redoing later.

Problem w/ solution: the last essential pipe wouldn't budge with the wrench I picked up.

New Solution for tomorrow: Get a bigger wrench.

Lil' Davey went to town on a large portion of the rest of the kitchen floor with my sweet new pry-bar while I installed my new locks and deadbolts.
N.Q.X. Fact: I biked from Burns Ave. right by the house back to the Parkside (My apartment downtown) in 12 MINUTES! It's about another 10 to Padelford (Work), so doable.