"De" or "Con" -structive?

I have finally been able to put together my before and "in the middle" pictures of our kitchen in the house we are remodeling and I thought I'd show off our progress. Our family celebrated memorial day weekend by working on the house - Friday through Monday with time off Sunday for good behavior. The kids have been remarkable good and helpful. We [Rus] removed a bunch of sheet rock to expose the studs of walls we are moving and we [Keri] painted all of the bedrooms - including the ceilings and closets. Closets are my new least favorite thing to paint, fyi. Rus actually helped a ton with the painting - he patched holes in the walls - and let me tell you there were quite a few - and he taped off the baseboard and painted most of the ceilings. His grandpa was quite the wiring/electrical genius. Some of his handiwork includes a smoke detector attached to the ceiling with the cord going through a hole drilled in the nearby sheet rock that goes into a closet to reveal a plug that goes into an extension cord that is stapled to the ceiling. The cord for the extension cord is stapled down the wall to a small hole above the baseboard that goes into the master bedroom where it plugs into an outlet. I'm not an electrician, but it doesn't look quite up to code to me... Similar scenarios explain the front porch light and outdoor plug, a plug on the back porch, and more. Thank goodness Rus' dad is an electrician or we'd be buying some other electrician a new pool.
Okee dokeee...let me see if I can decipher these pictures for you. To start - the kitchen is in the rear corner of the house. There are two ways into it, one from the dining room/living room and one from the hall. It previously had cabinets that came out in a peninsula and basically divided the room in half. It was used as a kitchen and dining area - it had space for a table and chairs. The updated version will have cabinets around two walls with an island; it will not be used as a formal dining area. The new version will also have big picture windows to take in the view of the Sandias. All of the "before" pictures have this yellow tinge.
Okay, first: Here is looking from the living room/dining area into the kitchen. When you walk through that tiny doorway there was a little pantry on the left side.

We took out the pantry to open up the space so you didn't have to walk through a teeny tiny hall to the kitchen.

Looking from the other direction - the kitchen back into that little hall (now the pantry is on the right side). Our new pantry will be where the wall oven and cabinets are in this picture. It will be floor to ceiling cabinets that are a foot deep and just over five feet wide. The fridge on the right will be moved over to a wall on the right side (out of this picture).

And here is the "after"

Here you can see the peninsula that comes out with cabinets on the ceiling and a sink on the bottom. The kitchen felt so small like this.

And here it is opened up. All that is left of that sink area is the pipes which are being moved over the next couple of days. And see those two windows? They'll be replaced with big picture windows. The sink will go on that wall under the windows. And see that metal pipe sticking out the ceiling on the other wall (with no windows)? That is were the cooktop/oven will go and the fridge will be directly to the left.

So there you have it...a big mess. Since these pictures were taken all of the sheetrock on the ceiling and the walls has been removed to make it easier to do the electrical. We have a contractor helping us - Rus' cousin Scott. AWESOME. I am SO. STINKIN. EXCITED. Rus and I are both exhausted and it's only the beginning of the summer. More to come later!