Saturday, September 21, 2013

Making a Kitchen, Part 5 - Demolition and Prep Work

This post will be a compilation of all my Facebook status updates and pictures dealing with the kitchen renovation from September 11 through September 18. During this period we completely took apart our nasty old kitchen and did a great deal of preparation for the new kitchen. Enjoy!

September 11

1:04 pm - Jeff and I are taking advantage of his week off. Right now we're clearing out the kitchen! Once it's empty enough, I'll take all the "before" pictures and we'll be ready to start demolition. Actually, we'll be taking stuff apart carefully to avoid a huge mess, so Jeff says we should call it "dismantling" the kitchen. Anyway, I'm so excited to finally get started!

September 12

12:30 pm - I've been hard at work all morning, and am now taking some break time for lunch and facebooking. :) I finished clearing everything out of the kitchen, did a bit of cleaning up, and took my before pictures. I'll do a blog post of that later tonight. As of now, all the drawers and cabinet doors have been removed, and we already took down two wall cabinets.

3:49 pm - Does anyone in the Salt Lake-ish area know how to remove a kitchen sink and unhook all the plumbing, and would be willing to walk Jeff and I through it?

10:12 pm - It only took a mere 6 hours, 5 youtube videos, 1 trip to the hardware store, and countless cries of "What the heck!" "This is ridiculous!" "Ouch!" and "That is disgusting!"


10:25 pm - Well, here's how our kitchen looks at the end of Demo Day 1. What a mess! Tomorrow I need to clear some space in the living room so we can put the fridge and oven in there while we work some more in the kitchen.


September 13

1:08 pm - Bye bye counters!


1:09 pm - Really wishing we had been able to get all this done before neighborhood clean-up. Disposing of all this would have been a bit simpler.


2:43 pm - Shudder shudder! A long dead mouse under the bottom of the sink cabinet is the last thing I wanted to see today! Yuck!

4:03 pm - All the cabinets are out! I am sweaty and stinky (oh, so very stinky), but filled with a sense of accomplishment. Also a sense of disgust at all the mouse poo and other gunk we've been sweeping up, but mostly accomplishment.


6:03 pm - All the linoleum and the particleboard underlayment have been removed. My back and legs are aching from all the bending over to pull out staples from the floor, and I'm starting to get a migraine from all this work. But we're really seeing a lot of progress! I think I'm pretty much done for the day.


11:28 pm - A shower is nice. A shower after a long day of hard work is amazing.

September 14

11:36 am - It's funny how kids react to something when you move it. Chairs? Something to sit on at dinner time. Chairs moved into the living room? A playtime paradise!

2:31 pm - Nasty dining room carpet is out! I had to pry all the carpet tacks out of the floor, remove the foam underlayment, roll the carpet out of the way, and pull out all the staples. All this without removing the table from the dining room - there was just no place to put it.


8:29 pm - Every once in a while in this whole kitchen remodeling whirlwind, I should at least try to remember to make time to do the normal everyday things. Like catching up on laundry - if I don't do some tonight, we'll all be wearing dirty clothes to church tomorrow!

September 16

10:38 am - First coat of paint is up! I mentioned to Jeff this morning that a big benefit of our chosen kitchen style is that any imperfections can be chalked up to the inherent rusticity of farmhouse decorating. :)


6:49 pm - Oh dilemmas. Somehow I have to be able to move the oven, fridge, and dishwasher out of the kitchen eventually, or I won't be able to do the flooring. But we can't figure out how to unhook the water line from the fridge or the dishwasher. It's really frustrating knowing that you absolutely need to do something and can't see a way around it, but have no idea how to do it.

September 17

9:31 am - Well, Jeff's week off is over, and he's back to work. Which means that the kitchen renovation will be going much more slowly for the next several days. Ugh, I just wish it were over and we had a gorgeous new kitchen already!

5:46 pm - Figured it out! When it's time to do the flooring, I'll just put the flooring everywhere except under the fridge and dishwasher. Then, once it's all done drying and curing and everything, I'll pull out the dishwasher and fridge and do the flooring under them. So there.
(One of the comments on this status was to do this in reverse - do the flooring where the fridge and dishwasher will be first, then put them in place and do the rest of the flooring. This is what I eventually decided on, to avoid scratching up the main part of the floor.)

September 18

12:06 pm - Today I've just been working on little things around the kitchen. I marked the studs with chalk line, replaced some outlet covers, and attached bead board to a couple end cabinets. Still have lots of bead board to attach, which I'll do once I get around to cutting it.

5:39 pm - Bead board on the cabinets is almost all done, I just have three more panels to attach. This is going to be so pretty!


Well, that's it! Just over a week of hard work, sweat, tears, and hollering at the kids to not walk on the kitchen floor in bare feet, and the demolition and prep work were completed. Stay tuned for the process of putting everything back together again. :)

In case you missed it:
Part 2: A Day in the Life
Part 3: What Next? 
Part 4: "Before" Pictures

Linking to:
Link Party Palooza at tatertots & jello
Project Inspire{d} at Dukes & Duchesses  
Think Tank Thursday at Joyful Homemaking

1 comment:

Abby said...

Wow! And I though I had a lot of work with my kitchen! That makes my back sore just looking at it! Can't wait to see the finished product! Thanks for stopping by chapter37