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 1

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

Making a Kitchen, Part 4 - "Before" Pictures

In case you missed it:

Making a Kitchen, Part 1

Making a Kitchen, Part 2: A Day in the Life
Making a Kitchen, Part 3: What Next? 

Any good renovation starts with some really yucky "before" pictures. This is where you get to show the world exactly why you chose to renovate in the first place. And that is what this Making a Kitchen installment is all about.

Brace yourself, kitchen ugliness ahead!

First glance, maybe not too bad. Just a bit bland.

Very, very bland. Nondescript bluish grayish blah-ish cabinets, plain counters. Not much going on.

White-ish walls, icky linoleum flooring. The fridge stuck against a big, empty wall.

Not much going on here. Oh, you know, just a big hole in the wall that's been there for about a year.

We removed the dated wallpaper before we moved in, nearly four years ago. And the walls have looked like this every since.

We removed all the outlet covers too, because we were planning on painting the walls. We never did, and the covers never got put back on. Again, we've been living like this for almost four years.

The linoleum floor is stained, buckled, warped, and all around nasty to look at and to walk on.

This is the cabinet under the sink. Disgusting!

Some of the cabinet doors and drawers don't even close properly.

The laminate counter tops have seen better days.

Yup, definitely a little worse for wear.

The seams between the sheets of laminate are pulling apart and stained black.

And there's this random corkboard stuck to the side of one cabinet. I thought it might be handy, so I left it up when we moved in. But it's in an inconvenient spot, and we haven't really used it in, you guessed it, nearly four years.

And there you have it. This is what I have been living with ever since we moved in. I am so ready for a change!

Since taking these pictures, we have already begun to take down cabinets. Thanks for bearing with me through all these nasty "before" pictures. Stay tuned for all the fun, messy "during" pictures!

Linking to: Link Party Palooza at tatertots & jello

Making a Kitchen, Part 3: What next?

In case you missed it:

Making a Kitchen, Part 1

Making a Kitchen, Part 2: A Day in the Life

The cabinets are finished! I have built every cabinet and every drawer that will go in my kitchen. At the beginning of the summer, in my naivete, I blissfully imagined that I would spend a couple of weeks building cabinets, and that we would have the old kitchen demo-ed and the new kitchen installed by the time school started. Well, it didn't quite happen that way. The cabinets took the entire summer! They say that renovations always take longer than you think they will, and I'm learning this first hand.

My thoughts now have been turned to what I should do next. I'm actually feeling a little lost. I spent so much time on those cabinets that it feels strange not to have any more building to do. Thanks to a suggestion from my sister, and a great online article about kitchen renovation, I made a detailed list of everything that needs to be done in the kitchen. Now that I have a pretty clear plan, I'm feeling much better.

My Kitchen To-Do List

Prepare for demo:

-Set up temporary kitchen

     -Move fridge, range, small oven

     -Stock up on paper dishes, plastic ware, disposable pans

     -Plan easy meals

-Box up and label everything that won't be in temporary kitchen

-Throw away what won't be kept

-Remove everything not attached

-Arrange for disposal – dumpster, pickup truck?

-Take “before” pictures

Demo kitchen:

-Shut off power

-Remove microwave

      -Disconnect and cap wires

      -Remove screws

-Remove flooring

-Shut off water

-Uninstall and remove dishwasher

-Remove sink and fittings

-Remove cabinet doors and drawers

-Disassemble and remove counter

-Remove a/c vent

-Remove base cabinets

      -Unscrew if screws were used, pry gently with pry bar if nails were used

-Remove wall cabinets

-Pull up carpet in dining room

Prep for new kitchen:

-Repair walls

-Prime and paint walls

-Locate and mark studs on floor and ceiling

-Prepare floor

      -Fill areas that are dipped, buckled, bulging

      -Fill any holes or gauges

      -Countersink any nail or screw heads that are sticking up

      -Thoroughly clean floor

Flooring:

-Rip paper into stone-looking pieces about 12 inches

-Wrinkle then smooth each piece

-Mix glue (not all at once) using 3:1 ratio of water to glue

-Glue paper to floor

      -Cover piece of paper with glue mixture

      -Press smoothly onto floor

      -Overlap pieces to allow for shrinkage

      -Edge pieces go along the edge

      -Paper yourself out of the room – don't get trapped in a corner

-Let dry

-Stain floor

      -Cut in several inches around edges

      -Open windows for ventilation

      -Mop on stain using extension pole and stain pad

      -Feather edges, mop yourself out

-Let dry 1-2 days

-Seal floor

      -1 coat water-based polyurethane, then sand when dry

      -About 12 more coats, sanding after every other one, about an hour to dry in between

-Let cure for a few days

Cabinets:

-While floor is curing, build island

-Veneer visible sides of cabinets with bead board or ¼-inch ply

-Cover floor with protective covering

-Install wall cabinets

      -Chalk line to mark position of all studs

      -Chalk line to mark top of counter

      -Chalk line 18-19 inches above previous line – bottom of wall cabinets

      -Nail temporary 1x2 ledger, top of board lines up with line, nail into studs

      -Screw into studs through cleats and bottom of back

      -Each should be attached to at least 2 studs. If not use toggle bolt as additional fastener

      -Screw adjacent units together, making faces flush

      -Recheck for level and plumb

      -Remove ledger, repair holes in wall

      -Paint wall cabinets

-Install base cabinets

      -Cut opening for a/c vent

      -Place cabinets in position, shimming as necessary

      -Screw adjacent units together, making faces flush

      -Check for plumb, shimming as necessary

      -Screw entire length of cabinets into wall through top cleat and into wall studs

      -Install toe kick and vent cover

      -Paint base cabinets

-Build, paint, and install doors and drawer fronts

-Attach door knobs and drawer pulls

-Attach island to floor with toe nails or angle brackets, making it level and plumb

-Install decorative corbels under wall cabinets

Counters:

-Cut wood to length

-Seal bottom, 2-3 coats

-Trace and cut hole for sink

-Dry fit for sink placement

-Glue and screw planks to cabinets, one at a time

      -Construction grade adhesive

      -Start with back plank

      -Glue planks to cabinets and to each other

      -Weigh down with something heavy

-Fill seams with wood filler

-Sand and smooth after filler is dry

-Stain

-7-8 coats of polyurethane

Install sink and disposal

Install dishwasher

Install range hood

Install back splash

Install range and refrigerator

Install lighting fixtures

Hmm, think I'll be a bit busy for the next little while? Yeah, pretty much. Part of me finds this list overwhelming - there's so much to be done! But mostly I'm just excited to take on the next step in this renovation process.

I feel like this post needs pictures or something. So here's a rather crooked picture of a cabinet with drawers. Just because.

Linking to: Link Party Palooza at Tatertots & Jello

Making a Kitchen, Part 2: A Day in the Life

In case you missed it, here's Making a Kitchen, Part 1.

A day in the life of an average stay-at-home mom, who happens to be building cabinets for her kitchen.

7:30 - Wake up to the 3-year-old wandering into our room saying she's hungry. Get dressed groggily, then get her some breakfast.

8:00 - Baby is awake. Nurse him, then give him some solid food while I eat some cereal.

8:30 - Make sure the older kids have something to eat, feed the cat.

9:00 - If it's Jeff's work week, hand off the baby to the 7-year-old. She's such a great helper, and a loving big sister. If it isn't Jeff's work week, then he gets the baby.

After I make sure all the kids are occupied with something fun, and the baby is being taken care of, it's off to my work bench in the back yard to start building.

It's not glamorous, but it's mine and it gets the job done.

First I gather all my tools out of the shed. This includes a drill, a pocket hole kit, clamps of various sizes and uses, a carpenter's square, measuring tape, wood glue, pocket hole screws, hammer, nails, and saws.

I have a variety of saws, which I'm really proud of.

Today I'm working on making the face frame for the corner cabinet that I built yesterday.

Always use eye and ear protection when using power saws!

After getting everything out and set up, I spend the rest of the morning cutting wood, drilling holes, clamping joints, driving screws, and doing it all over again.

 

I have a limited amount of time in which to do my building. I can only work when my work area is in the shade - it's too hot without it and I tend to get migraines when I work in the sunshine. So I keep an eye on my shadow.

By lunchtime, my shade is gone and I'm ready to pack everything up and put it away. If I have a finished cabinet, Jeff and I bring it inside and find a place to stow it until installation time. If not, I put it in the shed to keep it protected from the elements until the next morning.

Today I have a finished corner cabinet (minus doors, but those will come later, after all the cabinets are built).

When I'm done putting everything away, I join the family for lunch, and spend the rest of the day being a mom. And resting. Lots of resting - carpentry is hard work!

This whole cabinet-building thing is taking a lot longer than I originally thought it would. Picturing this all in my mind a few months ago, I blissfully (ignorantly) thought that we'd have a new kitchen by now. Truth is, if we'd gone ahead and bought pre-made cabinets, we probably would. But I love the sense of accomplishment I get each time I finish building a cabinet. I love looking at my cabinets stashed all over the house and thinking to myself, I built that. And I know that, eventually, when we actually do have all these cabinets installed in our beautiful new kitchen, all the time and effort will be totally worth it.

In case anyone is interested, here's where I got the basic plans to build all the cabinets. They were pretty simple to modify and customize to fit my needs in my kitchen.
Plans for the wall cabinets
Plans for the base cabinets
Plans for the corner wall cabinet

Linking to:
Weekend Wrap-Up Party at Tatertots & Jello
Creative Showcase at Housewife Eclectic  
Project Inspire{d} at Dukes and Duchesses
Think Tank Thursday at Joyful Homemaking 

Making a Kitchen, Part 1

Anyone who knows us on Facebook and/or real life knows that Jeff and I are remodeling our kitchen this summer. This is a pretty big deal for us - we've lived in this house for almost 4 years and haven't really changed anything in the house since then.

We still haven't painted the hallway after tearing down the wallpaper before we moved in. The dishes and everything in the kitchen are still located where they were haphazardly tossed when we unpacked the boxes - not a lot of make-sense organization going on in there. So to be taking apart the kitchen and putting it all together again with better layout, cabinets, and flooring is a really big deal.

Not to mention the fact that we're doing it all ourselves. No contractors, no workers. We're doing our own flooring, cabinets, counter tops - everything. And I'm so excited about it!

I have been posting little updates on Facebook about the design process and what not, but I decided that it would be neat to create blog post updates as well. I can be a bit more detailed on the blog. So this post is mostly to catch up on what I've accomplished so far, and I'll be sharing more as we continue to work on the kitchen.

I started with the idea to remove the peninsula from the kitchen - it cuts the kitchen/dining space in half and creates a couple awkward areas. First, there's only a small walkway to get from the kitchen to the dining area between the fridge and the peninsula, and if the fridge is open no one can walk through. And second, the dishwasher opens up right in front of the sink, so we have to stand at an uncomfortable angle to rinse and load the dishes.

After dreaming about taking out the peninsula for months, I took it to the next level and started a Pinterest board. Oh yeah, I was really getting serious now! I started pinning articles about how to remodel a kitchen, plans for making kitchen cabinets, tutorials for creating hardwood counter tops, and ideas for appliances, lighting, flooring, and anything else I could think of that I wanted in my new kitchen.

Next came the actual plan. I took lots of measurements and drew out what I would like the new kitchen layout to be. Without the peninsula, it will be more open. The storage and counter space that we're losing with the removal of the peninsula will be replaced by adding some cabinetry to the wall next to the fridge.

We'll save time, effort, and money by keeping the sink and fridge where they are, and the range will only be moving a few inches so that shouldn't be a problem. But the dishwasher will be next to the sink, which makes so much more sense!

After making this general plan, I got more specific as far as cupboards and drawers and such. Here are the plans I created which show where shelves and drawers will go on the range wall, the sink wall, and the fridge wall.

These plans took a lot of brain work - I stayed up super late a couple nights making them, but I loved every minute of it!

Next came the step of creating plans and cut lists for each individual cabinet. I relied heavily on Ana White's plans for basic wall cabinets and base cabinets. As I shared on Facebook, some plans were fairly simple, and some made me want to tear my hair out! The most major plan was the cabinet that sits next to the range, and goes all the way to the corner. The fact that I had drawers and vertical shelves to plan for made the calculations and measurements head-spinningly difficult for me, but eventually I got it figured out.

Seriously, look at that! It's ridiculous how many times I had to scratch my head, erase a whole bunch of numbers, and add everything up over and over again to make it all work to fit in the space properly.

But finally, I had plans drawn up for every single cabinet I'm going to build. Major sense of accomplishment there! I chose one of the simplest plans to start with, and after purchasing some beautiful hardwood maple plywood, I was finally ready to start building.

This first cabinet took me two days to build - one to make the carcass, one to add the back and the face frame. The sense of accomplishment I feel after completing this is indescribable.

After building one cabinet, and knowing that I still have 12 more cabinets of varying size and difficulty yet to build, plus a table comprised of a farmhouse table top and two additional cabinets, plus a storage bench, plus a kitchen island, I can honestly say that this kitchen will be a true labor of love. A WHOLE TON of work, but a whole lot of love.

I'm having to work around nap times, taking care of four kids, Jeff's odd work schedule, and trying not to be working in the hottest part of the day. I have to deal with the fact that I am extremely prone to migraines, and two of my triggers happen to be heat and physical exertion, so I have to take pain relief before I even go outside to start working each day. But looking at these kitchen plans, looking at my Pinterest board, dreaming of what my kitchen will be someday soon, I know that it will be worth it!

Linking to:
Think Tank Thursday at Joyful Homemaking

Tea Cup Rain Chain - Iron Craft #11

Our Iron Craft challenge was to create something dealing with rain, clouds, etc. I was intrigued by the idea of rain chains - alternatives to downspouts which "make a water feature out of the transport of rainwater from the guttering downwards to a drain or to a storage container." Wikipedia

I wanted to make a rain chain out of little tea cups, so I headed to the thrift store. It's a great place to shop for craft supplies. Here's some of the pretty little cups I found, only 75 cents each.

Other supplies for this project included some chain (I used white plastic chain), some 14-guage wire to wire the cups onto the chain, and some wire cutters.

Since I needed to drill a hole in the bottom of each cup, I picked up a masonry drill bit. I assumed that since it was strong enough to drill through cement, it would surely be strong enough for porcelain and ceramic. However, after trying to drill a hole for at least 15 minutes, and making little more than a dimple in the surface of the cup, I realized I needed something stronger.

So don't use a masonry bit to drill in tea cups.

Instead, I found a diamond-tip drill bit that is specifically for use on ceramic, porcelain, and glass. I guess I should have believed all those web sites I checked out when they said you had to use the diamond-tip. They know what they're talking about!

This video shows how to drill a hole in the bottom of a ceramic pot, and I used this technique to drill a 1/4-inch hole in the bottom of each tea cup. Some took longer than others. It depended on the thickness of the cup, as well as the strength of the porcelain or ceramic.

Then I cut the chain into segments of about 10 inches each. Similar to this video, I attached the cups to the sections of chain, only I used the 14-guage wire instead of fishing line.

And here is my finished rain chain! I love how it turned out, so dainty and pretty.

Due to some problems with our gutter, I haven't actually installed the rain chain yet. I took these pictures with the chain just hanging off a loose gutter nail. Once we get the gutters fixed, the chain will hang where the downspout currently is.

I want the water to drain into a large container, so that we can collect the rain water and use it to water our vegetable garden. So I bought this large planter, which I'll place directly under the rain chain as soon as we get it properly hung.

There were five of these lovely cups at the thrift store. I was thrilled. Unfortunately, they took the longest to drill through, so by the time I was done, I was quite a bit less thrilled with these cups! But now that I'm done, I can love them again.

  And thus concludes this installment of the tale of the dainty rain chain. I will post about it again once it is properly installed. :) 

Linked to:
Think Tank Thursday at Joyful Homemaking
Project Inspire{d} at Dukes and Duchesses