Wednesday, December 7, 2016

Kitchen Demo

After we moved into the house and really lived there for a while, we started to notice some things. I mentioned one in a previous post about how weird the house is. The kitchen was just gross. There were extra kick plates on the cabinets, no trim or corner round on the floor around the fridge, flat edges instead of 45 degree edges cut for corners of the shoe molding. It was all so, so strange and extremely annoying.

My commission from selling our house was about enough to replace the countertops and the sink and faucet, with some to spare. That's the money I could use to reno the kitchen. Once we had lived in the house, though I realized I hated the cabinets. They became my sole focal point. Somehow I convinced my husband to dip into our earnings from selling our house and redo the countertops, as well as the cabinets. We had thought about refacing them but they were just so gross that we decided to go all the way.

It took about a month to find a cabinet company that we thought we liked. We scheduled our cabinets to be installed on Friday November 4th. We decided to save a little money and tear out the old cabinets and countertops ourselves. While it was frustrating and hard work to get them out, it was also kind of therapeutic.




  



As we pulled the cabinets down, we were able to take a look at just how bad the situation was. The cabinets that were originally installed were pressed particle board. They had what looked like a sheet of contact paper on the outside to make them look like "real wood." Then, one of the previous owners decided to reface them. Another layer of particle board was added to the ends and the doors were painted white.

For some reason they added the extra kick plates in one or two places. They also did a hideous job painting - there was paint on the hinges, inside the cabinets and drips down the sides of the doors and the sides where they added the extra panel. Once we started demo, we were both really glad we decided to rip them out.


So much wine was needed to survive this demo

Oh yay, mold.



What a mess. There was so much caulk in that kitchen from the cabinets to the floors. Most of the caulk on the floor was disgusting from years and years of being open to dust and dirt since they didn't cover it probably with trim or shoe molding.

When we tore out the cabinets under the sink, we accidentally broke off the water shut off valve. It sheared right off. Thankfully we had the water turned off before that happened and didn't need water there again until the plumber was scheduled with our counter install.

The last picture is the final shot before our new cabinets went in. After we removed the cabinets, we cleaned and sanded and finally Dan painted. He painted around where the cabinets were going to go so we wouldn't have to tape them off later. Gray is so much calmer than that awful yellow that was in there before.


Our dining room became our staging area for everything that we had removed from the kitchen cabinets. We attempted to eat dinner in here a couple of times but mostly we just ate out. We even had company while we were in the middle of this mess but it all worked out in the end.

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