Kitchen Demo: Day 6 and 7

Saturday was the first day we had outside help on the house. We are planning on doing most of the work ourselves (with the help of my dad) but there is so much work to do if we want to move into this house before Cora graduates we needed a few more hands.

We hired two teenagers to help with more demolition on Saturday and they worked very hard all day. We got almost all the kitchen demo done and still made progress on the rest of the house.

One of the projects in the kitchen was to remove the soffit. I wanted to redo the lighting in the kitchen to make it more like the lighting in my old kitchen so we didn’t need florescent lights in boxes.

It was a huge mess, but all the soffits on two walls were removed. We ended up having to open up a wall to figure out all the electric in the kitchen. Once we got the soffit down we realized that at one time the range was on a different wall and there we many unused wires.

It took a few hours to figure out which wires went to the different lights/ outlets in the kitchen.

We also ended up cutting out the section of drywall where the backsplash was located. It was really torn up from the backsplash removal, so it will be easier to repair an entire section instead of several large holes.

We finished demolition on the bar area.

Thanks for the suggestions for the mud room. As you can see there is a door to the right of the bar which leads to an area before you get to the garage. That is actually going to become the mud room, but probably not until next year.

We also needed to remove the oven from it’s Fort Knox like position in the kitchen. I’m pretty sure all the cabinets in the kitchen were custom built based on how they are irregular sizes and how they fit in the spaces. The oven was the last kitchen demo project on our list.

After I unscrewed every screw on the entire unit (and realized that only 3 of them actually needed to be unscrewed to get the oven out) the guys were able to remove it.

Hopefully we can sell it or give it away because it is in good condition.

I started working on wallpaper removal in the half bath. This the bath we are totally redoing now. The rest of the bathrooms will wait until we have more remodeling funds.

This wallpaper is a BEAST to remove. I’m pretty sure there are 3 or 4 layers on these walls. While I was removing wallpaper my dad came in and game me a great idea.

The current vanity space is 45 inches, which is a custom size. If we removed the partial wall in the bathroom it would give us enough space in the bathroom to put a 48 inch standard (and cheaper) vanity plus it would make the small bathroom seem bigger.

That was all the encouragement I needed to pick up a sledge hammer and get to work.

After we removed the wall we realized that the back wall behind the toilet comes out 1.75 inches more than the wall behind the sink. Oh the fun things you learn when you start permanently removing things from the house.

We will build up the wall behind the sink so the wall will be even. On day one this would have been upsetting to me, but now I just tack on another several hours to the project in my head and move on to the next job.

Some of the closets had those old school wooden shoe shelves in them. Since I have lots of closet organizers already, I wanted the shelves removed so we could use the floor space. Those were removed on Saturday. I couldn’t find a before picture so you’ll just have to image what it looked like.

In the master bedroom there was a vanity and mirror in a nook in the main room. I wanted it removed because I have a ton of furniture and I know I have a piece that will work in that spot. I also know if it stayed it would be covered with my stuff and always look junky. So it had to go. 

The guys in my family thought it would be fun to remove the mirror by throwing hammers at it.

Notice the holes in the drywall??? Ahem.

The cost of fixing the drywall seems to be worth the excitement of hurling hammers into glass, but I can’t recommend it as a demo technique.

We took Sunday off. The kids have been working so hard and we wanted them to have a break.

Who are we kidding?!?!? We’re exhausted and wanted a break for ourselves!

Everyone who has come by the house says the same thing…

“Boy, you sure have your work cut out for you.”

Yes, we have taken on a huge remodel project and we have hardly any skills, but we are learning as we go from my dad and getting help when we need it. If I look at the big picture I get totally overwhelmed.

But if I look at one wall of wallpaper, mirrors, or flooring it seems more manageable. We just keep our heads down and keep working.

And when we are finished our entire family will be able to stand in OUR home and say…

“We did this, together, as a family.”

That is if we survive the process. 🙂

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This is part of our ongoing renovation project for our new home in Florida.  Our goal is to be done by Thanksgiving or else.  Follow the daily accounts of our real life during this DIY renovation process here.