The Kitchen Remodel – Part 1 – Goodbye old kitchen

Last week, things were pretty quiet around here. We didn’t do much other than to rest up. It was pretty nice. Well, now that we’re rested up, it was time to get back to business. The next big project is the kitchen. First, lets take a look at how the kitchen looked when we bought the house. There was no full size fridge nor was there an oven. The back door was so small that we had to remove the doors from the fridge to make it fit inside the kitchen. We then wired up for an electric oven and brought ours from our previous house when we changed out the appliances.

Clearing out the kitchen

In preparation for the remodel, we ran to Lowe’s and got another storage rack and a bunch more plastic totes. Oceana got the rack set up and cleared out the cabinets and pantry from the kitchen. With the kitchen cleared out, we then set up floor protection in the dining room. Once we finished with that, we rolled the fridge from the kitchen and into the dining room, which will now serve as our makeshift kitchen. Next, we moved the oven next to the fridge and then I used some spare wire that I had laying around to extend the plug for the oven into the dining room. It’ll work for temporary purposes.

The demo begins

With the appliances out, we got right into the demo. We tore out the cabinets from both sides leaving just the sink countertop and cabinet in place. Once the cabinets were gone, we put up plastic between the kitchen and dining room since the next part was going to be real dusty. Now it’s time to demo the drywall. I grabbed a crowbar and started ripping down the old drywall on the walls which revealed a layer of old siding. Once the drywall was gone, I removed all of the old siding, which revealed more siding on the opposite side of the wall.

Layout options

After looking at how pieced together the wall is between the kitchen and the master bathroom, I think it’s going to be best to completely remove it and start over. That will have to wait for another day though. We turned our sights towards the drywall on the outside wall and ripped all of it out. Oceana went through and pulled all of the remaining drywall nails from the studs after the drywall was gone. As we got cleaned up, we looked at layouts for the new kitchen and master bathroom (since the wall is shared between them). We’re opting to lose a little space from the kitchen which will allow for a larger master shower as well as a second closet in the master bedroom (his and hers).

That’s all, folks

That’s all for this week. Next week we’ll be tearing out the drywall on the ceiling, tearing out the wall between the kitchen and master bathroom, and tearing out the multiple layers of old flooring. Stay tuned!