Update on kitchen progress

I am blogging my entire kitchen renovation from start to finish. Greentea Design has provided me with their solid wood kitchen cabinets, and I'm taking care of the rest.

If you'd like to be brought up to date, check out my kitchen remodel blog for an archive of previous posts. I posted recently about more demolition and work begun by my contractor. Now for a bit more demolition (seems to never end) and some of the progress with the walls going back up and plumbing/electrical.

Work continues to progress in my kitchen. I am SO looking forward to finally having a kitchen again and being able to cook. I have never eaten so much pizza in my life and as much as I love pizza, I am tiring of it fast. But things are moving along, and as you would expect in a house of this age, unexpected work kept popping up (along with things I realized at the last minute needed to be fixed - and luckily my contractor is a patient guy). It seems the ceiling needed to be removed to allow the electrician to wire it for my potlights and pendants. The problem was it wasn't just drywall that needed to come down but more wood panelling, which is why it had to come down - he couldn't install the potlights in the panelling. And there was 100 years worth of dust and cobwebs that came down with it. It was TERRIBLE - such a huge mess, and the guys were covered in it when they were done. There was black dust all over the house. (In the left side of the photo below you can see alot of cobwebs - I think I took this after some vacumming of the beams was done).

The contractor discovered what we're thinking is horse hair in the ceiling (just a few chunks), which maybe 100 years ago was used for insulation??

And as a result of taking down the ceiling, the pile of garbage on my driveway grew to new heights.

To see more of the progress, click HERE.

More demolition and preparation for cabinets

I am blogging my entire kitchen renovation from start to finish. Greentea Design has provided me with their solid wood kitchen cabinets, and I'm taking care of the rest.

If you'd like to be brought up to date, check out my kitchen remodel blog for an archive of previous posts. I posted recently about the removal of the old kitchen, and now for more demolition and work begun by my contractor.

Once my boyfriend and I removed the old cabinets and tile floor, the contractor started his work. And of course as it always goes with an old house, there was more work than originally anticipated. And it probably didn't help that I added a little project (ummm, not that little) onto the ever growing list of things that needed to be completed before the cabinets arrive.

I've got to start by talking about the amazing discoveries on the walls behind the drywall and wood panelling. I have never seen so many layers of wallpaper and newspaper in one space. We all got a really good laugh out of that. My boyfriend counted 15 different wallpapers on one chunk he removed.

When we discovered newspaper on the walls behind the wallpaper, I was excited to see how old it was and if there were any dates visible. When I bought this house the age was not disclosed and all I got was the inspector's guess that it was about 90 years old. I did find one date, and although the builders may have used old newspapers they had stashed away, it is amazing to think that this house was built so long ago.

So once the kitchen was stripped bare of all the drywall and the plywood removed from the floor, the contractor got to work on levelling the floor. This was a crucial step as the cabinets would have been on a really obvious slant. The contractor nailed down new thinner plywood over the floorboards (the floorboards were in too much of a rough shape to have skipped this layer), then added strips of wood which he used to level another thin layer of plywood. This will mean that the kitchen floor will be higher than the living room floor but there's nothing I can do about it, and with the floors painted the same colour throughout it won't be that noticeable that there is a little step up into the kitchen.

During the process of removing all the drywall, conversations were had about the wall covering the staircase. I was concerned that it would be a tight fit having a table down the center of the space and trying to get around it with people seated there. Before the demo I took my desk out of my office (which would be a similar width) and we tried it in the kitchen. In the photo below you can see a bit of the wall in question on the left side. On the right there is a little brown rug that shows the depth of the cabinets.

If you'd like to see what I decided to do with the wall (a HUGE success) and more of the construction in preparation for the cabinets, click HERE.

Emptying out the old kitchen

I am blogging my entire kitchen renovation from start to finish. Greentea Design has provided me with their solid wood kitchen cabinets, and I'm taking care of the rest.

If you'd like to be brought up to date, check out my kitchen remodel blog for an archive of previous posts. I posted recently about the beginnings of the demolition phase and my flooring dilemma, and now for lots more demolition.

There's been alot of work going on at my house, and this being my first renovation, I am realizing how tough it is to have your home in complete reno chaos. This is one of the first times I've ever wished I had fewer cats. But I'm coping and praying things will be done in a timely fashion. I've got all fingers and toes crossed on that one.

A couple weeks ago my boyfriend and I started taking down all the old cabinets in the kitchen. As sad as I was to see the pink go, it felt REALLY good to have at them with a crowbar. I thought I'd show you a sequence of photos of the work we did in preparation for my contractor's arrival. One weekend we started by removing the island (that housed the dishwasher), the wall cabinet above it, and the built-in china cabinet.

Here is the island with the dishwasher removed.

I am totally dumbfounded by the poor craftsmanship of so many things around my house - this island being one of them. This is what the interior of it looked like (with the door removed). And I will spare you the horror of what we found underneath the island once it was taken apart.

This photo is the island and the cabinet above it removed. It was a very revealing process as the island was built recently by a former owner and the cabinet on the wall above it was there probably since the house was built. The island came apart with 2 whacks of a crowbar. The cabinet above took about 20 minutes.

To see more of the demolition, click HERE.

Random on a Sunday

I am pretty miserable today so I'll make this brief. I have nothing planned for a post today because I spent about 8 hours yesterday getting everything out of my old kitchen, then tore everything that was left in it out (with help...thanks Jeff!!). Photos to come eventually on my kitchen blog. It was hard work and every muscle in my body is aching. My left eye is killing me (?? something must have landed in it yesterday), and from carrying out loads and loads of garbage onto the driveway in the pouring rain, I am now getting a cold. It gets worse. This is now my kitchen for the next 4 weeks.

I don't want to bring everyone down with me so here are a couple of random photos I took around the yard the other day. As much as I hate the fact that fall means winter is on it's way, it makes for some pretty photos.

To continue the randomness, I thought I would include this adorable photo of Pugley, my former cat. My younger sister Jen now owns him. He's the grumpiest cat in the world and I love him. Jen loves him more because he lets her touch him. :P

And that is my random Sunday. Hope you all have a great random Sunday.

The power of a crowbar, and a dilemma

I am blogging my entire kitchen renovation from start to finish. Greentea Design has provided me with their solid wood kitchen cabinets, and I'm taking care of the rest.

If you'd like to be brought up to date, check out my kitchen remodel blog for an archive of previous posts. I posted recently about the major purchases I've made for the kitchen, and now it's time for the fun stuff - DEMOLITION. I also have a flooring dilemma to figure out.

Demolition began recently in my kitchen, and it was a BLAST. I have no fear of tools (especially power tools), and love to get my hands dirty. I didn't do it all myself mind you, my boyfriend was as eager as I was to help with this demolition. We started with the wall between the living room and the kitchen. That had to go because the cabinets are ending about a foot into the living room and frankly, regardless of how the kitchen ended up being designed, I wanted that wall gone to open up the main floor. Here are a couple before photos to show you the wall (which I had an architect friend come by to check out and ensure it was not load bearing).

And here are a couple "during" photos. (During the demo of this wall we discovered mouse poop in the cupboard above the closet. Seems mice chewed/clawed a hole through the wall to get into the closet at a bag I had stashed in there of makings for granola. I have a couple pics in my kitchen remodel set on Flickr of this little surprise if you care to see the HORROR).

To see the space sans wall, and to see what my flooring dilemma is, click HERE.