Remembering - Our Kitchen Renovation - Before & Demo

I truly regret not starting this blog when we purchased our home back in April 2010 but I was so busy with the renovation, I probably wouldn't have updated it anyway. So now that we're almost finished, I will 'remember' our renovation, one room at at time.

First is our kitchen. It was the most dramatic change and the most expensive, so it's the best place to start.

Here are the before pics, these were taken after we made the offer to buy but hadn't purchased yet. It was some time in March 2010.

As you look at the before pics you'll probably think, those cabinets look pretty good, why did they feel like they needed to change them? Well, if you had seen them in person, you'd understand, the sink cabinet was crumbling from a leak in the sink plumbing and the laminate was peeling off. They were bad. We did keep the ones in the laundry (for now).

The room beyond was the dining room, the refrigerator went right by the door where the outlet is on the wall.

Dishwasher went on the left of the sink, the previous owners took it with them. See the hole in the tile? Interior foundation work was just completed.

A close up of the hole - this wasn't the only one, there were about 8 of them throughout the house.

It was nice to have a lot of pantry space but how old is that oven?

The cooktop was on the peninsula that overlooked the den. There was a HUGE exhaust fan over the cooktop so you couldn't see anyone in the den even if you wanted to. The breakfast area is beyond the peninsula.

Here's the view from the den - see the monstrosity exhaust fan?

See how the floor of the cabinet under the sink is wet? Sink was leaking - for a long time - when we pulled out the cabinet, the floor and backside crumbled - yeah - it crumbled. Pics later in the post.

No dishwasher - who takes a dishwasher when they move out? Especially these people - they ran a - I'm going to misspell this because I don't want google to pick it up - pros = titu-shun ring - yeah, really, we found the news articles on the internet from when they got busted. More on that later.

Next I'll show you the work that led to the transformation. This is the demo phase ONE.

The contractor that we ended up firing took up the tile floor. Brent and I removed the upper cabinets one evening after work.

Next, Brent and I spent a Sunday removing everything else, including the wall between the kitchen and dining room. The hardest part of this was moving the oven microwave combo, it was too heavy for both Brent and I together (like I was a lot of help). He ended up taking the two units apart and using the dolly to get it out of the house. Putting it in the dumpster about killed me.

Not very clear, but that's some of the crumbled cabinet where the sink was leaking.

I won! I got the biggest piece off the wall without it breaking!

This isn't just the kitchen, it's the drywall from the living room and bathroom along with the old bathtub and all the tile that was removed.

Also most done with demo - still needed to remove the drywall from the outer walls so we could replace the insulation and redo the plumbing. If you look hard you can see the ice maker water pipe in the old wall, that had to be moved to the new location for the refrigerators.

Now demo phase TWO - this is where we took down the studs to the wall between the dining and kitchen and found damage. Brent and Zack reinforced two ceiling joists that ran across the top of the kitchen. Somewhere in there, we took down the drywall on the outer walls and had the electrician install recessed lighting.

It's hard to see but the joist was cracked horizontally.

Looking up into the attic you can see the top part of the chimney. It was painted white at some point in its life.

We had the 2x4 supporting the cracked joist. In the background you can see where we moved the opening to the new dining room (that used to be the formal living room). We had our new refrigerators and a borrowed microwave in there, that was where we kept some essential foods (like water!), but we ate out every meal.

As you can see, we had a huge hole in the ceiling and this was in the middle of the Houston summer. We put plastic over it until the drywallers could get it fixed.

I never got a pic with ceiling open and the studs on the front wall showing but this pic gives you a good idea of what the kitchen looked like for quite a while, probably longer than we should have let it go.

 

Sometime after this, the plumber came in and replumbed all the water lines on the west side of the house including the laundry room and moved the gas line so we could relocated the the cooktop.  

Now that I've got it torn down for you, sometime next week I'll post the building up phase where we drywalled, tiled, put in cabinets, countertops, and appliances. Whew! It seems so long ago, it's hard to believe we really did all that!

Till later,

Reba~