Kitchen demo

Well..... HANK was supposed to post this, but he's not cooperating... so here I go...

YUCKY! Yucky, yucky, yucky. The kitchen was just nasty. Filthy. The cabinets were old and let me say again, filthy. The floor was layer upon layer of linoleum. The pantry door was a bi-folding door that had been "rigged" to not fold anymore and had wheels attached to the bottom of it so it would swing in and out... well, roll in and out? Does that make sense? Guess you had to see it... Anyway, we knew none of this was really an issue... we wanted to rip it all out and replace it. We budgeted for this, so it wasn't really an issue. When we decided the kitchen demo day arrived.... I started feeling really bad for Hank. The cabinets, however old they were, had been built into the kitchen walls.... literally. To take them out was basically taking them out in one piece. I cannot begin to tell you how heavy they were. Some parts of them smelled like fat lighter. (With some of the wiring that needs to be done in the kitchen, I guess that wouldn't have been a good combo.)

We originally hoped the linoleum would come up and we could refinish the red oak floors underneath to match the rest of the house. We even thought if we didn't want to deal with the "refinishing", we would paint the floors... but still have the great look of the thin slats of wood in the kitchen and breakfast nook/butler's pantry. Well, as we wrestled... (Ok... so I wrestled to keep it out of Hank's way... obedient wife) ... with the linoleum, while Hank ripped it up, we started to realize our floor plans were changing. There was a third layer of linoleum tiles that had been applied straight to a tar vapor barrier... ON TOP of our red oak floors. :( It took a while on our hands an knees scraping/chipping those up. The floors must have been beautiful once. It even shows in some spots where they are still a great color, etc. But overall, they are just ruined. We're having to go with tile.... they are being laid as we speak... errr... type.

We are still deciding whether or not we want a glass tile backsplash. We also are having our cabinets custom made... which we're really excited about! They will be red oak with a light stain on them. We still have some old paneling to pull down around the pantry and put sheetrock up and some crown molding to replace. At least the major work has been done in there so far...








And here is the floor ready for tile: