Kitchen Demo

Wow, the first Dan's Wood post in a long time.  Better late than never.  I wanted to try and start keeping up with the kitchen phase, as it is something that might be more interesting to most readers than updates on the bones of the house.  It is funny that Erin and I refer to this as the "last phase" of the house - in reality it is the last big phase but there are still "incidental" items after this like:

• Finish Painting and Caulking the Outside of the House
• Finish the Porch
• Finish Master Bathroom
• Sheetrock and Fire Tape Garage to Meet Building Code
• Stain Windows and Install Trim on All Windows Throughout the House
• Finish the Basement

Back to the kitchen project.  What better time to start tearing things apart than the traditional 3-day Memorial Day weekend.  I made it a 4 day weekend with Friday off and things got started in a hurry.

Thursday night I jumped the gun a bit and started removing the old cabinets.  I knew from previous experience that this kitchen was installed very solidly.  Keep in mind we had plans to re-use these cabinets in our pantry, so I couldn't just bust out the sledge hammer.  The biggest challenge to removal you might ask?  Without a doubt it would be trying to remove the screws that held the face frames together.  Let me tell you - if you want to make it a pain in the butt down the road, countersink square drive screws and then pack the screw heads and holes full of wood putty.  Very hard to find and nearly impossible to get out.  The secret was using a small dental type pick and also a special screw extractor bit.  

Here was the kitchen as of Thursday night.  I was able to get a good jump start on the planned Friday demo.

Friday morning the reinforcements arrived - my dad and father-in-law Mike.  We finished removing the rest of the items you see here and got started.  First the sheetrock was removed on the walls.  Luckily, the kitchen had been previously remodeled so there was no plaster and lath to deal with!  

Sheetrock is removed from the walls and the first two layers of the ceiling are removed.

After that went the ceiling.  It was made up of wood slats mounted to furring strips mounted to none other than plaster and lath.  Mike dropped all this in a matter of about an hour.  After that, the plastic and fiberglass insulation batts were removed from the walls.  

The end of day 1.  All wall and flooring material has been removed back to the studs.

While Mike was doing basically all the demo in the kitchen, I was in the pantry working to re-install the salvaged cabinets to give us back some sort of kitchen to use during the demo.  On the first day, I was able to get in all the base cabinets.  

Re-installation of the salvaged cabinets progressed well on the first day.  Surprisingly, even though the layouts were completely different, the cabinets fit together remarkably well.

Start day 2.  Day 2 was the day of the floor.  The floor had some issues with it - probably the biggest issue was some poor framing that had been done in one area.  Why not just cut off two 2x8 floor joists and throw a single 2x6 with a few nails to carry the load.  The floor had previously been very bouncy in this spot.  The same situation had occured in the living room.  The floor was also not level in the SW corner.  

Floor demo is started.

Before we could actually get to the old floor boards, first we had to remove the top 6 layers of flooring!  From the top down, wood laminate, plywood underlayment, some sort of newspaper coating, hardboard, vinyl tile, sheet flooring - then we finally reached the original wood pine tongue and groove flooring.  So, yes, 7 layers of flooring in total!

The flooring is all demoed.  Here you can see the white colored 2x6 header that was installed after two floor joists were cut off towards the middle of the picture.  This picture is looking down into the mechanical room, thus all the tubing, wiring, ductwork, etc below.

The next step was to fix the poor framing job and add cross blocking down the middle of the floor span.  This takes us into day 3.

Cross blocking was added down the center of the room - this helps to straighten and stiffen all the floor joists.  We also added a stiffening beam with three columns below to further help stiffen the floor.  The middle of the kitchen is going to have a large island which will weigh quite a bit.

Things were also progressing well in the pantry.  I got the rest of the base cabinets installed along with the countertop and sink.  This countertop was a new off-the-shelf purchase from Menards.  The dishwasher was also re-installed for the time being from the kitchen - yep, our pantry has a dishwasher - pretty serious business.  A portion of the upper cabinets were also installed.

Day 3 progress in the pantry.

This takes us to day 4.  The last day of the long weekend was spent re-framing some items.  The first picture shows the south wall of the kitchen.  This is where the refrigerator and range will go.  Even though the wall was in good condition and plumb, a new 2x4 furring wall was added to allow for duct work to be installed for the kitchen hood, room above the kitchen, etc.  The gap in the framing is where the fridge will sit slighly recessed so the front will be flush with the counters.

Day 4 progress - south wall.  A new 2x4 furring wall was added in front of the existing wall to accommodate duct work.

The east wall had more challenges.  The wall was bowed out along the bottom sill plate and also was not plumb.  In other areas of the house, we have installed horizontal furring boards and shimmed them to make everything plumb.  However, in this case, I tried something new and just attached new 2x6 studs level to the old out of plumb studs.  This actually worked very well and now the inside of the wall is plumb and straight.

This picture is actually from weekend #2 of work, but you can see the new window framing is also complete along with the new plumb studs.

Here's an in-progress picture of the east wall framing.  You can see there is not much of the original wall left!

Framing the new window is in-progress.  Mike was on the outside handling demo materials and cutting boards while I was installing them on the inside.

By the end of the second weekend, the pantry was also completed and is functioning as our interim kitchen.  Believe it or not, we have not yet succumbed to take-out... yet..., but thankfully it is summer and we have been able to grill out.  

So there you go - two weekends worth of kitchen progress.  More to come soon. 

Oh, yeah, for those of you who didn't know, we now have a third cat called Tortie.  She showed up last summer and similar to Shop Kitty, is very well mannered and probably was someone's indoor cat.  So now she has joined our family at the farm!

Tortie, when she was still an outsider.  She is now an insider.

And lastly, just a funny picture of Owen on our typical Menards trips.  He loves to be lowered inside the sample chimney section out in front of the store.

Owen @ Menards