Demolition Time

Demo is as fun as it looks....on the first day....on the fourth day, not so much.

A little reminder of our before

 

And in progress.



Oh and we demolished the island too. We're going to build it back up again but with better storage underneath so half my body isn't in there trying to get a pot.

And we have big plans for this wall that connects to our den that I forgot to tell you about in our renovation plans. *I'm really annoyed right now because the hyperlink thing isn't working in Blogger so I can't easily get you back to the post about our plans or any other post for that matter. Doesn't Blogger know this is my first time blogging and I'm trying to do my best to make it easy for my reader(s) to follow my ramblings?!* 

We want to take out the pocket door, remove that column that now splits the door and the pass through window, bump up the header, and bump out the window to the right. So we're keeping the lower cabinets for storage and it will look more like a peninsula. If I knew how to do all that fancy stuff with arrows on pictures to show you what I mean, I would. But I don't. So you're stuck with my crappy description and your imagination. 

There must have been a sale on nails (along with the ugly molding) when our kitchen was last remodeled. Is it really necessary to use so many nails to secure a small 10 inch piece of trim on the cabinet? It made demolishing a sloooow process since we were trying to salvage as much of the cabinet boxes as we could. We were shaking our fists in the air and cursing the previous carpenter/owner, who we dubbed, Bob. Because it's so much more gratifying to yell at someone with a name. 

And then good 'ole Bob got us again. We were prying out the shelves in the cabinets and the hammer went right through the back....which was just sheetrock. Awesome. Norm, the Master Carpenter, would be so disappointed in Bob.

Bob (a couple of decades ago in the local hardware store):

Hmmm, if I don't buy wood to back the cabinet uppers and lowers, I can use the money saved to buy a ton of molding and paneling to cover every square inch of the kitchen walls and one billion nails on sale! I'll just paint the sheetrock to match the cabinets and nail the shelves right into the studs of the walls. Genius Bob, genius (while patting himself on the back).

So there were no cabinet boxes to salvage and we just went crazy ripping everything out. We stopped at the base of the bottom cabinets and figured we could just build up from the bases already in place.

Until we realized that the floor underneath the cabinet bases was just particle board that disintegrated to the touch. Thanks again, Bob!

So we tore up all the bases and particle board and replaced the floor underneath.

And since we were in a Bob-cursing-demolishing-mood, nothing was safe. Not even our pantry....

Buh-bye pantry. We'll move you over by the fridge and make you even bigger and better in the next life.

Remember this molding and paneling that we hoped was attached to some salvageable sheetrock? Well by now you kind of have an idea of how Bob works. There was nothing behind it. The wall was just a very thin piece of flimsy wood nailed directly into the studs.

So we tore everything off.

 

And after all that, here's what we're left with. We're about 95% done with demo. I say 95% because the wall with the pass through window will be the last to go since it's currently keeping all the dust and chaos out of our livable space. We quickly built up the base of the island so we'd have a work station.

 

Miraculously, we only had one minor injury that involved blood. My brother's leg was cut from a flying piece of porcelain tile.

On the up side, we did find a dollar in the walls.

Lessons learned:

1. Be flexible in your plan because if you're as lucky us, you might have had someone as cool as Bob who built your kitchen in the past. There will definitely be surprises.
2. Wear a mask when removing back splash tile with black grout or else you'll end up with black boogers. So I guess that's digging for coal instead of gold. Trust me, gold is much better.
3. Demo is exhausting. Our bodies and especially our hands were incredibly sore after a long day of demo. They always make demo look so easy on the crashing shows on the DIY network. I guess it's because the home owners do it for like 10 minutes and then a team of 25 comes in to finish it off. If you're DIYing, make sure you have some able bodied friends that you can trick ask to come over to help.