Kitchen Remodel Part 1

This summer we tackled the remodel job of our lives. When reading all the books on kitchen remodeling to prepare, this title stood out, "Kitchen Redos, Revamps, Remodels, and Replacements: Without Murder, Madness, Suicide, or Divorce." I'm happy to report that we are all alive and well in our family. It's been a little touch and go. 

 I had the brilliant idea to rent a dumpster to dispose of our cabinets, old chimney bricks and linoleum all at once. We bought a large pvp pipe that we put through our window to slide the bricks down. We had 2.5 tons of junk. Awesome!

 Here we are taking all our our things out of our old cabinets. These cabinets had un-moveable shelves with small doors. I understand that many Western kitchens aren't planned to accomodate a large wok, but these cabinets didn't fit my regular pots or skillets either.

But who would have thought they were a perfect fit for Carl? Note the black tile counter tops. The grout was coming out of the cracks and the protective film on the tile was flaking off into our food. Ultra-gross.

 I talked Ryan into letting the kids and I take off all the doors and pull out the drawers. They had a great time.

 Things got really messy once the chimney started coming down. This was the messiest job with all the plaster powder and cinders suspended in the air. I have never seen such dirty boys. Thanks to some determined scouts and a great EQ President, we were able to get it all done in one day.

Ryan still looks for the chimney when he walks into the kitchen. I think he got attached to it after spending so much time planning and executing it's removal. Note the old fancy wallpaper. There were 10 layers to take off under what you can see and it felt like taking a trip in time back to 1940. Our kitchen smells so much better without all that old paper and paste. 

 The plaster wall here was so cracked up from the house settling that all the plaster had to be taken off and replaced with drywall. The smartest thing we did was to cover the doorways with plastic. It kept Carl out of the action and the mess out of the rest of our house. Although that did mean we had to come up with alternate routes to the laundry room in the basement. Option #1 Walk laundry out front door facing our busy street and around the house in 90* weather. Option #2 Squeeze through my bedroom window into the back porch. The kids liked option #2 the best.