Let’s forget for a second that Kitchen Reno – Round 1 was written more than a year ago. Crazy!! It didn’t take that long to demo, but it definitely happened in phases. Let’s see, when we left off the kitchen looked like this. Already better than how it started.
You can see that the sink was still intact (covered in plastic), as was the refrigerator, cook top and wall oven. One of the first things to go was the dishwasher because it was a piece of junk and because I was desperate to get rid of the peninsula and test out a new layout. The new fridge and dishwasher were delivered in April.
Followed by the new range, wall oven/microwave combo, and range hood, which were delivered in May-ish. Who knows, they weren’t installed for several months. The range was temporarily installed just so we could use it to cook Christmas dinner. (Read the post HERE) Yup, that’s right, my family decided they should come to my house for Christmas. And you wonder where my crazy comes from!
I am a believer in doing the demo first and then coming up with a design plan. Yes, this leaves you without a kitchen for longer, but it keeps you from having to completely scrap your original plans when something “unexpected” happens. For instance, how many times on Fixer Upper have you seen Chip have to call Joanna and tell her that a wall was load bearing and couldn’t be removed without spending an extra few thousand dollars. Or that there was a sewer pipe that was in the way or HVAC or something else. The truth is you don’t know what is behind those walls until you open them up.
Demo BEFORE Planning New Kitchen Layout
That doesn’t mean you have to take the entire wall down to find out, start with a smallish hole. You saw in Round 1 that I made several holes in the kitchen soffits and in the wall between the dining room and kitchen. These holes taught me a few things…
- The soffit above the sink was hiding the sewer line coming from the kids’ bathroom upstairs —> I was not willing to spend money relocating this, so I’d have to work around it
- The soffit above the refrigerator was hiding a main HVAC line leading to the left side of my house —> I would have to work around this too, but luckily the HVAC was recessed almost 12″, so a much smaller soffit could be used
- The soffit above the cook top was empty except for the exhaust line from the vent —> But there was plenty of room in the ceiling to run the exhaust through there (the joists run parallel to this soffit and there was a wide space between two joists where we could run a new exhaust line)
- The wall between the dining room and kitchen was not load bearing (see joist info above), but the left end of the wall contained the main sewer pipe and hot and cold water lines feeding the upstairs —> so this part of the wall has to stay
- The right end of the wall (next to the existing pantry) was hiding the main branch of the HVAC system —> so that part of the wall had to stay, and it had to remain nearly 12″ wide. Boo.
- The wall between the living room and kitchen (kind of behind the refrigerator) had other HVAC lines in it —> so any plans to break through to the living room were scrapped
- The corner of the soffits between the window and the cook top had plumbing lines running through them —> My plumber moved these up into the ceiling, no problem
- The only electrical in the wall between the dining room and kitchen was to switches and outlets in these two rooms (no major electric lines running through) —> My electrician was able to move these to the remaining part of the wall that houses the HVAC line (next to the pantry)
More Kitchen Demo
Toward the end of the 2014-2015 school year, we pulled almost everything out of the kitchen. Here you can see several of the cabinets, the countertops and the cook top out on the curb. I LOVE BULK TRASH DAY! Check out my corner cabinet — it’s that round one. So much space wasted by using a lazy susan. I vowed to made full use of my next corner cabinet! No more lazy sowans for me.
Who needs a cook top anyway? I’m pretty sure the wall oven bit the dust at this point as well, I just don’t have photographic evidence of it. This became our new normal for a few months. This is kinda the 1.5 stage. By the end of round 2 things were looking a lot worse than this.
Look how little of this wall was actually exposed… only the light green, everything else was covered by cabinets. Wow.
Meanwhile, it was finally time to install the new patio doors. I was adamant about the order I wanted the door installed — remove tile floor, remove old piece of crap sliding door, install new door, install new flooring, live happily ever after.
I had the honor of taking out the door frame. Oh and look, there is the photographic evidence that the wall oven is gone. It used to be right between the black refrigerator and that tall pantry.
Full post on installing the Pella french patio doors will be coming soon. We special ordered it from Lowe’s. Hubby removed a small section of the tile floor for me before we put the new door in. Dude, I’m no fool, that’s totally a man’s job. Not that I couldn’t do it, but it’s a real pain in the butt and the likelihood of him screwing it up was pretty low. (Love ya Babe!)
Here the doors are installed. The trim around the doors can’t happen until the floor is installed. 
Once the kitchen sink came out, the kitchen was pretty unlivable, so I took my kids to the beach for the summer (read post HERE) so they didn’t have to live like this for long (or so I thought). Hubby stayed home and had the miserable job of tearing out the rest of the ugly white ceramic floor tiles. It was extra miserable because the tiles were on a mud bed, which is mesh wire covered in concrete. But under that was felt paper, so the plywood subfloor was actually in good shape. Yay!
The mesh is used under a “Mud Bed” to add strength and rigidity to the floor. Typically, a 15 lb felt is put down, the mesh is cut and stapled over it and the mud bed is installed over it all. You can now tile over the mud bed. ~Avanti Tile & Stone / Stonetech
Over the summer, the electrician was able to move the wires that were in the wall between the kitchen and dining room. The plumber also moved the plumbing for the kitchen sink to under the window, where it was originally, before the former owners moved it during their kitchen reno. Ugh.
Hubby also took out the rest of the soffits (well, he took out more of the soffits, I had to remove the last bit of framing when I installed the cabinets).
When the kids and I came home in August the kitchen looked like this. Don’t you just wish you were my kid?
And of course there’s still tile left. Ugh. In an effort to protect the plywood subfloor, I insisted we leave the felt paper down. That lasted like a hot second. We lived like this for the rest of September and into October, when I finally decided I wasn’t going to tile the floor after all. I was going to do hardwood! Yes, you remember correctly, I swore in the last kitchen post (found HERE) that I would never again install hardwood flooring in a kitchen. Never say never. That is today’s lesson.
We held on to the pantry a little while longer, but it went out with bulk trash at the end of September. In the end, I was able to salvage 5 base cabinets, 3 are now in our shed and 2 are still in the kitchen forming a makeshift island. Yes, still. As in today, June 1, 2016.
You shouldn’t hold your breath or anything, but I’m ready to roll out the whole kitchen renovation for you, so check back soon. Or keep up with me here: Facebook / Instagram / Twitter / Pinterest / YouTube
Lol, glad to hear someone’s kitchen reno took longer than ours! We started in Oct last yr (and actually had professionals for the building work and installing the cabinetry). Only got a top on the island last month and with any luck might actually finish up the last few tasks in the next two weekends.