More Demolition (Did You Think We'd Stop?)

Now that the upstairs is slapped together, we figured we'd do some more work downstairs.  And by "we," I mean the hubs.  He really knocked it out of the park, removing the rest of the soffits in the kitchen (except the one with the can lights that used to have the kitchen sink under it), taking out the closet in the laundry room, and completely ripping out the downstairs bathroom.  We'd already seen 7 layer of floor in the kitchen, but three layers of wall in the bathroom, really?  Wasn't the space small enough already?  Oh, and remember the chimney in the kitchen?  Buh-bye!

Gravity assist

Of course, this all made for lots of dust and debris, which is where I came in ... with the Shop-vac.  I also toted the bricks outside (whole ones in one stack, broken bits and mortar in a separate pile) along with the reusable lumber (another pile).  A good time was had by all.

The Sweet Smell of Sawdust

After I cleaned all of the cabinet doors that weren't attached to cabinets still, I needed to sand the finish off (or so I thought - more later).  So, I swung by my local Home Depot and picked up this beauty.

 

 

 

Using this little sander, I was able to transform the cabinet doors like so:



Before / After

 

I also transformed myself into a dust-covered version of myself. (=

 

 

So, I was told (after putting all the extra effort into the sanding) that I just needed to rough them up a bit, not sand all the way to the wood.  I'm not letting it get me down, though, because the smell of sawdust when I got down to the wood brought back so many good memories of helping my stepdad in the garage that it was totally worth it. <3

 

Here's another comparison shot to show the incredible difference sanding made.

 



Cleaning Cabinet Doors

Today I had the house all to myself.  I cranked up the tunes and went to work.  First, I replaced the pulls for the ceiling fan in the dining room with some cute (and not crud-covered) ones I got at Menard's the other night.  Much better!

Next, I gathered the cabinet doors that were removed on Saturday.  I removed the hinges.  Well, I removed some of them.  My husband took care of the rest when he came at lunch time to plow the driveway and have lunch with me.

Than it was time to clean them.  They were pretty gross.

My husband's mother had told us about this cleaner she found at the Dollar General that cost like a dollar a bottle.  So, we picked some up when we stopped in for a couple of other things.  This stuff lives up to its name.

I sprayed it on and let it sit for a couple of minutes (not too long, or it'll just add a layer).  Then, I wiped it and the grossness off the doors.

I did have to put a little bit of elbow grease into it on a few spots, but look at this door after I was done!

 I almost couldn't believe it, and I was there.

Kitchen Demolition, or How I Spent My Saturday

We knew going in that we wanted to make some changes to the kitchen.  We also knew it needed to be thoroughly cleaned, like bathed in PineSol, but ... We didn't know we were going to take everything completely out until that was what we were doing.  We also didn't know that doing so was going to be a very good thing for us (more on that later).

So, it started out like this ...

We have very typical 80's era wood cabinets, cracked formica countertops, and some sketchy linoleum flooring tiles.  Right away, we knew we wanted to take out the soffits and raise the upper cabinets to ceiling height.  Neither of us is a fan of the wasted space, and we know it will open up the counter space.  So, it stood to reason that the upper cabinets would need to be taken down off the walls.

What we didn't know until I was cleaning the countertops on Monday is that the base cabinets would also be coming out.  See, there's a gap between the countertops and the walls that has allowed things to fall down in the space between the cabinets and the walls.  I noticed this phenomenon when I accidentally sprayed some of the detritus from the countertop into the void on Monday afternoon.  We decided that needing to remove the lower cabinets was a good thing, as it would allow us easy access to the flooring.  We also decided we would clean up the cabinets and prime and paint them before reinstalling them.

Before we removed the cabinets, we took out the stinky, science experiment-filled refrigerator.  That immediately improved the air quality inside the house.  It also gave us a little bit of additional floor space.  (I guess I should have swept before I took the picture, not after.  Oh, well.)

Next, we labeled the cabinet doors and drawers with painters tape, so we'll know where they all go when it's time to put everything back together again.

I decided to just count the cabinets from left to right, and label the doors as left/right and upper/lower, hence L1U and R1U in these photos for the left and right doors for the first of the upper cabinets.  I suggest using whatever method works best for you.  After everything was labeled, my husband removed all of the cabinet doors.  We started with the upper cabinets.

Next, we took down the cabinets themselves.  Ours were held up by a handful of screws that were driven directly through the cabinets backs and into the studs.

Once the screws were removed, gravity jumped in to assist.

The trim was not actually attached to the cabinets, but was nailed into the soffits with brad nails.  As a result, we were able to pull them down by hand.  The additional boards behind some of the cabinets appear to have been used for spacing.  We used the claw side of the hammer to pull those down without incident.  The rest of the cabinets came down just as easily as the first with one exception.  Turns out in one cabinet, the people who installed them decided to also drive screws in through the side of the cabinet into the adjoining one.  I later learned that you're actually supposed to connect the cabinets to make sure everything stays together.  Still, they came down very easily.

For the base cabinets, we had assistance from one of my husband's friends.  This made it possible for me to take photos during the process instead of making my husband stop every couple of minutes for me.

And this was when we discovered that there were more than two layers of flooring on top of the original hardwood.  Here we can see the linoleum tile (bottom of pic), the layer of linoleum directly beneath that (top left of pic), and the layer of linoleum under that (top right of pic), but wait ... What's that on the far right?

Could it be?  Why yes, there's another layer of linoleum under a plywood layer.  And that layer was on top of some weird paper board layer that was adhered to the original wood floor with tar.  (We didn't get to the tar layer until later in the day, but why keep you waiting?)

Next, the fellas removed the kitchen sink and counter top (all as one piece ... I was impressed) and removed the false front on the cabinet, so they could pull the entire base.  This required a bit of sawing to make a large enough hole for the pipes to fit easily through the "floor" of the cabinet.  The previous owners left the inside pretty gross, so we will be replacing the cabinet floor anyway.

And viola! The kitchen is free of those cumbersome cabinets (though the front rooms have gained them).  Also, I have a lot of cleaning to do.