It is with great excitement that I announce the completion of kitchen and laundry room demolition. When we began Friday afternoon, this is roughly what the kitchen looked like.
Totally dreadful. And a mess, too. It's amazing how knowing you're leaving or emptying a space demotivates us to clean or maintain it.
This is the laundry room, with only a few holes in the wall. You can see how narrow and dysfunctional it is from this angle.
I was in a stalemate with the floor since we moved in. It's definitely dirty, but it's really hard to tell how much of that is permadirt. We didn't actually rip that out. Trevor said he can just go over it; he'll be installing 3/4"-thick walnut floors and can just float them on top.
Horrible pink sink. Goodbye. This is still in place though, because the plumber will be here this coming week and it made more sense to let him fix the leaky valves than mess with it ourselves.
Stupid little corner desk that only a 6-year-old could fit at. This, along with every other piece of cabinetry, turned out to be very sturdily constructed and was highly resistant to my giddy Friday after-work attempts at easy removal. The only thing I managed to do was pop two holes in the plaster, and then I got mad and stomped off to find some dinner.
Todd pulled up the gross carpeting in the eating area Friday. That was both easy and satisfying to dispose of.
So by Saturday mid-morning, we'd managed to remove most of the doors and some upper cabinets. Once we got going, it was a lot easier. Except that everything seemed to be held together with about 20 nails. Where a normal person might conclude using two or three would be sufficient, the builders evidently wanted to be on the safe side in terms of possible earthquakes, tsunamis or other natural disasters. Come hell or high water, those cabinets were not going anywhere. Prying things apart was
not easy.
The whole process did get a lot more fun after Todd's dad dropped off this splitting maul, which made a nice stand-in for a sledge hammer.
With that and the Sawzall, I made short work of this countertop. Mike (torso pictured) stopped by just moments after I dealt the death blow, let out a victory yell and spouted something about having smote its ruin upon a mountaintop. You say a lot of grandiose things when your brain is adrenaline-addled. It was a rush.
Mike was a huge help. He knocked out half the wall in the laundry room and ripped a bunch of the MDF out of the wall in the garage.
After removing the carpet in the eating area, we got to dig into removing the rubbery foam pad underneath. Not super fun. Suppose it could have been worse though, since we didn't have to get it perfectly clean.
Finding this red pine made us cringe. Evidently in the 40s, laying linoleum of an unidentifiable pattern with a maroon line that ran the rim of your kitchen was more stylish than just finishing this gorgeous wood. There's no salvaging it, not without a lot more work than we're willing to put in at this point. Even then, there might be parts that are too far gone.
In addition to the work in the kitchen, Todd also removed the wilting workbench and sawed it up to fit in the trailer. My suggestion of putting in upright and sticking up about 10 feet was ignored.
This is after I requested a "thumbs-up" picture for the blog. Sunday afternoon, somewhat grudging compliance. Reluctance to be photographed aside, I couldn't have asked for a better partner to tackle this with.
So this is roughly what we're leaving for Bruce&co, as Todd likes to refer to our contractor.
We're left with a lot of unanswerable questions that would be directed at the builders and original owners who chose so many questionable materials. Like,
why did you pick that ugly green paint? Was it really necessary to build that 18-inch-long wall next to the fridge with three studs and countless nails? Did you really like the pink sink, or did you get it on extra-super clearance because all the people who weren't sniffing so much glue in their free time left it on the shelf where it belonged?
These are things we'll never know.
We semi-sealed the kitchen from the dining room and rest of the house, after I spent an hour today swiffering from yesterday's oversight. Neither of us considered how much dust violently bashing in plaster walls was going to kick up. Been a few years since we've gotten this dirty. But we're good to go now, and Bruce will tape off the rest of the area next week.
One more...
And here's the result of our weekend of destruction. I don't really feel like this picture does the trailer justice. It's really big, like probably 8 feet wide and 12 feet long. And obviously piled well over the brim.
This was an interesting find on one of the cabinets. "Built Dec 19 - 1941 Walter Clark." Frank Clark is a rather well-known local architect; we speculate that Walter was his less-successful younger brother. He was obviously compensating for something with all the nails he used. Kind of a fun find. We wish we had more history about this house, but I suppose all old-house owners feel that way.
Of course, what we really want to know is where the money is hidden. Our cabinet removal yielded
another mysterious key of unknown purpose. We've been over this house pretty thoroughly, but we've heard that Clancy, who lived here before the idiots who tried to flip this place for $400,000 (see: the heat didn't work) in 2007, was the sort of crazy old codger who would store his life savings in some random wall. We'll keep an eye out.
Two other bits of non-kitchen news. First, Todd's dad has begun painting the house. Here's a close-up. The left is primed, the right is not. It looks like it could just be the lighting, but it isn't; it's really that dramatically different.
You can't tell as well from this picture, but whatever. New shutters and gutters will be going up at some point soonish.
AAANNNNDDDD... Those delinquents who were building the fence finally finished. I probably haven't ranted about this yet, but it took them three weeks from start to finish. One day to dig the holes and put in poles. Then a week and a half later, they showed up to put up half the slats. A week after that, they finally decided to finish.
I shouldn't complain though; it looks really nice and our yard is a ton more private. The dead shrubs are gone and the neighbors' dog can't see us anymore and consequently doesn't bark at us all the time.
So we've covered a lot of ground in the last week, and definitely in the last two days. The guys will be here while we're gone for work this week, so it'll be fun to see any progress that happens while we're out of town. The wall between the kitchen and the dining room should be gone when we get back. Other than that, electrical and plumbing this week.
For our next installment, tune in to find out where we'll be "cooking" until the kitchen is done. Dinner invitations welcome in the interim.
WAHOOO KITCHEN REMODEL!!!
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