Kitchen 101: Part I

It's been a long time since we've posted anything, and it's because our computer crashed right before Christmas.  We were planning on getting a new one for Christmas anyway, but it was not cool to be left without one for almost a month.  We bought a new laptop last week, and all is well again!  We got a new Dell...a very cool little toy.  As a result, Mark and I have both been on it non-stop.  So, for those who haven't seen the kitchen pictures, we think it's about time to start showing you a little of the work we've been doing.  Unfortunately, we don't have many of the 'true' before pictures, because they weren't all backed up before the computer died.  To paint a picture for you, we had these 60's style knotted pine cabinets that were old and looked extremely dark and grimey.  This is kind of what they looked like, but ours were much worse.  These appliances are lightyears ahead of the ones we had, including the dishwasher that didn't exist in our kitchen. 

So, it all started the week of Thanksgiving.  Mark took a week off work, and his dad came over to help demo the kitchen (thanks Pops!!).  We rented a big dumpster that sat in the driveway for two days.  They started by tearing out all of the cabinets.  Then, they took down all the drywall.  We originally intended to keep the ceiling, because that seemed like it would be a huge pain to put up ourselves.  With one last piece of drywall left, a strong tug of the wallboard caused the ceiling board to rip.  At that point, Mark and his Dad decided to take the whole ceiling off.  Mark had to call me at work that day to warn me that everything in the kitchen had been ripped down to the studs.  He thought I might have a panic attack if he didn't.  It turned out to be a good thing in the end though, because it allowed us to install recessed lighting, which would have otherwise been very dificult.  Another task Mark decided to take on himself was all of the electrical work.  I think at first, he was just going to do some of the work, so it would cost us less.  But by the end, he had read up on it so much, and spent so much on materials, that he just decided to do it all himself.  Here's a picture of us in the crawlspace/basement hooking up the power for the lights.  Another task that was harder than it looked was tearing off this old siding from one of the walls in the kitchen.  The kitchen and the bedroom was an addition on this house.  That might explain the water damage in the wall in the bedroom.  When they added on, they just put drywall over the existing exterior siding.  Mark had to pry all of those boards off. It was especially difficult in the corner, where the boards ran past the wall and into the bedroom.  It's kind of hard to explain, but here's a picture.

Once the demo-dust was cleaned up we started on the floors.  The first thing Mark did was reinforce the floor joists from the basement.  It really made the floor more stable since we were planning on tiling.  Mark and his dad got up as much linoleum as they could, then they used twelve tubes of liquid nails and 500 screws to put plywood down.  Once the plywood was down we laid hardi backer board down on a bed of mortar with another 500 screws.  That's a lot of screws...........

So, the next brilliant idea we had was to tear down yet another wall!  It would allow us to cut an opening from the kitchen into the dining room.  That turned out to be one of the best decisions we've made.  We can't wait to see this all finished, because it's going to really open up the two rooms.  Here's a picture of Mark tearing in to that wall.  Here's me, freezing in flannel because we have to keep the doors open when all this dust is flying around.  Then, here's a picture of Mark, framing the opening.

      

         

Since the drywalling was now going to include the ceiling too, we decided to hire that out.  We knew we could do that ourselves, and we knew we could do a good job, but it takes a long time, and we just wanted a professional to come in and take care of it for us so we could move on to other things.  Before the drywallers could start, we had to get the insulation up on the outside walls and the ceiling.  Expecting the drywall guy on a Wednesday we cut it close and started on Tuesday night.  We ended up working on it until midnight for me and 2:00 am for Mark (I had to get up at 5:00 the next day).  Good thing we stayed up so late, because the drywallers didn't make it out until Friday......This was a sign of things to come with Charles and Duane.  This story is turning out a lot longer than I thought it would!  There's a lot more to show you, but we're going to have to split it up into multiple posts. End Part I