Kitchen Remodel Continued...

As promised, here is an update on the current status of our kitchen: we don't have one!! Actually, we don't have one right now, but a week from tomorrow we should have a beautifully redone one with solid oak cabinets, nice shiny new knobs, a new (much deeper) sink with a pretty faucet (which matches the shiny new knobs), more cabinet space, and new, dark counter tops. I CAN'T WAIT!!! To fully appreciate my level of anticipation, let me show you what our kitchen used to look like: please notice the crooked cabinet over the stove....

So, out with the old, in with the repairs....To save money, we decided to tear out the existing cabinets ourselves (heeheeheee...many of you know how we are NOT capable of home repairs on our own, but as I mentioned in my last post, we had a friend help us. THANK YOU GUY!!!). We ran into some interesting things after tearing out the cabinets. For example, behind the wall with the stove, there wasn't actually a wall.

Sure, you can see some wall in the pre-existing kitchen, but that is the only actual wall space there. Once the cabinets were out, we discovered the cupboards were nailed into bits and pieces of what were supposed to be 2x4s. We had to rebuild the entire frame and hang new sheet rock. It's almost as if someone had a bunch of random materials lying around, and for fun, told their 10 year-old to grab whatever they wanted from this pile of random materials and build a wall. This is what that fictitious 10 year-old came up with...

Here are the guys (Mark and Guy) putting up a new solid wall: We also had to tear out part of the kitchen floor to make room for the new cupboards (plus we are replacing the entire floor throughout the kitchen, living room, dining area and hallway). The floor in the kitchen is 1 solid inch higher than the rest of the flooring in the house. This made for an interesting tear out job. I counted the layers of floor as I was on my hands and knees tearing it out. There was the original floor, a layer of plywood, 2 layers of linoleum on top of that, another layer of plywood with two more layers of linoleum!! Who built this house??? Were they drinking on the job??? I don't understand what some people choose to do, but we are the fortunate ones who get to fix everything that wasn't done correctly.

It will look absolutely beautiful once it's all finished (at least everything will be level). This house is definitely a "fixer-upper" and we are in the midst of the "fixer" part. There is still much to do....if only our wallets were as deep as this home's potential :)