Kitchen reno: part 1 of a million

We're almost a full week into our official kitchen renovation, so I figured I should write about the crazy for posterity's sake.

I should disclaim: we did a lot of prep work before official "demo day," so the first day wasn't really the first day. I think I packed up some of the dishes we never use probably more than two months ago, and David's been building the new cabinet doors for at least that long. So take everything you see here with a grain of salt! And know that the pictures make it seem a lot easier than it actually is, you know?

If you need a refresher to see where we began, go ahead and click on over here. Soon after that, I painted that faux brick white, and then we began work on the cabinet doors, which involved a ton more math than I'm comfortable with, so David was pretty much on his own for that.

A couple Amazon links below are affiliate.

Here's David at the very beginning of building the cabinet doors:

We have a 4.5 car garage, so luckily we have plenty of room to keep everything all messy in there and try to limit the mess everywhere else. Plus extra room, when it's nice enough, for the girls to do fun circular laps in their little cars while we work!

One of the biggest things that bugged me about this kitchen was this dumb jet-out cabinet in the corner. I know why they did it -- to maximize kitchen storage area -- but it just looked dumb as hell. So we demo-ed that bit to make it all one flat section of cabinets and it's glorious now.

See what I mean? Even in the beginning stages, with everything still a mess and not painted, it looks so much more normal. The other biggest dated things we fixed were the random curly trim bits above the fridge and the sink.

We lived in this ugly stage for a couple weeks. Man, there is a reason cabinet doors hide all your junk because grocery stores do not care about your aesthetic. Anyway, it was kind of a pain to see all that all the time but slow reno is the name of the game to save time and money, so it worked.

See also: the top of our vanity in the main bathroom currently housing all the stuff that's normally under the kitchen sink; the guest bedroom in the basement filled with boxes and tubs of stuff from the empty bits; the recycling bin in our games closet; the pile of cleaning stuff just sitting on the floor in our bedroom. I didn't take pictures of those. For obvious reasons.

David spent a solid two weekends building the new cabinet doors. It was a tedious process, since we are reusing the boxes that were already there to save $, so it involved a lot of specific measurements and exacting cuts. I mean, there's a reason why most people just demo everything and start from scratch with cabinets because it's a pain in the butt to try and retro-fit stuff. But it's more eco friendly (less trash!) and money-saving so it worked for us.

After that, it was time to break out our airless paint sprayer and go to town on the new cabinet doors. We built the above drying rack to have a space to put all the doors. Definitely worth the $15 we spent on the wood to have a specific spot for every door -- and it's helping us keep track of which door is which, aka also extremely helpful.

You can almost get the scale of our garage with this photo. It's huge. We built this enclosed tent to start our own meth lab / murder all our neighbors / keep all the sprayed paint inside it. Biggest downside: it was really hot the days David was painting, and like 30° hotter inside the plastic. If we were to do it again, I'd try to do it on a cooler day. I felt so bad for the poor guy -- dripping from sweat just stepping inside it.

On to DEMO DAY!!!! (as Kitty would lovingly SHOUT it every time we mentioned it)

The official last "before" photo. I'm already forgetting what it used to look like!

These cuties helped for awhile!

The demo was, surprisingly, more difficult than I anticipated. I mean, I guess I expected the cabinets we took out to be in worse shape. It took a lot of muscle and effort to get some of it out. I demoed some, but mostly I took trash into the garage while David ripped stuff out.

The most difficult stuff was the stuff built in around that stone chimney you can see in the photo above. I don't know if the original builders were anticipating people using it as an adult climbing apparatus, but it was solid. I may or may not but definitely did whack myself super hard in the upper arm with a crowbar trying to rip some of it out because it was so much more solid than I thought. David got it out, though!

I guess I don't have any photos of ripping out the floor. That top layer was extremely easy to get up -- it was just interlocking vinyl planks, so it came up all in about 20 minutes, and I did it so that's probably why I don't have pictures. haha. We had some deliberation after that top layer was out. Underneath it was a layer of styrofoam fabric, packing material-like, and then under that was a layer of linoleum. There was evidence of a previous layer of different linoleum on the dining room half, which had been ripped out by someone else. (See photo evidence below.)

(Disclaimer: we had the layers tested for signs of asbestos, because any type of flooring put in houses before around 1980 around here are possibly made from asbestos, especially if they are 9" square tile size. We couldn't tell what it really was before demo, so David cut off a section underneath a vent and sent it to be tested with this kit we bought off Amazon. It took a huge load off our minds to know that it wasn't asbestos before demoing, especially because of the cancer risk (hello, cancer, our old friend) even though in the state of Nebraska you're legally allowed to demo asbestos flooring without violating any health or build codes.)

Anywho. After those two layers were gone, David tried to get the linoleum layer off, but it took him 30 minutes of difficult work to get about 15 square feet up, and it was only gaining us mayyybe 1/8" of floor height, so we decided to just leave it and build up above it.

After demo was the somewhat tedious bits: fixing the plumbing (thank goodness for David's dad to come in and help with that!!!), rebuilding the parts of the cabinets we had either damaged or demoed (that new plywood piece at the end by David is an example of one of the pieces), taking out all the electrical work in the ceiling we weren't going to use or need anymore (two leftover ceiling lights, and the old vent hood).

That night David locked himself in and spray painted the boxes. I snuck in once to take some photos.

He did one coat of primer, and then I think just one coat of the paint/primer combo we bought. Most of it's going to be covered by the doors anyway, so we figured that was enough. We could not have gone as quickly as we did without our airless paint sprayer. We bought this one from Amazon, if you're interested, recommended by John and Sherry at Young House Love.

The next morning it was time for backer board, and tiling!

Before he started laying them, David and his dad cut and dry-fit around the doorway and the various cuts along the side. It's a big time saver to do it this way, especially with only a few people working at a time, because otherwise you end up losing time or mortar once it's already mixed.

If you follow me on Instagram, then you've already heard our fiasco with the tiles. Long story short: the tile company sent us more than half the wrong color tiles because the two very similar gray tiles were named W19C and W91C. Of course, we didn't realize this until like 6 of them were laid down next to the other, and it was glaringly obvious they were different colors.

So. Yeah. Super fun to realize. David and Jeff took up the offending tiles, we spent hours on the phone with Home Depot and the tile manufacturer, returned all the wrong tiles (even the ones we had already laid), and new replacement ones are being shipped to us Friday. So that halted progress juuuust a tad.

Sunday morning we grouted what's been laid, and this is pretty much what it looks like now. The new tile is supposed to be here on Friday, so we'll see. Frustrating to say the very least. As you can imagine, lots of cursing happened but if this is the worst hiccup we encounter, it's alright by me.

Whew. That was a lot. More to come once we get a little further!
HG