kitchen gut

Hey guys!

So last week we gutted the kitchen. And I'm not exaggerating when I say gutted. It's gone. Which makes me extremely excited but also nervous. There's no going back now!

First, I would like to state that I took these pictures with my nice. And I was also having a "Hey, maybe I can actually work this thing" moment, because these pictures look prettyyyyyy good. By that I mean that it makes the kitchen look like its in better shape than it is. When Leo first saw these pictures he was like, "You can't post these, people are going to think we are crazy!" But here they are anyway (I've also included a couple of the bathroom, which was also torn out):

And then there's the ceiling...we aren't exactly sure what happened there :)

So, it really doesn't look bad. I wish I had taken more detail shots of the damaged parts, but it's too late now! But I will enlighten you. First, several of the floor tiles were broken and cracked. Second, if you look to the top left hand of the ceiling, there is a whole. We weren't sure what was going on there, but assumed some kind of water damage. Fourth, another clue about water damage to the ceiling is the fact that the cabinets directly under that had water damage stains. Fifth, it was hard to open many of the doors and drawers, and often they would slam shut. Sixth, leaning against them caused your shirt to literally get stuck....a.k.a tons of yummy grease build up. 

Lastly, we really wanted a bigger kitchen. Not huge...just bigger. More open concept. Or semi-open concept. The kitchen will be open to the dining room and semi-open to the front of the house, but it won't be the first thing you see when you walk in the house. Which I am grateful for, because I can guarantee you that my kitchen will not be a dirty dish free zone at all times. But I also don't want that to be the first thing someone sees when they walk in my house :)

This is some of the first steps, taking out the cabinets.

The floor was AWFUL. The tile itself came up very easily. Probably more so than it should have been. Getting up the plywood/particle board subfloors was the awful part. It took hours. It had to be done though, to figure out what was going on under it all. Also, depending where you were standing in the kitchen/dining area, there was anywhere from 1-4 layers of different vinyl floors. In the concrete area, it was a little wet, which is never good. We even found a layer of burlap :)

These next pictures are slightly more drastic. The whole thing is gone. Floor, drywall, everything.

Tada! If only it were that simple in real life...actually (for me) it kind of was this time--we were out of town for the weekend and my Dad hired a couple of people to help him gut it. So when we came home, tada! I won't take credit for this part of it ;)

The only thing left is to build two temporary walls, remove those studs (they are supporting part of the house) and add the beam to provide the support after we remove the studs and the two temporary walls on either side. We bought the beam today at Menard's! Then it will be truly open! We are adding the bathroom back in another part of the house. We are being careful and saving all of the trim and doors that we take off and recycling them back into the house once we put the new walls and doors up.

I hope this all makes sense! We have spent the past two days gutting the upstairs bathroom (though not down to the studs), and patching part of the downstairs bedroom. I am soooo sore! I was so excited to gut, and while I'm glad we finally can, I'm a little over it now. I'm pretty sure it had something to do with disconnecting a moldy toilet from a 90 year old stack and then carrying down a flight of stairs to the back yard. That is something I could live without ever doing again. Ever, ever, ever. More on that next time :)

Thanks for reading!

-katie