Kitchen Demo

It’s Kitchen Demo blog post time! What a crazy busy weekend for Kieran and myself, I can’t wait to tell you all about it! Kieran and I got the keys and closed on our new home on May 10, 2016, at 5 pm. At 5:01 pm we unlocked the doors, took a deep breath, held hands, and stepped across the threshold.

I spread my arms as far as they would stretch and straight up Julie Andrew’s twirled around my new living room singing, the house is alive, with the sound of Christina and Kiiiiieeerraaaaaaaan.

We walked through each room and discussed what changes we wanted to make if any. The kitchen hasn’t been touched since the house was originally built in 1938 it’s in horrible shape. The cabinets are decrepit, the vinyl floor is torn and permanently embedded with dirt, and the walls look filthy as well. If we’re going to start remodeling rooms in our new house, the kitchen has to be first.

I paced the kitchen focusing my attention on the wall between the kitchen and dining room and asked, “What are we up to this weekend?”

Kieran, “Uh oh, you have that look in your eye, what cockamamie scheme are you contemplating in that noggin of yours?”

A devious smile enveloped my face, “Up for taking this wall down?”

“OK!”, Kieran instantly responded.

Immediately after our conversation, we contacted our good friends Phoebe and Eric. Eric has carpentry experience and can identify if a wall is load bearing or not. Eric came over to analyze the wall and confirmed what we wanted to hear, the wall was literally good to go.

It was time to start making the dated, stale kitchen into the Shock Munchy kitchen of my dreams.

Ladies and gentleman, I bring you Kitchen Demo Day!!

The kitchen is dated from 1938. It’s functional but needs a makeover.

This area of the kitchen will be left alone for now, but I have plans to update this area in the future.

I’m OBSESSED with the sink. We are on the fence if we want to keep the cabinet under the sink (it’s gross under there) but we will keep the sink.

I would love to preserve some history from this 30’s style kitchen, but the cabinets haven’t aged well. Instead of throwing them away we’ve stored them in the garage. We’ll repurpose and hang the cabinets in our garage for additional storage.

This is my demo chic look 😀

Eric is an amazing friend and carpenter. We’re extremely lucky to have his expertise and guidance on site to assist with the demo.

On Kitchen Demo day, Phoebe had to work so Eric came over first with a car full of tools. Kieran and I are demo novices so we watched Eric set up and waited for instructions on how we could help. Eric taught Kieran how to begin taking down the first cabinet while I snapped photos. Admittedly I felt lost in the beginning, I didn’t know what to do and feared to get in the way. The guys began taking the first cabinet down. I helped by hauling out materials that needed to be stored elsewhere (like the cabinets we wanted to repurpose) and focused on clean up. Any time the guys knocked something down I would scurry in afterward to sweep and haul out the debris.

When the cabinet was off the wall, we discovered the walls were built using lath and plaster. According to Google, lath and plaster is a building process used to finish mainly interior walls and ceilings in Canada and the United States until the late 1950s. After the 1950s, drywall began to replace the lath and plaster process in the United States.

Lath is thin, flat strip of wood nailed into a fence like formation, covered with plaster to form a wall. It’s painstaking to build walls using this method as each piece of wood must be nailed precisely into place. It’s no wonder the method of building houses has been updated! Unfortunately, lath and plaster are as equally painstaking to tear down, mostly because the mess it leaves in its wake. First, you must break the plaster from the lath, so the wood can be yanked off the studs. During removal plaster and dust fly everywhere and cover everything. Once the plaster is knocked down, you can grab a crowbar and yank out the wood.

Demo begins. Eric works on the flooring and Kieran (my husband) works on the upper cabinets.

I’m the one in the pink shirt. I’m breaking up the plaster before removing the wooden lath.

The girl on the left is Eric’s lovely wife Phoebe. Phoebe and Kieran went to college together and have remained friends. Lucky for us because Phoebe is a remarkable person!

Our friend Phoebe showed up and went to town, tearing out lath like it was her day job, it was impressive to watch. I helped tear down lath too, but my main focus was clearing out as much debris as possible. I anticipated removing a wall would be messy, but lath and plaster mess is ridiculous.

I am happy to report we salvaged the larger, intact lath we removed from the wall. I would love to repurpose the wood in another house project. It will be a fun story to tell and a cool way to preserve some of the kitchen’s history.

We have a fire pit in our backyard so luckily we’ll be able to burn any wood we’re unable to reuse.

Phoebe, Eric, and Kieran continued to tear down the wall as I continued cleaning up the mess, saving what I could for future projects. If it wasn’t for Phoebe and Eric, who knows how long Kieran and I would have taken to accomplish the kitchen demo, we were grateful for their help.

I was so excited when we finally broke through the wall. I had everyone pose with their heads peeking out.

Amazing to see the wall (or what’s left of it) at this stage.

It took about 5 hours to finish the demo. To thank Phoebe and Eric, we took them out for dinner and offered up our services for their next home project. We’ll still need Eric’s help and expertise to patch up the ceiling drywall and reroute some electric outlets, but at least the hardest part of the kitchen demo is done.

Now the fun part can begin, patching the kitchen back together into the style I’m visualizing in my head. We just bought this house so you can imagine our savings account is depleted, so we will remodel the kitchen in the most affordable way possible. This means we’ll probably tackle DIY projects instead of buying all new custom cabinets, a kitchen island, shelving, ect. It may take us a couple of months to finish the remodel or it could take us several. I’ll document our progress and post any useful tips or fun DIY projects along the way.

I hope you’ll continue stopping by for updates on how we’re doing. 🙂

Thanks for stopping by,

Christina