kitchen gutting

Though we’ve been great sports about living in a state of remodel in our 1960s project ranch house, L is getting to an age where it’s become imperative that we live in a safe home. We decided to bring in a contractor to solve some of the problems outside our range of ability. Our friend’s father has been a general contractor for ages, and gave us a great and affordable quote.

The first and main project is to finish the kitchen, which I posted about here.

This first photo shows how we’ve lived for two years now, after gutting the cabinets on the first day we moved in, and discovering they were built straight into the beams of the attic (even before the sheetrock was put in). God knows how much money we’ve wasted on heating and cooling, with just plastic sheets covering the demo area. This was one of those situations where we vowed we would finish it immediately, and then got married and pregnant. Time has flown by.

More of the “before” photos:

The first task at hand was to get rid of the awful painted paneling, which used to have nasty teal scalloped fringe around the top.

The sheetrock is in decent shape, but on the left side, adhesive was used and came off tearing the sheetrock in squiggly lines. Depending on how much our contractor friend says it will cost for extra mud and tape, we are considering beadboard.

By the time midnight rolled around, we had ripped out the rest of the paneling, the upper cabinets, backsplash, and sheetrock and beams above the upper cabinets. The rest of the sheetrock was in surprisingly good condition, and already had mud and tape.

We set up our makeshift kitchen (sans sink and stove) in our front family room, using butcher’s racks, our discontinued IKEA Udden tables, and two older IKEA Varde butcher block freestanding kitchen counter units, positioned back to back.

Work starts this morning, we’re hoping for the best.