I’m so excited to finally be sharing details of our kitchen remodel. A lot has happened around here in the last week. I thought it might be helpful to share the weekly progress to give our blog readers a realistic view of living through a kitchen remodel. Here is our kitchen before we started demo.
Tucker’s current kitchen
It’s glamour shot. 🙂
And here it is with the appliances removed and ready for demo.
appliances removed and ready for demo
Quick tip- before demo you will need to have a plumber come and unhook the sink and dishwasher and an electrician unhook any hardwired appliances.
Habitat for Humanity offers a great service called “deconstruct”. They have volunteers who will come and demo your kitchen FOR FREE when you donate your cabinets and countertops. We had a crew of semi-retired tradesmen and contractors who worked on our kitchen. They had the whole thing demo’d in about two hours.
floor with big gaps where cabinets sat
The next day I had the floor guys lined up to repair the hardwoods. The hardwoods in our kitchen were installed by the previous owners after they built the house, so they only went up to the base of the cabinets.
There were big holes in the floor where the cabinets sat. Since we are changing the cabinet configuration, all that had to be repaired.
Cutting out boards for lacing the floor
The first day, they cut out some boards to make the pattern they wanted for fitting in the new boards.
cut out floor for lacing in new wood
The second day, they laced in new boards.
floor is laced and ready for sanding
The third day, they sanded everything and applied the sealer. We opted to leave the floors the natural white oak. They applied a water based sealer called (affiliate link), Traffic by Bona that wont amber or yellow. They came back the next day and applied two more coats of sealer and buffed out the finish. They are perfect!!!
White Oak floors with Bona Traffic sealer
On Monday of this week, the electrician came out and pulled all the wiring for our appliances, under counter lighting, and sconces. He added a few additional outlets and made some adjustments to a few current light switches. He will come back once the cabinets are set and do the finish work, install the pendants over the new island and add outlets to both ends of the island.
It was a full week of activity. On Monday, we will start to set the cabinets. I’m so excited to show you how we are going to recycle cabinets from a friend’s kitchen. She is going through a kitchen remodel at the same time. She is putting in all new cabinets, so we bought her old (gorgeous) cabinets and a couple of her appliances. Here’s a walk-through of her kitchen before demo.
Luckily, this kitchen remodel hasn’t been terrible. We were able to install our new double ovens before the demo started.
New double ovens installed in a converted pantry
We converted an unused pantry into a space for the new ovens, so it wasn’t a part of the kitchen demo.
pantry before double ovens
extending the pantry into the stairwell behind
We can bake pizza’s and easy meals. We set up a makeshift kitchen in our laundry room which has a sink, refrigerator and microwave.
make shift kitchen in the laundry room
And of course, we had to have a coffee station.
coffe cart
This cart has been great because we just wheel it out of the way when work is being done in the kitchen.
Of course, the mess of everything that used to be in the kitchen piled up all over the house is about to send me over the edge.
stuff stacked everywhere
Literally every inch of my office is covered in kitchen stuff
It’s good though, because now I have empathy for what our clients go through. I’ve got to say that the hardest thing to adjust to is not having countertops. We don’t have anywhere to place meals, or mail, or groceries, or really anything. Once the cabinets are set next week, we can lay some plywood on top to create a makeshift countertop and life will be good.
If you want to follow along with the day to day progress, make sure to follow us on Instagram where I’m posting regular updates in my stories.
Next week I’ll be able to show you the cabinets and the start of our built in dining banquette. Make sure you subscribe to our email newsletter so you don’t miss any updates.
Want to read about our original kitchen makeover 6 1/2 years ago?? CLICK HERE
I know your kitchen will be drop dead gorgeous, and I can hardly wait to see the end results. Your kitchen floor is fabulous.
You are so sweet to say that. I’m so excited to see it all come together. Thanks so much for following along 🙂