Kitchen Remodel | Design

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We’ve gone through about 3 demo’s on this kitchen, so I think it’s time to share some design and lighten the mood! We have most of our selections made, not all of them, but the big ones. So here I’ll share what we know for design direction for the kitchen remodel.

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Kitchen Remodel | Demo

Kitchen Demo

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The wall is gone! We demo’d the kitchen sometime between Christmas-New Year’s (It all blurred together) and now we are completely gutted. Take a look at some footage.

Gutting the Kitchen

Whew, I get tired just watching that. It’s a pretty long video, but it was a much longer day I assure you. We were sore, tired and hungry by the end. It was a lot of fun tho – everyone loves to demo amiright? Here’s a slo-mo shot of Joe busting through the wall.

Old Appliances

Kitchen Demo

We started by taking out our old appliances. I was bracing myself to find extreme nastiness behind the fridge and stove, but honestly it was way less bad than expected.

Kitchen Before

Fridge and oven gone. Joe’s sister is getting the oven and I think an old neighbor is getting the fridge for their garage, so it’s nice our appliances get to have a second life. As much as possible, trying not to waste.

Kitchen Demo

Joe looking happy to rip out the old cupboards. Upper cabinets are going to use in the garage so that’s another plus. I am a very dainty demo-er, I’m usually trying to salvage, just like Christmas wrapping paper while opening presents 🙂

We do have a pretty good junk pile going though for sheetrock, old sink and lowers – we should probably get a small dumpster… We were able to salvage a lot of 2×4’s too. Which is like gold right now.

Kitchen Demo

Nobody wants our old dishwasher, I promise!

Broken Dishwasher

It actually broke just a day or two before demo!

Knocking out the Kitchen Wall

Kitchen Demo

And now for the moment we’ve all been waiting for. The Berlin wall is coming down!

Kitchen Demo

The wall came down pretty well. I was tasked with hammering off all the tile backsplash first. Then we went to town with hammers and pry bars on the sheetrock.

Kitchen Demo

Everything in here is double sheetrocked for whatever reason, so it was a bear to rip out not one, but two layers of everything.

Kitchen Demo

And yes, we made certain it was not load bearing or structural in any way. There was some electrical running through the post, which you can see dangling down the middle of the room. (Breaker turned off).

Kitchen Demo

The whole previous electrical situation was kind of a mess, but that’s a topic for another post. Can I just pause and say Wow, it looks more open already!

Kitchen Demo

Goodbye old pantry! I will not miss getting smashed by a door anytime someone came in from the garage.

Kitchen Demo

This was by far the toughest part to dismantle.

Kitchen Demo

Here’s Joe rewiring everything.

Behind the Scenes

A photo dump of some miscellaneous demo stuff:

We found this wedding invitation from 1981 behind our old cabinets! I hope they made it to the ceremony! I thought it was really cool we opened it on January 3rd 2022 and the wedding was for January 2nd.

Kitchen Demo

Pro Tip: Make sure to turn off your furnace while demo’ing so sheetrock dust doesn’t clog up your vents. We are lucky to have a wood burning fireplace, so we’ve been chopping wood like crazy and keeping that stoked.

Our borrowed hot plate for making mac n’ cheese. Don’t judge! At least it’s Annie’s organic. 😅

Kitchen Demo Dishes

And because we like to keep it extra real, here’s our dishes situation! In the laundry room sink, complete with ironing board as drying station. It’s honestly no big deal, I grew up without a dishwasher so it’s nothing for me. Really trying not to use paper and plastic, but understanding the occasional paper plate is OK given the circumstances. We will definitely appreciate new kitchen appliances that much more!

Kitchenette

Kitchenette

Speaking of, here’s our little temporary setup. The kitchenette is coming in handy! We have a mini fridge, toaster, pizazz pizza maker, microwave, crockpot and new this year – air fryer and instapot! (Please send your quick+easy recipes).

Temporary Kitchen

We also have this beverage station/coffee station. I also use my nutribullet quite a lot.

Kitchenette

We’ve been eating meals at this table in the movie room.

Up Next

That’s all for now! I think we’ll be ready to share the ceiling next. Then we need to finish electrical and new drywall.

-Leah & Joe

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Kitchen Remodel | Prep Work

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Preparing the Kitchen

The kitchen is about to get rocked, it doesn’t even know. There are some things we need to do before the big demo, such as installing new windows and running electrical. Read more for some of the things we’ve done so far!

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Kitchen Remodel | Planning

The secret is out! The kitchen remodel is underway. Well, not exactly. We plan to start early 2022, but we have some groundwork to lay between then and now. I’ll try to keep this update short and sweet, outlining our plans for the dream kitchen.

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Kitchenette Reveal

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Basement Kitchenette Reveal

Now that the kitchenette is finished, we’re so excited to show it to you! (It’s actually been done for a couple weeks now, but we’ve been taking in the last drops of summer.) Come take a peek into our mini kitchen reveal!

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Kitchenette Progress

Kitchenette Header

Progress Update: Basement Kitchenette

Alright, we’re rocking away at the basement kitchenette. This will go down in history as one of the fastest little projects we’ve ever done! We couldn’t be happier with the direction this is going. Put on your hard hat and check out our progress.

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Kitchenette Finishes

Designing the Kitchenette

In case you missed it, we’re in the midst of transforming our basement hallway into a kitchenette. We have it prepped and ready to install everything. In this post I’ll walk you through our design choices and finishes!

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Basement Kitchenette

Basement Kitchenette DIY

We’re baaaaackkk

We really never went anywhere, just took a break from sharing updates. But we certainly didn’t take a break from house projects! Consider this our official commitment to share a weekly post, at least up to our current progress. If 2020 has taught me anything, it’s to not make commitments for the future, but this feels manageable and will be good accountability. 😉 This week we are sharing our basement kitchenette build.

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DIY Laminated Recipe Book

Laminated Recipe Book DIYUnprocessed October is coming up! And that means a lot of time in the kitchen for me. To help make my life a little easier, I whipped out my recipe book. And to help make your life a little easier, I’m sharing my splash-proof laminated cookbook DIY idea.

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DIY Floor Stenciling

DIY floor stencil header how to stencil floor

This project goes down in the books as not a Pinterest fail! In fact, we love the finished product. It was an overall inexpensive, quick and EASY fix for our quirky little kitchen. I’ll tell you some of the tips I learned and show you my stenciling technique below. I’ll also share what to consider before stenciling your own floor, along with some before-and-after pics.

Before and After floors

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