Kitchen Remodel | Demo

Kitchen Demo

kitchen demo header

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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Addition Demo | Phase 2: Roof

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We’re raising the roof! Literally. But first we needed to level that roof. We made a timelapse video to capture it. And we’ve never appreciated having a roof over our heads more.

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Addition Demo | Phase 1

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Ready to roll, we had our building permit and blueprints in hand. But the hardest challenge, we’d learn, was finding a builder.

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Demo Day in the Apartment

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Bathroom Demo

We’ve broken ground (literally) in the mother-in-law suite and completed most of the demo work. It was a good five hours of work, but actually a ton of fun! We found some very interesting things behind the walls and floor.

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Installing Ceiling Beams

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Ceiling Beam Installation

We deciding faux barn beams were the way to go for our particular situation. I hope you caught the first post where we catalogued the whole process of making and weathering our beams. In case you missed it, we joined together three boards to look like one solid beam. However, it’s hollow in order to encase the retractable movie screen. After building them, bashing them and staining them, we’re ready to install them. It’s time to get these puppies onto the ceiling!

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Bathroom & Shower: Taping and Mudding Walls

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Mud and Tape

The natural next step after pouring the shower pan is? You guessed it: Adding shower walls. And you can’t just use regular drywall, you need to really waterproof that new shower of yours. It’s a high-stakes job, but you can do it!

Here’s a glimpse of us mudding and taping (with a little help). It’s in reverse order, so you’ll see the shower walls up first, then the rest of the bathroom. Enjoy!

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Bathroom Remodel | Framing the Shower

framing the bathroom

We Have Walls

They’re up! We just have to get them covered with sheetrock, but they’re looking good already. I’ve never done this, so it was all a learning experience for me. I even got to use gunpowder to nail into the concrete! It took me a few tries, but I finally made it through.

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Bathroom Demo | Phase 4: The Big Kahuna

bathroom demo phase 4

 

Last Demo

I find smashing walls infinitely entertaining, and I’m a little sad to be ending demo. But alas, all good things must come to an end. If you’re tired of seeing us crash through walls, on the other hand, good news: this is the last one. At least for the bathroom… We have a whole lot of building to do, so we really need to get a move on. These bathroom updates will be coming in rapid fire – I really need to keep up!

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Bathroom Demo | Phase 2

Bathroom Remodel Phase 2

Bathroom Background

Let’s back up a little and talk about this bathroom remodel. If you missed the first video, pop over to that and come back here when you’re done watching. Here’s a little intro of us getting hyped up to start, and me swinging a sledge hammer for the first time! Awww, my first (intentional) hole in the wall.

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Total Transformation

Under Construction

It’s been a whirlwind week! From finding a dream house to making an offer. Having the offer accepted to putting Joe’s house on the market… Wow. There was so much work put into his house, I can’t even believe it all started only one week ago. All I can say is THANK YOU to everyone who came over to move a truckload of boxes, shampoo the carpet, paint a room or jump on deep clean duty. We would have never been able to make that kind of progress alone. You were unconditionally there for us when we needed you.

Pulling Back the Curtain

shower curtain

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