We had moved into this house in 2008, and since then we have not really liked the kitchen. Our purpose was always to remodel it but we were never sure when or what exactly we wanted to do. Then slowly we started getting all the pieces in order. We replaced all of the windows in the house first, then the sliding back and side doors since those ran into the floor. Finally we were ready to begin.
Pre-Pictures
Below are some images from right after we moved into the house. We painted a little and changed the furniture around a bit but otherwise it didn't change much.
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| Kitchen facing the sliding door |
Designing the Kitchen
When we finally decided to go ahead with the kitchen, Veronica (the wife) sketched out some ideas of what we should do. This included changing the wall with the fridge to be a pass through kitchen island and moving the fridge elsewhere.
Once we had determined roughly what we wanted, we moved on the Ikea and spent several hours and days working with their design software. Getting all the dimensions perfect and adding in cabinets and appliances where we wanted them. We decided that we were going to get rid of everything except the fridge. Below are the Ikea printouts of the kitchen layout.
The great thing about the Ikea software is that it can produce a 3D rotatable image of the kitchen. Here is what our kitchen was estimated to look like.
Destruction
On September 2nd, 2015 we went and purchased the kitchen at Ikea. They asked if we wanted to take all 175 packages home with us right then. "Ummmm, what?". Didn't know that was an option. We ended up just having them delivered along with having to grab a few other packages from elsewhere across the city. That and countless trips back to Ikea to add and exchange things made a lot of trips.
September 4th, 2015
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| Ready for destruction. You can see the wife had already removed the old floor. |
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| Starting with removing the wall where the fridge was/is located. |
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| We assumed and had confirmation that there was significant water damage below the sink and dishwasher. I had already thought we would have to replace the subfloor, this just confirmed it. |
September 6th, 2015
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| The wall is completely gone now. Along with all of the upper cabinets. The cabinets has a small false wall above them that we wanted to remove as well. |
September 7th, 2015
Delivery Day!!!!!!
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| The day we are gifted with tons and tons of boxes. I think these boxes got moved around more than anything else in the house. We had to keep moving them out of the way, eventually putting most of them upstairs. |
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September 10th, 2015
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| The frame for the small wall is starting to go in. |
September 11th, 2015
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| Removed the small wall that jutted out above the cabinets along with the paneling that was on the wall behind the cabinets. |
September 16th
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| We had gotten far enough by this point to call in the electrician we needed. I Knew exactly what we needed done, but it was a lot of work. Once they arrived we were able to get everything on the above image (which I sent them) done. |
September 19th, 2015
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| Cabinets were starting to be put together along with continued demo in the kitchen. |
September 27th, 2015
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| Adding in the overhanging cabinets over the island. They were initially pushed up against the ceiling. The fit between the walls was WAY too tight though and ended up with me having to sand down one of the walls heavily, and still ended up having to jam the cabinets up. Then we did have to eventually take them down to add in a 2x4 spacer, but luckily they slid right back up without much of an issue. |
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| The electrical has been completed by this point. |
October 6th, 2015
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| Added in drywall and starting to paint the kitchen walls and ceiling. We have not yet fully removed all of the old kitchen cabinets yet because we wanted to reduce the amount of time we didn't have running water in the kitchen. |
October 11th, 2015
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| The walls are done. Sink is the only old cabinet remaining. |
October 15th, 2015
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| The sink was finally removed along with a chunk of the floor to replace. This meant having to remove all pipes and drains to the sink and dishwasher. |
October 17th, 2015
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| New floor installed. |
October 20th, 2015
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| New floor finished off and upper cabinets added. |
October 21st, 2015
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| Lower cabinets placed into position. |
October 24th, 2015
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| Larger wall cabinets added and lower cabinets secured. |
October 26th, 2015
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| By this point we were ready for the countertop. However, we didn't realize that the lower paneling needed to be attached to the lower cabinets in order to measure for the countertop. To attach the paneling, we needed the floor installed. And so began the marathon of installing the floor. And of course the walls aren't straight so we had to start on the far side of the dining room. |
October 27th, 2015
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| Most of the floor has been finished in just over a day. The most important parts are around the paneling, which are done. |
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| View into the main kitchen area, which is a mess at this point since that is where everything went when the floor was put in. |
October 29th, 2015
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| Appliances are being installed slowly. First in is the stacked microwave and oven. |
November 5th, 2015
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| Paneling is finalized and most of the floor is finished. |
November 6th, 2015
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| Getting ready for the countertop to be installed. Cabinets are starting to be used and doors and drawers being added. |
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| Dishwasher installed and water pipes are being added. The drain was already replaced by the time the cabinets were installed. |
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| For some reason the cooktop did not fit into the cabinet space which it was supposed to fit. So before the countertop was installed I needed to cut in grooves on the sides so that the cooktop slid in nicely once everything was said and done. |
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| Still the same day after all of the countertops have been added and the cooktop installed. |
November 12th, 2015
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| Spent a long weekend in the crawl space getting the faucet hooked up after about a month of having no running water in the kitchen. Dishes were cleaned in the upstairs bathroom. |
November 14th, 2015
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| So nice and tidy under the sink now. Everything is installed and the dishwasher is now hooked up. |
November 20th, 2015
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| Moving towards finalizing major construction and getting the walls ready for painting. |
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| Added the doors to the cabinets. |
December 14th, 2015
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| We ran into a problem with the ceiling. We had a popcorn ceiling in the dining room, a stucco ceiling in the kitchen, and a tiled ceiling in the front entryway, all of which were now flowing into one another. So the wife found plans to add paneling and whitewash the ceiling. This project alone took about a month to do but it came out looking very very good. |
January 9th, 2016
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| Finally finished the ceiling panels. |
January 23rd, 2016
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| Whitewashed the ceiling. |
February 1st, 2016
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| Added a new fan and lights. |
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| Also was able to add in most of the tiling along the kitchen wall. There was a contention over this type of tile and a more "rocky" tile but I lost. |
February 3rd, 2016
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| Added tile to the island walls to tie it into the kitchen as well. |
April 4th, 2016
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| Needed to remove the doors to redo the walls around the front entryway. There was paneling along much of the doorway, however we removed it above the door and to do the mudding of the walls, the doors needed to be taken down. |
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| Inside view. |
May 12th, 2015
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| By this point, we had finished all of the major projects except building the bookshelf/bench that was going around the dining room window. This is the window picture I took to Ikea to have them help me get the required materials. |
May 14th, 2016
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| Most of the kitchen is in final shape, with the walls all painted to what we wanted. |
May 16th, 2016
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| Started construction on the wall unit. |
May 27th, 2016
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| Installing the cabinets. |
May 28th, 2016
May 30th, 2016
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| Working on the bench seat. |
June 1st, 2016
June 5th, 2016
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| Mostly finished on the bottom. |
June 18th, 2016
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| The bottom portion of the wall unit is completed including cabinet tops for the end cabinets. |
June 22nd, 2016
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| Starting to build the top part of the cabinets. |
July 16th, 2016
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| Wall unit is complete. Job Complete!!!!!! |
November 17th, 2016
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| During the completing phase, we ran into several small problems that took a while to resolve. The floor was losing stain rather easily so I added more stain and sealed the floor. Also some of the undercabinet lights were overheating in the attic, so I had to rewire them so they came down into the kitchen, like the other lights. |
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| Since the main entryway ran into the stairwell, this was added to the to-do part of the project. That added a bit of time to get everything complete. |
So, in all, it took over 15 months to complete, but the major part of the project was done before Thanksgiving of 2015. We had running water in the kitchen and all appliances were hooked up. The rest of the project dragged out for quite a long time because we didn't have as much time to devote to it as we did earlier in the project. But by the time it was done, over 1/3rd of the house was completely demoed and redone.
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