Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Day 248- Kitchen Demo

Since we moved, the Hubs and I have been working furiously on the kitchen. Being plastic free while renovating a kitchen is basically impossible. For two reason:


1. We have nowhere to prep food, so most of our eating comes in the form of take out or prepackaged foods. I never get heartburn, but 4 weeks of eating out all the time will make your heart feel like a ghost pepper. 


2. We are doing the renovation ourselves. Hubs and I, and our four hands. Buying plywood and backer board is very plastic free, but buying tools and blade replacements is very full of plastic. We do our best to buy as little prepackaged equipment as possible, but sometimes you have to buy a 7" circular saw replacement, and it comes in one of those hermetically sealed plastic containers. Because heaven forbid that saw blade get germs on it before I cut my rotting plywood! Anyway, my daily trips to Home Depot haven't been plastic free, but we are still trying. 

So, let us talk about where we are in the renovation.


Here are some terrible pictures of what we started with in the kitchen:


Cooking area and (brown) sink

Breakfast nook

I know, how on earth could we possibly want to change this at all? The linoleum! The brown ceramic sink! The stove original to the 1960s?! Well, the stove didn't work, the floor was rotting and I don't have a good excuse for the sink, other than it wasn't attractive. So into the dumpster it went. 

 We knew that we wanted to have tile in the kitchen for durability, so I started scouting Home Depot. Many times they will have tile on clearance, and it was simply a matter of snagging a color we liked. Once we found tile, we knew it was time for the linoleum to come up..... And so began the problems. 

First we took up the kitchen linoleum. It was really easy, we scored the surface with a utility knife and then poured hot water all over the floor, followed up buy some scraper usage to remove the old linoleum (don't worry, we also checked to make sure there would be no asbestos particles due to removal). Well, under the that first layer we found soaking wet MDF as a sub floor. Okaaaaaayyyyy.... 



Well, this doesn't look good at all!

See that hole? It's been there for a month




Why is this floor wet? That's so strange. So the Hubs pulled out the dishwasher to find out if it was leaking. Turns out, it was leaking mouse nests. So now we have to remove the MDF and all the base cabinets because they are soaked in urine. Great. Out come the counter top and cabinets. And while we are at it, let's figure out why this part of the floor is soft, so Hubs opened up part of the floor where the cabinets used to be to find out that the plywood underlayment is also rotted. That was a month ago. 

Here are some progress pictures:

See the rotting plywood on the right?

Working on the last little bit under the pantry

Classy solo-cup drip catcher

Now the fridge won't fall through into the basement
As of yesterday, we finally closed up the hole in the floor and no longer have to worry about someone falling through the floor into the basement. So we are FINALLY making some progress. Who cares if we have a fridge in the dining room?! That's how we roll!

Next step is to get hardiback or cement board on top of the plywood and think about new cabinets. Has anyone used hardiback or cement board? Which one is better? What do you think for cabinets? Thoughts on paint colors?


**Solo cups are have been moved halfway across country and are 3-4 years old. No new plastic!

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