Demolition of old kitchen

 

Here are pics of the kitchen 2-days before D-DAY....cabinets are empty and hardware removed.

 

  Here are pics of the kitchen 1-day before D-DAY....appliances out, plumbing ripped out, electicals disconnected.

 

And now....demolition day!

May 1, 2006

Phew, where to begin. The cabinetry came out fine, but we found the plaster walls to be in much worse condition that I had hoped. For  the lower 60% of the walls, I had always planned on covering it with 1/4" cement board and tiling it. I wanted to use a paintable textured wallpaper on the upper half, but the plaster is too far gone. We're going to cover the top half with 1/4" plywood, prime it, then wallpaper/paint that. Should work fine. 

The ceiling is also in pretty rough condition. It's been previous drywalled over with 1/2" drywall, and I planned on removing it and covering the whole ceiling with 1/2" plywood (so it'll be ready to accept the tin ceiling). However, we're concerned that removing the drywall could bring all the plaster down, so we're going to patch the drywall where needed to level it out, and then put plywood on top of that. Should provide plenty of reinforcement for the plaster, and a good solid base for the tin. 

In the lower picture, you can see a bizarre white area on the wall. That plaster has been patched, and the squarness of the opening suggests that it had been something else at some point. Maybe a built-in shelf or something. I'm not going to chop out the patch job and find out though.

Now look at the top picture, in the bottom right corner. See that exposed junction box? You won't see it in the previous pictures because some asshat covered it up during a previous remodel. The wiring inside was LIVE until yesterday (when I disconnected the circuit). The box had been stuffed full of newspaper (dated 1943) and cemented over. Was somebody intentionally trying to burn my house down back in the dark days of World War 2? How could ANYBODY ever think this was a good idea? I luckily noticed that the cement was a different color than the plaster, and decided to investigate what was going on. I'm STILL shaking my head over this one. Needless to say, this particular bit of wiring is getting completely redone.

And the day after....

Well, we got the old floor out today.....two layers of vinyl on top of some 1/4" lauan plywood. Whoever layed that plywood must have just bought a pnumatic stapler, as there were TONS of staples in that lauan. Didn't make much of a difference...the staples were short, so the floor came up pretty easy. Took well over an hour to hammer them down flat. We then layed down some rosin paper to prepare for the new wood floor. We also patched the holes in the drywall left by the removal of the old upper cabinets. We found the walls and ceiling exceptionally not square and level, but that's to be expected in an old house.

 

At this point, demolition is complete. Now the fun part starts.