Kitchen Remodel

So be prepared for a lot of pictures and mess. I must say that this remodel was pretty fun at times, but also very stressful. We started this thinking we'd be here for a while. Then suddenly a month after we started we were moving to Nebraska in a month. To say I went crazy is an understatement. A lot of blood, sweat and tears went into this house for the year that we lived there. Here's a list of what we accomplished in a year. We painted the whole basement, cleaned up the yard, took down 2 walls of mirrors, removed a wall of wallpaper, painted the entire upstairs, revamped the entire kitchen, removed 3 types of faux brick, and so much more little varies things. I was so excited to have a beautiful, big kitchen to cook in and I was so sad to leave it the day we finished. I sadly didn't even cook one meal in it.

I'm so glad that we were able to do this. We learned so much about demo, framing, drywall, floors, etc. We now feel confident to be able to do work on our future home. (View future posts)

Here are almost all the pictures of the remodel. We didn't get a good decent before picture and a lot of them are from various views, but this will give you an idea of what it looked like.

This beautiful brick was outside the bathroom in the hallway. There used to be a wood burning furnace there. So happy to have that gone.

This was the kitchen. No garbage disposal, carpet, dishwasher in the other room...I could list negatives for a long time.

View from kitchen into the dining room

View from dining room 

Brian started the demo while I was in California for a week. I'm glad he started because the demo took 2 weeks longer than we thought. Back in the 70's they would put up drywall and then slap a 1-inch later of plaster on top of that. So just hitting the wall with a sledge hammer once really doesn't do much. Plus they added a whole lot of chicken wire everywhere. "Curse you chicken wire" was a phrase said multiple times on a daily basis.

Once we removed the drywall and plaster we realized that taking down that post might be a bad idea. Thankfully my brother is a structural engineer! I spent an hour or so up in the attic facetiming him so he could tell me what we needed. He's so smart.

More framing removal and we ended up taking off the drywall on the ceiling because there was chicken wire all over it.

Framing isn't that difficult. I'm not a pro, but I must say I'm very proud of my pocket door framing skills. We decided to put a pocket door leading to the laundry so a swinging door wouldn't interfere with the pantry next to it.

Here's the wonderful beam that we had to put in place of the post that was there. That thing was dang heavy. Good thing I had Ben and Brian lift it up there.

Framing was fun. Demo got old real quick and Drywall is my enemy. I really hate drywall. More like I hate taping and plastering drywall. I suck at it. Drywall made me cry so I dislike drywall. A lot.

My absolute favorite and easy part was hanging the upper cabinets. I got so excited when we hung the first corner! ps. laser level rental was SO worth it!

Other side of the cabinets all in. We installed the cabinets in a day. It was pretty difficult to get them all level. That floor is so uneven. This side of the kitchen we had to raise the cabinets up about 1 1/2 inches. We used a lot of shims!

Almost all of the cabinets in!

Brian wanted a picture of the before and after cabinets. I'm very happy with our choice.

View of the dining room. Those walls had a lot of texture that was really annoying to get rid of.

Finished laundry room. So much better and it's enclosed!

Emily and Jordan came over and helped a TON. Emily and I decided to tackle the backsplash. Another easy and fun project. Doing the grout was the annoying part. My arm got so tired. 50 square feet of grout isn't the funnest.

Right before we installed the backsplash

Don't you just love that sink and faucet! I do!

After pictures of the backsplash. So pretty!

I love the color it adds. I would have preferred black subway tiles though. 

 View from the dining room. The flooring was my baby. I spent so many hours on my hands and knees installing those things. I'm a pro. Seriously. 450 square feet of flooring makes me an expert.

The finished product after we were all moved out. I love our choices. I told Brian that I want to put that kitchen in our new house. Soon I hope.

This is the view from the garage door. Kitchen on the left. Laundry room and pantry to the right

 Laundry on the left. Pantry in the middle and garage door on the right

 Garage door on the left and dining room on the right

This is the view from the front door. We put the flooring on the entryway leading to the dining room and in the hallway leading to the bedrooms.

So sad to leave, but we're excited for our new step in life!