Day 10: Drywall Mudding

Today the drywall was tapped and mudded. Not sure if that's the right term for it or not.

Days 6-9

Last Thursday, Friday and this Monday the electrician was here to add switches, outlets and recessed lights. The photos aren't too exciting, but you can see some of the changes in the photos I took today. more importantly, today they drywalled over the few areas of the kitchen that needed it. One of the larger areas was the small wall that was built where the entrance to our kitchen used to be (the small white wall in this photo). This area will be mostly hidden when the kitchen is done because a pantry will be placed in the corner, leaving just enough room for the switch. On the grey wall you can see an outlet that will be behind our pantry. We will have rollout shelves so we're planning to put our coffee maker in our pantry and there will be a cutout at the back so that we can plug the coffee maker in.



This is the other side of the small wall:




The ceiling around the beam was also drywalled:




As well as the area on the ceiling where the wall between the dining room and kitchen was:



The plumbing was capped off and new drywall was installed around it:




Last but not least, the subfloor was screwed into our floor joists...not sure why this wasnt done before...it must have been right? I guess our contractor was just making sure it was!

Day 5 and some more history

Today the electrician came to change some of our switches and outlets and add new ones. The job is not done, and not all that exciting.

I mentioned that our new cabinets were delivered yesterday. It's hard to believe that this pile of boxes in our garage will become our future kitchen!


One thing I know is that we will have plenty of Faktum to go around:

Our flooring is also boxed up in our garage. We had heard a lot of great reviews about cork in kitchens (it is resistant to mold and mildew, durable and environmentally friendly), so after some debate, we decided to narrow our search to cork and would up with this choice (APC Cork, "Apollo Brown").



In my search for an old kitchen photo from when we first moved into our home in 2006, I found something even better...a video. Obviously, we have made a lot of changes since then. But this will give you an idea of what we started with, as well as the full layout of the kitchen.



I guess we have come a long way already, but there is still a long way to go!

Day 4

Not much of an update today. The plumber was here to pull out the old sink pipes and install new ones. Somehow all of the piping down to our utility sink was replaced along with it (I guess they don't want to join old pipe to new pipe). They tore out some of the gross drywall around the old pipes. It looks like this now.


Our new cabinets were also delivered by Ikea today. Everything is flat packed like a good Ikea product should be. It was delivered on a large skid, and then everything was moved separately into our garage, where it will wait until it all gets assembled.

Fridge

We bought a new refrigerator before starting the kitchen construction. We are going with Bosh appliances throughout the kitchen but found this Fisher & Paykel fridge at a scratch and dent store in near perfect condition. I thought I would hate having the freezer on the bottom but it's really nice and seems roomier even though it is counter depth.

Day 3

Today the contractor removed the temporary wall that was holding up our kitchen ceiling and installed this large beam.

I have been very impressed with how clean our contractor is! Check out this plastic wall surrounding the construction:

On the right side of the plastic is our dining room. Which now looks like this:


Today we also ordered our new cabinets from Ikea. The Ikea purchase was pretty unceremonious. We printed out a list of what we needed and walked to a register to buy and schedule delivery. The new cabinets are stocked at the store and will arrive tomorrow.

Day 1 and 2

Our contractor and two of his crew members arrived early for the first day of work just as we were heading to the airport for a wedding. We were told that when we returned on Sunday the walls surrounding the kitchen between our living and dining room would be gone, as well as everything in the kitchen.

I should start with some "before" pictures. Eventually I will dig up some true "before" pictures with details on the ivy stenciling and peel and stick tile that were part of the kitchen when we purchased our 1950s split entry. We couldn't live with that kitchen for long and made some minor inexpensive improvements to make it livable for four years. This was the state of the kitchen when we left our house for the airport:

This picture really makes the kitchen look decent. I should explain that we have white cabinets with newer modern looking handles, and a newer faucet. Nothing fancy, but simple measures we took to make our kitchen livable when we first moved in. The peel and stick tiles that were cracking and breaking were replaced about a year ago with inexpensive vinyl "wood like" planks. The dishwasher has been barely usable as seals have broken leaving us with a mold problem inside of it. The cabinets were probably one day beautiful since they are solid wood, but although cabinet materials have gone downhill over time, the construction and use of space within a cabinet has greatly improved making these older cabinets a bit of a bummer. The configuration of the kitchen was the largest problem. It's not a small kitchen but all of the counter space and cabinets are shown in this picture because kitchens of the 50s were designed to have an open area for a large kitchen table. Unfortunately pantries, an area for trash and recyling as well as countertop space didn't seem to be a priority back then.

At the end of day 1, our contractor sent us this picture:

On day 1 and 2 all of the cabinets and appliances were removed along with the soffit and the two walls. Fortunately when we returned to our kitchen on Sunday night, it looked like this:

The walls to the right of the kitchen and at the forefront of this photo were entirely removed, and a temporary wall was created to keep the ceiling from falling in on us (who knew it just took a few strong sticks).

Oddly enough, we thought the space would feel larger but somehow without anything there to remind us of the scale of a kitchen, it felt smaller. I'm sure this will just be temporary perception!

Our old cabinets and our appliances are now stacked up in our dining room.