Kitchen Demolition

The kitchen demolition started today. The cabinet guys wanted to come and do a final measurement on the cabinets, but the dropped ceiling had to be out before they measure.

So, the shed doors are put on hold while Our Good Friend worked on taking out the dropped ceiling.

We weren't really sure what was under there, but had an idea that it was put in after the house was built and not during original construction.

We were mostly right on that, you can see what I mean in the photos.

I love those plastic buckets! They stack and store and are easy to clean. I have all of my upper cupboards stored in five of them. (I'm not kidding!)

It took me about an hour to take everything in the upper cupboards out and everything off the walls and counters.

Everything is stored in buckets, on the kitchen table (under a sheet) and in Son1's room. Not much is in his room, though. The frame was around the light box in the dropped ceiling. I'm saving it for now, I'm not sure what I'll do with it, but I'll think of something!

I even remembered to cover the computer with a sheet!

Demolition begins! Out comes the dropped ceiling!

Just as we suspected, the dropped ceiling was added after the house was built so the original textured ceiling is still there! Yay!

Unfortunately, the original builders built in some soffits so the cabinets wouldn't have an open space above them. It saves on cleaning the upper cabinets, so I would have chosen to do the same.

The soffit is framed in with 2x4s and plywood. It took Our Good Friend longer to get the soffit out than it did to take out the rest of the dropped ceiling.

All the soffit is out! The insulation is from the attic, yup, the attic.

This part will have to be patched with new wall board. The wire hanging was from the old light that was above the sink. It's switched, and we will move the wiring so we can eventually install under cabinet lights.

Soffit area shoved full of insulation.

Before the house was remodeled (so the neighbors say) this was a door to the driveway. I love kitchen doors, but I'm not re-installing one here. I'd rather have the counter space!

Our Good Friend and Vet2Be put sheetrock up into the spots that the soffit left.

They had to cut holes for these wires to go through. The original electrician was a bit lazy and decided that since the soffit was there, he didn't have to drill holes to put the wires through, he could just lay them through the soffit. When Hubby saw that, he decided that we are getting an electrician to come in and re-wire this area so that the wires go where they are supposed to go, and the new cabinets can go to the ceiling.

The electrician will also take care of this wire. It went through the dropped ceiling and powers a light on the drive way. Whoever put in the dropped ceiling didn't want to run the wire through the attic......

They wanted to pull it out of the box in the ceiling and run it through the dropped ceiling--after all, who would want to pull out such a lovely dropped ceiling and make the kitchen feel BIGGER?!

This is what it looks like tonight. All the upper cabinets out (some will be re-used in Spunky's home that is being rented right now. I copied her color, so the cabinets are not the same style, but they are the same color!)

So far we haven't hit any huge problems. We weren't expecting to hire an electrician to re-wire, but that's okay. Every remodeling project takes 20% more time and 20% more budget than expected. It's the law of remodeling!