kitchen of tears: part 1- the reckoning

The largest project of the house is by far the kitchen. We initially thought it was pretty livable, but that was until we started taking little bits of it apart. The initial intention was to do some reorganizing, maybe some updating, but not much more. Once we started removing the cabinets we realized how much of a sleeping giant this project was.

It seems like rather than being cleaned, the place was just painted over. And over and over. Thick white paint hiding streams of yellowed grease and dirt and cooking crap on the backsides of the cabinet doors. So, we started the long and arduous task of remodeling the kitchen by essentially tearing it out, starting with the cabinetry.

The cabinets took about a day to remove, and then the counter was a second day. I have never gotten so comfortable with destroying shit with a crowbar.

Here is the wonderful BEFORE picture. Hideous.

the beginning

Ready to mess the place up:

Day One

Surprise Hidden Chimney

Day Two

We pulled up the floors all the way to the bottom, too. All four of them. It was an almost geological layering of linoleum, board, more linoleum, asbestos tile, and then board.

2 Comments

  1. Carolyn
    October 29, 2010
    Reply

    Glad you posted the link to the blog on Facebook, this is hillarious and awesome. I totally want to flip houses for a living someday. When teh market doesn’t suck so much. And I have some seed money to start with. My parents’ old house, when we finally redid the kitchen, we took up 5 layers of linoleum and crap, to discover beautiful original fir floor boards at the bottom. Sadly they were worn too thin for flooring, and also got ripped up. My dad eventually planned them down and turned them into a table and some serving trays though.

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