Kitchen Remodel - Part 1: Best Intentions

It’s somewhat misleading to call this Part 1, since we’re well into our third year of fixing up our house. I’ll confess right up front that we bought this house because we didn’t want to tear out perfectly good materials to make it what we wanted. This house really needed some fixing. Think boarded up windows, bathroom floor falling into the crawl space, and retaining walls like a Civil War battlefield. After taking care of the really urgent stuff like heat, light, hot water, and a fully functioning bathroom, we’re finally getting to second-tier projects like the kitchen.

It started with the rusty white metal cabinets – classic for our 1950’s subdivision. We decided to send the cabinet doors out to be powder coated, intending to paint the boxes ourselves. With a little re-arranging of the existing cabinets we could even add a dishwasher. Original concept: a super-minimal face-lift remodel until we decided what we really wanted to do with the kitchen. Budget price: about $1,300 including the new dishwasher, if we did most of the work ourselves.

Well, the cabinet doors came back from the powder coater looking so fabulous that we just had to send the boxes out as well. Caught up in a wave of enthusiasm, that decision led to a surprising cascade of things that we really should do at the same time. I mentioned that if the cabinets were being removed we would probably want new counters. New counters and cabinets would make the old floor look shabby, so we would need to replace that as well. The kitchen floor extends into the pantry, hall and half-bath. Ken decided that while the cabinets were off the walls we should also take the drywall off and insulate the two exterior walls. Once the drywall came off I noticed the knob-and-tube wiring which had to be removed before we could insulate. Revised budget: slightly less than $10,000.

installing insulation

Here’s a photo after the demolition as we’re installing insulation. We’re down to the bare studs and sub-floor. The refrigerator is on the back porch, plugged in through the kitchen window (you can see the cord) along with the stove and the newly painted cabinets. We’ve got the dining room set up as a combination kitchen/eating area with microwave, toaster oven, and rice cooker, to supplement the barbeque outside. A dish-washing station is set up at the laundry sink in the garage. This is actually luxury compared to the first two months we lived in this house without refrigerator, stove, or central heating. And the next six months after we got the refrigerator and before we got a stove.

This time we’re much better prepared. We know more people in the neighborhood and we’re not shy about fishing for dinner invitations. One neighbor is going away next week and has even offered to let us use her house to make food that we can freeze and eat later.  

Next week:  Part 2: Execution