DIY Kitchen Renovation: Demolition- It Has Begun!

I know!!! This post is long overdue. It has been utter chaos in the house the last 4 weeks.  We started demolition and renovation of the kitchen ( as you will see in this post) and planned a gender reveal party at the same time. I am pregnant with Baby 2! Found out July 2nd that we are having a baby girl…I just can not believe it. I almost do not want to believe it cause I was so sure I was having a boy. The hubby and I are just over the moon elated and are looking forward to the journey.

Ok, concerning this house. We are starting the first phase of our kitchen renovation, which includes demolishing that horrible wall that was separating the kitchen from the rest of the house.  We are renovating the kitchen in phases and I will break down the phases for y’all in the next post. Our house is in semi chaos and usually chaos causes a bit of uncomfortability for me, but I know this chaos is necessary to get where we are going!

First up to go were the floors. And can you guess what was underneath? Yep, you guessed it! Beautiful hardwood floors. We took up two types of tile- one was a click- locking faux wood floating floor that ran through the hallway and living room/dining room. It was easy to pull up by hand.

Note: Once we saw the floors, we went through a two week search to find out the types of floors we had. At first we thought red oak, then white oak, and a lady at a store even thought we might have walnut ( she made her decision based on a photo.) Thanks to our friendly contractor neighbor, we confirmed they are red oak ! I can do a post on the flooring alone, if you would like. Drop me a line below and let me know if you would like that.

The kitchen floor required more work! It was tile held down by mortar. He uprooted this tile using an automatic floor scraper we rented from Homedepot.

I thought I had a pic showing how to place the machine against the floor, but did not find it. However, the idea is pretty simple ( even though I didn’t do the work myself…hehe) because you just place the tip of the scarper between two of the tiles at an angle that would allow you to up-root one tile at a time, then give it a push. Hmmmm, does that make sense? The scraper didn’t leave us with whole tiles but broke the tile into fragments. I would have liked them to be whole because it would’ve been less mess and a possible resale (never miss an opportunity to resale somethin’!)

To remove the mortar he used a crowbar and hammer.

We were left with this not-so nice cork floor. Yep! No wood floors like we were hoping. That means we will have to match the existing wood floors or think of another nice alternative.

Next up was the demolition of the wall! (Sooo excited). We started by removing the dry wall.

We used a dry wall knife from Home Depot to cut into the wall ( there is an electric option). Water was sprayed before cutting to reduce dust. A little side note about dust: cover errthang!I mean it…like for real. We made the mistake of leaving counter tops uncovered and some pots out ( what were we thinking?). We were cleaning the dust every night, so don’t be like us. Anyway, he would make a vertical and horizontal cut. He would then use a crowbar in the cross-section of the cuts to pry the dry wall up, then used his hands to take down the rest. He repeated this over and over.

In the end we were left with the above pic. Here we are down to the studs! Can’t you see the potential! I am so proud of the hubby because he did this all on his own, taking some down everyday after a hard day’s work! This is the beginning of our new kitchen, the biggest project we have undertaken to date and our dreams are becoming reality! Hallelujah!

Have you guys ever undertaken such a big project by yourselves? What was the outcome and what did you learn?

Til’ the next post, guys!