Kitchen Renovation - Part One

So this is the kitchen and what it looked like when we bought the house. Actually, this is what it looked like before we got the keys. When we bought the house we lost the only useful thing in here: the table.

But luckily, we were left with a floating dishwasher! Yaay! (not!)

The main issue we had with the design was the arch, and how it was so low. The assumption was that there must have been something special inside the arch, or that it was a supporting wall. In any case, we could only find out after it was too late.

I should also specify that I kind of agreed with my husband that we were going renovate the bathroom before moving in the house, and then take care of the kitchen at a later date. A lot of people had told me to live in the house and work in the kitchen for a while before making any decision, and for a few hours I agreed with them... but then, look at this kitchen! 

I just couldn't live with it more than I needed to. But my husband didn't want to work on it yet... what to do??? The only thing that made sense...

While my husband was upstairs working on the bathroom, I started ripping one little piece of paneling off. You know, just to see what was under it... and to start the process... 

When my husband came down, he wasn't thrilled. He asked me why I had taken down the paneling... we had a little conversation... and for a few days I didn't touch any more panels. He went back to work on the bathroom and I primed the dining room wall.

But then one day, out of nowhere, he took some more paneling down on its own, and that gave me the green light to take it all down! 

I mean, it didn't mean anything. We didn't have to renovate the kitchen just because we were taking down the paneling. We could just take care of this side of the room and refinish and paint these walls. Right? 

Look at how much better it looked afterwards! (not!)

The next logical step, while my husband was back upstairs working on our beautiful bathroom, was to see if taking down the tiles on this other wall of the kitchen was going to be an easy job.

And to my surprise, it was! Not only easy, it was fun! All I had to do was hit a tile from the side with my wrecking bar (love this tool!) and the tile would just fly up and then down to the floor! 

So I took one tile down, then the next, then the next. Before I knew it, I had taken a lot of tiles down. 

All I had to do now was wait for my husband to come down and see if we were going to have another conversation about how we were not re-doing the kitchen just yet, or not...

This time, when he came down, he just shook his head, because I think he had started to get an idea of how this was going to work: he went up to the bathroom to fix things, I stayed down in the kitchen to break things. Eventually we would meet in the middle.  ;)

On his next trip upstairs, I figured it was time to open the surprise present, and so I started poking holes in the arch.

Since I didn't want my husband to think that I wanted to take down the whole wall, I just made little holes, just to follow whatever was inside of it. And this is what I found! 

This big snakey pipe going up, turning left and maybe going up again (because it wasn't going left since I opened that side of the wall, too).

When my husband came down again, he figured there was no point of arguing anymore, and so he helped me finish up the job! :)

Oh, and in this picture you can also see how I took down all the tiles on that back wall.

We also opened up the left side of the arch coming down, to see why the arch had such a big landing foot on the counter. And this is what we've found.

From what I understand, this is the vent coming up from the basement, hooked to the slop sink, and it meets here in the kitchen with the vent from the sink and then they both go up to the roof.

By this time, I had asked for my brother's help and we started taking the cabinets apart. That side of cabinets by the fridge are now gone.

Well, not gone completely, they are just laying down in pieces by the wall. I think I've already said this, but gosh! I hate the clean up part!

And now this side looks like this.

We started breaking the cabinets on the other side too, until we figured out that the sink was sagging and if we weren't ready to take the sink out as well, we needed to stop right there, and use a nice piece of wood to keep the sink from hitting the floor and break a pipe or two in the process!

Hey, I've never done this before... I'm learning...

This is it for now, but stay tuned for more to come!