Kitchen Demolition: Part 3 - The Ceiling

With the wall between the kitchen and dining room demolished, we turned our attention to...the ceiling!

This is probably the best shot of the ceiling - tile that you might find in an old school room, but it wasn't white anymore!

We were advised to try to take down the tile ceiling to see what was under it, in hopes that we could still use what was underneath without putting another layer (of drywall) on top.

But, as you can see, it was quite difficult to get the tile off the ceiling. Robbie was able to take off the easy pieces pretty quickly, but there remained lots of pieces of the tile that were glued to the plaster ceiling.

So after a couple days of scraping...

and scraping...

and scraping!! ...

We got a little testy!  :)

So we had one of our friends come over to look and see if it was "good enough", and determined that the remaining tile pieces were so stuck onto the ceiling, we better just put up some drywall.

Oh well, at least it was entertaining!!  :)

Major Project: Kitchen Demolition - Part 2

After the plaster and drywall was taken down, the next task was the studs. We had several people come in and tell us that it wasn't a supporting wall, but that doesn't always make you feel any better when you consider that one wrong move could send your new house into shambles!

But with some testing, we saw it was ok, and Robbie got out the circular saw to start taking down the studs!

Well - I guess it turned out ok, since the ceiling is still there!

We left a lot of the electrical work until we could get someone to help us with the wiring. The previous owners had so much going on in the house - there were outlets and switches everywhere!

We also decided to widen our doorway, so you can see part of the wall is missing all the way to the floor.

It's starting to open up! After some help from our electrical buddies, we were able to take down all the studs and just leave some wires hanging for lights we'd install later.

You can also see in this picture that we removed the countertop - fun!

Now the room is really starting to open up since you can see completely from one room to the other. You can also tell that the fridge changed places, moving to its temporary home in the dining room. We found lots more layers of wallpaper behind it! However, since we taped off the entrance to the dining room, it was a little challenging to get to the food every meal as we trailed through the demolition area!

Major Project: Kitchen Demolition - Part 1

About one month after we moved in, we started demolition in the kitchen area. Our grand plans were to open up the kitchen into the dining room by removing half of a wall between those rooms.

This little "window" from the kitchen to the dining room inspired us to take down half of the wall!

Since Robbie had the summer off from teaching, one Monday he just went to work on demolishing the wall. He also was able to get some help from one of his students! When I got home from work that day, here's what i found:

One side of the wall is torn off, showing the studs. Yes, that's Robbie with the face mask!

"I'm so strong, I can tear down walls with my bare hands!"

"Look honey! I'm taking apart the wall!"

Yay! We can see through the wall!

While fun, demolition is dirty and dusty business. We put up plastic tarps in the doorways of the dining room and kitchen to try to keep the dust from getting too far into the house, but it still got tracked everywhere. But before things get better, they have to get worse!

Getting Ready for Home Improvement #2: A List

Being in Pittsburgh everyone and their cousin works for Westinghouse or some other engineering firm, so I hear the label "Project Manager" a lot. Well when it comes to home improvements, the improver is the manager. People come over and help out, I listen to their advice and end up getting shocked by an outlet. Improvers manage their own property and seek to make it better. So with that idea in mind we had to come up with a plan on how to renovate our kitchen. (Warning this gets specific.)

1. Remove the ugly wallpaper - it tore off lovely and we used a steamer to loosen the glue. Good friend Derek Bates suggest fabric softener mixed with water. It worked just as well and better on occasion.
2. Demolition: take out 1/2 a wall and convert it into a 40 inch bar wall. This will require moving wiring and removing bulkheads, thus exposing the attic.
3. Electrical work - install new lights over bar
4. Demolition - bye, bye cabinets with countertop, sink, stove, and dishwasher.
5. Ceiling work - install new drywall ceiling after removing the tile and scraping off hardened glue.
6. Electrical work - install recess lighting that replaces the old ones
7. Mudding and prep work for paint - gotta have a flat, smooth surface
8. Painting ceiling, walls, and anything else.
9. Flooring - tear up the old stuff and down with the new
10. Cabinet installation (which must be delivered) along with all the bells and whistles
11. Appliances delivered and installed
12. Countertop templated, ordered, and installed

I feel like I am missing something...............

Mini Project #1: Pink Bathroom

Since this bathroom was obviously wayyyy too pink and retro girlie, something had to be done. While originally we thought the bathroom was going to get renovated in the fall, since the kitchen project took longer than expected (as kitchen projects usually do), we decided to take the bare minimum approach to the pink bathroom, and focus our attention on the kitchen for now.

Before: Floral wallpaper, shower curtain and Pink everywhere!

We had some out of town guests coming in at the end of July, so we took that opportunity to get our rears into gear and get something done about the bathroom. On the to do list:

1. Reattach some loose tile on the floor
2. Replace the pink toilet seat (that gave you a wild ride if you sat on it just right!)
3. Remove the wallpaper
4. Replace the light fixtures & switches (including a built-in "night-light")
5. Paint the walls
6. Decorate!

We got most everything done before our guests arrived (with only minutes to spare! haha) and now just need to finish decorating (this will fully happen much later - after major renovations!). Here are some pictures to chronicle the work...

The old light fixtures - two bulbs with large cylindrical covers on each end.

The room looks smaller without the big mirror. Scraping the wallpaper glue off and putting in new switches.

Wallpaper off, Cleaning & new Light fixtures (left)

Final pictures (with some decorations) to come!

Some quirky features about the house

You never really know what you're getting until you get into a house. So there are always things that make you go, "Really?" once you start to live in it. Here's some of the things that we found:

• There is a "window" from the kitchen into the dining room, complete with "shutters"!

• The light in the middle of the kitchen (pictured above) is so bright, that when you stand under it, it feels like you're in a tanning bed! (We call it the sun!) This is also the result of 4 - 100W bulbs - which were also in all the receptacles all over the house, heating us up.

• The shower head holder in the master bath was mounted to the wall, at knee height! (After one week of showering with one hand, this became first priority to fix!)

• There are lots and lots of switches for pretty much every light in the house - multiple ways to turn the lights off and on everywhere. Except the dining room - which has only one way to turn the light on, and it isn't in the place that even makes the most sense (from the kitchen).

• Cable and telephone lines were threaded all around the house, through windows, walls, A/C units and more, leaving long lines of cable everywhere on the first floor. Since we don't get cable now, we don't really need them either! The previous owners, however, must have had a phone and TV in every room!
• One other quirky thing about the phone - the owners had "ringers" installed on every level, so even though the phone was on the middle floor, it "rang" up in our bedroom (and quite loudly). For the first month, our phone was literally ringing off the hook, and we hadn't even told anyone our number yet - look out telemarketers!

Starting the Renovations...

So pretty much immediately after we signed the papers to close on the house, we packed up our "truck" with cleaning and painting supplies and headed over to the house to start surveying and fixing the mess! In the first two weeks, before we moved in, we managed to paint every room in the house except the kitchen, dining room, family room and laundry room, due to pending renovations.

One of the first "demolition" items was taking down the wood paneling wall in the family room. For some reason, the previous owners had screwed in hooks and bars (exercise stuff?) all over the door inside the family room, so along with the paneled wall came off all of the trim. It was a good excuse for Robbie to get a crowbar, and then he just went to town! (More about the continuing tool escapade later!)

Another thing that was to go were the masses of curtains, everywhere! Those were actually harder to get out of the wall then the wood paneling, and some took the wall with them!

A "gift" from the owners! The gold chair on the right actually plugs into the wall!

We found a lot of "gifts" left from the owners, and are continuing to find them, actually. One of the best was an electric knife still in its original packaging, and actually, probably better than the one I have! (Some of the worst were dirty socks and rags in the laundry room! Eww!)