Kitchen Remodel #5

We need to cut the hole in the wall before we took down the plastic.  I also didn't want to screw up the wall on the dining room side so that I had to patch that with sheet rock.  I could repair dings and stuff but didn't want to match the width of the cement board with sheet rock if I could help it.

So I bashed out the cement board on the kitchen side and removed the pocket door.  I measured twice and cut once and it worked out pretty well, despite the cement dust.  There goes another saw blade.

The refrigerator is moved into it's new place temporarily to get it out of the way (on the right of the photo).  The wall cabinets are gone.  The hole is cut into the kitchen/dining room wall.

This is the view from the dining room.  No wall cabs, no soffit.  Still got the important tools for cooking for one more week!

I'll need to build in the hole just a bit, but it's not structural. 

And, it's a sigh of relief to be cleaned up.  First, a broom, dustpan, and brush.  Then,  a little shop vac.  I pulled the plastic down, and washed all the surfaces with a little soap and water.  Looked pretty clean!

Kitchen Remodel #4

At the beginning of this week, I printed my google calendar.  Thanks, Google, I like it.  When I looked at it, I realized that ML was right - again.  It used to irritate me that she was always right, but now I have a perverse delight in confirming what I already know.  She had said that there wasn't much time to get ready for the cabinets.  I said, "Don't worry, there's lots of time!"  But, Bob and Glenda were coming through, Hannah was here for a long weekend, and the time looked short.

 Time to get rid of the upper cabinets and cut a hole in the wall and see what we have. But first, what I struggle with - getting ready to get ready to work.  We knew this was going to be messy and we needed to shut off the rest of the house as best as possible.  We taped the double doors into the "study" and put a rug against the bottom of the doors.  Then we blue taped a sheet of plastic across the whole dining room.  As usual, it blew around and we had to cut a few slits to keep it from blowing down.

I also learned from one of my mentors, Randy, tape cardboard down on the floor to protect it - in this case all we had to protect was three feet of dining room floor since the kitchen floor was GONE.  Taping cardboard allows you to use a vacuum!  Thanks, Randy.

 The first job was removing the upper cabinets.  They are made of plywood and weren't difficult to remove with a big hammer and a prybar. 

They were screwed into the soffit in the photo on the left.  Oh boy!  Wires!  Oh boy!  Loose insulation.  Two of my favorites!

I started using the sawzall (sawsall?), one of my favorite destruction tools.  But the cement board is very tough and the blade went dull in no time.  Then I realized that I could just blast it through with a hammer, then I used a crowbar.  And then, I went out and got a hatchet I use for firewood and that did the trick!  I smashed the cement board and then I was able to get the wonderbar or crowbar and but it off the wood framing.  The wood framing came out more easily than I though it would.  On the right of this picture, you can see where I smashed the wallboard on the soffit.  What a mess!


It was 7 o'clock before I got the soffit down and patched the ceiling to keep the crap from drifting down.  But we were left with a working sink, cooktop, and oven.  Come on, visitors!

Kitchen Remodel #3

The old oak flooring has to go - not because it's not good wood, but because we can't get the remnants of the linoleum and glue off of it - and because there are nails that have to be dug out every 8 inches or so.  We wouldn't be able to resurrect it in the end.  Shucks.

Here are pieces of hardwood oak that we took out. 

This is when we were just beginning.  I cut a kerf down the middle of one of the planks in the middle of the floor so we had something to dig into to pry up.  After the first plank, it came up easily. 

So now we're down to 1 by 8 diagonal planking subfloor, typical in the late 50's.

We put some old carpet down to keep the rats out.

Kitchen Remodel #2

Goal #1: Take the tile up and see what's under it!

Plywood!  Or at least that's the next level.  ML was a "tile removal animal"!  With a cold chisel in one hand and a big hammer in the other, she had row after row popped up and hauled out to the driveway.

But under the plywood?  Not so fast!  Ring shanked nails were spaced every 8 inches or so in half inch plywood.  Sometimes I was chipping out 8 inch chunks of plywood.  It went OK until the last third, when the nail spacing went to 6".

But look what is underneath - just what we thought!  Not really!  This photo is the edge of a sheet of plywood to give you scale.  In front of  it is what is left of old linoleum when you strip it up.  A paper like layer mixed with glue is left.  You can also see a different kind of nail in the middle right of the picture.  All that is stuck to some real nice oak hardwood flooring - which is what we wanted.

You can see the plywood being ripped out the best way possible.  But, eventually, we had a floor without plywood and tile.

Watch out for nails.  They blend in with the black and are miserable on bare feet.

Kitchen Remodel #1

It's time.  We have an original kitchen from when the house was built in 1958.  It's been updated with a newer small wall oven and cooktop.  A dishwasher has been shoved into a hewn gap in the base cabinets.  The sink is 6" deep at most.  The cabinets are custom plywood. The countertops and backsplash are pink tile.  Crumbs and a lot more rests in the grout.  Yep, time to upgrade.

  The following pictures are of the existing kitchen.  See all the counterspace for food preparation?

We do have a cute table.  The blue tape marks where we're going to cut out the wall to the dining room.  Should be fun.

This photo shows the other side, anchored by a side by side frig.

See the pink tile?

The floor is a nice cracked white tile so that dirt won't be seen very well.  Luckily, ML has less tolerance for dirt on white tile than I do. 

GASPARILLA !!

The pirates are about to attack!!

The City of Tampa has quite a celebration in late January.  It seems to have something to do with people, pirates, beads, lots of food, and copious quantities of alcoholic beverages.


We have a nice view of the "invasion" of the pirates weaving down Sneddon Channel, not far from our house.  It's always worth a jaunt to see the scene.  Watch out for the occasional patches of vomit.

The pirates are hanging all over the Gasparilla ship in the background.   They "land" and a big parade with various "Krewes" compete to see who can drink the most and throw the most beads.

There are lots of boats!  

People line the shore to get bead necklaces thrown from the boats. 

Put on your eyepatch!  Eat! Drink!  Be merry!

Aye Aye, Captain!

HOT or COLD?

Sometimes the simplest of things seem so complicated.

Six years ago when I plumbed the house, I spaced out and switched the hot and cold water pipes to the shower valve.

Hmmm.  It worked OK, just opposite.  One person that stayed in our house thought we had no hot water!

For years, my mind was consumed with the difficulty of crawling under the house, removing insulation (in the face, of course), and cutting and patching pipes.

But, 6 months ago, I said "AHA!"  Why don't I just switch the valve backwards too!  Plus, the amount on information on the internet is amazing.  I found a youtube video the detailed exactly how to swap out my brand of valve.  You can learn too at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEDxl0A2pl0

The girls were gone and I was by myself, so I crawled under the house to turn off the water (I'm gonna fix that soon, too!).  Ten minutes later, the valve was switched (I didn't even break anything and have to wait a week for parts!).  I crawled back under the house and turned the water on again.

Voila!  It's fixed.  I wish I had thought of it earlier.