Before we went on our Scotland vacation earlier this year, Dwayne and I got a wild hair and decided that we would update our kitchen later this year. Later this year turned out to be when we were both on vacation again in October (last week and this week). So last week we started tearing out the kitchen.
To give you an idea of what we have done to this point. This is what we originally started with for the kitchen.
We bought all new appliances before we left on vacation to Scotland. The main reason we are remodeling the kitchen is that some of the appliances are much larger than the original ones and the cabinets are now too small. So we have torn out the wallpaper, although at this point I look back and realize that I didn’t need to remove the wallpaper because well, we gutted the kitchen down to the studs in the walls. We also removed the flooring so that we could replace it with really nice porcelain tiles.
So, we had a very slow start to the morning.
We started taking off the linoleum and realized there was particle board under it. Of course you can not lay tile down on particle board. So as most projects go, we had one more layer to remove before we could begin to think about laying tiles. So, we removed the particle board. All I have to say is whoever put it down should have had to come and tear it up. When you see nothing but a sea of nails it’s a little ridiculous.
So, after 3 consecutive trips to the dump to get rid of flooring and drywall. We are now down the the original sub floor.
After Dwayne did some further reading on laying tiles, we realized our sub floor flexes just a little too much to put only cement backer board and our tiles down. So, back to home depot we went for flooring plywood. Now, we have to lay down a vapor barrier (see the black roll in the background), plywood, thin set, cement backer board, more thin set, then the tiles. Seems like a lot of work but we both decided with what we just spent on the tiles, there was no way we were going to let them break when we walked across the floor because it flexed. That would not have made my day.
Oh yes, and as you can see, the drywall on the left side of the picture has been removed. That wasn’t the original plan but Dwayne the contractor decided it would be oh so much easier to do wiring if we just removed the drywall and put new up. That was a very logical plan to me until i learned that he didn’t want to have to do more than one seam on the length of the wall and we went to get 12′ pieces of drywall. Oh that was just more fun than I’ve ever had.
Yesterday we bought 4 12′ pieces, 8 – 8′ pieces at 1/2 inch and 6 – 8′ pieces at 1/4 inch along with 6 pieces of plywood. Yes, I had to help in the store as well as help put this stuff into the truck. I will be coming back to work with bruises. We had a little lack of communication in the store and unknown to me he was going to slide a piece onto our cart and I was trying to lift it. So the end result was that it slid off my upper arm pinching it a little and causing me a little bruise for my trouble.
We got the paper put down as well as the plywood. This will probably not come out right no matter how I say it, but my knees will never be the same again after having crawled around on that plywood for most of the afternoon.
I hammered all the nails into the floor today. I’ve come to the conclusion that it was my punishment for not having taken any of the other nails out when we removed the particle board.
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