Great kitchen remodel of 2011: Alternative Layout

When the cabinets were removed, I got to thinking there might be a way to keep the nice open feel the kitchen suddenly had. When we went to Home Depot to pick up the floor stripper, I stopped by their kitchen area and talked to a fantastic associate named Ken. He helped me draw up a quick idea of what it would look like to wrap the cabinets instead of the previous layout. Here are the pics that he came up with. We would appreciate the input of family and friends!

Pros: This keeps a much more open floor plan and it actually adds about 22 inches worth of cabinet space! Wahoo!

Cons: You would have to walk around the corner to get to the fridge or anything in the cabinets by the fridge while cooking.

It would also eliminate the dedicated dining room area however we were thinking the table could go in the corner by the windows and have some nice light.

Let us know what you think!

Great kitchen remodel of 2011: Living room/storage room

During this kitchen remodel, the kitchen wares and food had to go somewhere. Well, let me show you where that "somewhere" currently is.

This is before the rearranging. We just stacked stuff at first, hoping there would be enough room.
This is after we had to clean out everything from the kitchen to remove tile.
This is the hallway after I rearranged and did some cleanup.
This is the living room after the rearranging and cleaning up. Yup. That's what the living room will be like for the next few weeks. Good news is there's room to sit on the couch and we can still see the TV. So relaxing after a day of working on the kitchen is now a possibility!

Great kitchen remodel of 2011: Tile Removal

After the cabinets were removed we headed over to Home Depot and rented a floor stripper. There are lots of pictures of this project so I'll explain the process along the way.

This here is Darren using the floor stripper. In the beginning, much progress was made!
The machine has a blade that vibrates and is supposed to get under the tile and thin set and glue and scrape it off the floor. This worked out okay at first.
This is Shae taking off the baseboards so the tile was easier to get to.
This is what the back splash looked like after I took off the tiles. And yes, they did indeed glue the tile directly to the drywall.
This is Loren and Darren working on a particularly stubborn section of tile once the blade was no longer sharp and not doing as good of a job.
At this point, I left to go to Home Depot to get a new blade. They didn't have one.
So Darren started to hammer at the floor while Loren was stripping it to try to finish the job. Not super effective but better than doing it by hand.

I look like I'm working right? I tried to be helpful. I got to work the machine a bit and helped Darren hammer.

This is what Eddie did while we worked in the kitchen. Hid from the scary machine and hammers.
After we moved the dishwasher, there was more evidence of the great mouse war of 2010. Yup my friends, that's all mouse poo.
This is the kitchen after some clean up, taken from the back door.
This is the kitchen after some clean up taken from the front door.
This is the crew relaxing after they stopped for the night.

Next: Living room/storage room.

Great kitchen remodel of 2011: Cabinet removal

Next on the kitchen remodel, the cabinets were removed! Hooray! Darren posted an ad on Craigslist saying they were free if someone wanted to remove them. He received about 10 offers! Apparently free cabinets are all the rage. Saturday morning at about 9:15, two gentlemen showed up to take the cabinets away. Farewell cabinets! Here are some pictures after they are gone.

This is a picture taken from about where the cabinets used to be, looking at the dining room. Not much changed here, but it will!
This is taken from about where the old cabinets by the fridge were.
This is taken from the back door. That's Darren sweeping up the gross that was under the cabinets. He's a good Darren.

This is taken from the front door area. Look how much space that opened up!

Does everyone remember the great mouse battle of 2010? Do you see that hole along the baseboard to the right? That's where the little vermin were getting in!

And just for fun, here's Eddie checking out the new discovered mouse hole. Don't worry though. Even though it looks like he's checking to see if he can attack the mice who may want to invade our home, I assure you the dog is perfectly useless in that respect.

Next: Tile removal!

The Great Kitchen Remodel of 2011

We're doing a kitchen remodel at Darren's house so I decided to dust off the old blog to use as a place to post the progress.

First, back story. Thanksgiving 2009, we decided to put new grout down on the counter top tiles. The prep area went great and the new grout looked fantastic! We started to take out the grout near the sink, and the tiles just popped off. Apparently the water had rotted the grout and the tile glue.

This started a debate as to whether we should just glue the tile back down, or get new counter tops. New counter tops won out. A new debate began. Should we get new cabinets or just put new counter tops on the existing cabinets? New cabinets won. The bottoms of a couple of cabinets were rotting through so this was probably a wise decision. Yet, another debate arose. Should we put down new floor tile during all of this as the current tile is old and chipped and makes the floor appear perpetually dirty? Why yes. Yes we should. Quite a bit of research later and we're moving on with the remodel.

Let's start with some before pictures.

This is the view of the dining room and part of the kitchen from the front door. Note where the fridge is currently as well as the cabinets that extend to part of the dining room.

This picture is taken from the other side of the fridge towards the back door. Not the cleanest the kitchen has ever looked but it gives you the idea of the layout.

This is a view from the back door area looking towards the fridge. You can kind of see the bare wood where the sink is. Also note the cabinets at the back which are currently next to the fridge. We are considering a change to the layout.

That's all for the before section! Next: Progress!