Kitchen Remodel: Part 1 Demo

When we bought our home in late 2015 it came with a sunny yet outdated kitchen. We aren't sure if the cabinets were original to the house, but they were certainly decades old. We decided to renovate the kitchen in early 2016 and our hope was to complete as much as we could ourselves.

We started with a simple faucet replacement. Knowing we would later replace the sink, we purchased a faucet that we knew we'd keep after the full renovation. It was the simplest part of this project, except that Jon struggled to fit into the small cabinet to reach the back of the sink.

New faucet when we first moved in. 

The demo stage of projects is my favorite. There is so much observable progress! We did our best to find screws and nails while removing the cabinets but we mostly had to muscle through it!

Knowing that the kitchen (and its storage) would be non-existent during the renovation, we decided to remove the upper cabinet first and actually install the new upper cabinets before the main demolition. With storage space at a premium in our small home, we wanted to use the new upper cabinets to store as much as we could during this time.

Move out day

Upper Cabinet demo

The upper cabinet was very well attached to the wall (with nails!), but we were able to pry it off.

After we removed the upper cabinet, we posted it on Craigslist for free and it was picked up in a matter of hours. Hooray for re-using!

And then the big demo day came on March 26th, the day before Easter this year. This demo day was a point-of-no-return for us, because we planned to remove all of the cabinets, the sink, and shut off water in the kitchen. The oven and refrigerator would stay operational, but everything else would go.


Demo day Easter March 26th 2016. The calm before the storm.





The Lower Cabinet Demo took some serious muscle. We even pulled out the circular saw at one point.

These handsome hunks powered through the Demo like hulks! You guys Rock!!!

Abracadabra! The cabinets are there, and suddenly they're not! Also, you can see the new upper cabinets installed in the photo below. 

At this point, the renovation just got REAL. Our next post will talk about the vision and installation we had for this space. By the way - washing the dishes in the bathroom is not super fun.

See part 2 of the kitchen series here: Part 2 - Vision & Installation