Removing and painting

So we decided to widen that kitchen doorway. It's probably better to do it now than regret it later. Like many before us , we had to figure out how to cut through plaster and lath without accidentally ruining our whole house. If you have an old home, you know what it's like to pound a nail in the wall and have a 1x1 foot chunk of plaster fall to your feet. Here's how we did it:


Well I, thank you, had the brilliant idea that we should score the paint, layers of wall paper, and who knows what else. We drew a few marks and then held up a big ole level (straight edge) and scored along it with a box knife. It was working pretty well and then I noticed I was hitting lath. So I decided I could go all the way through. With a little bending and prying, we got all the plaster off. The only thing left was lath. The reciprocating saw did the job. A little plaster fell off, but the new molding should hide it. The only thing left is the heater. We'll re-route it under the cabinets in the form of a toe kick. You say "what about the floor?" I know. I called back the hardwood guy and he said it would be about another $100 to put in some new Fir and Oak pieces. Done!

Here's Buddy helping. He enjoyed the demo. He sat under the plaster and saw the whole time. This is after we cleaned him up a little.

Oh and we picked a paint color. I'm not sure about it. It's pretty blue. I was trying to match it to the backsplash a little. We'll see if it works. If not, it's only paint.

Keg cups! Love them for painting. Hate them for drinking.
We're not wasting any time or paint. This is where the stove will go...surrounded by cabinets. Why paint what will be covered?

Did I mention we're taking care of the neighbor's dog for TWO WEEKS?! Nightmare. Luckily it's almost over. First day was first day of demo. Could the timing get any worse? I just broke out the blow horn. It stops them both in their tracks, so it's worth the ear ache.

Kitchen Weekend Number Two, demo + repair

The cabinet guys (Spencer Cabinets in Monroe, WA) showed up early Friday morning to a kitchen that wasn't even completely demolished, but they were done, so whatever. We stacked them in the spare room and dining room. I knew we'd eventually cram them all into that spare room, but the cabinet guys don't want to risk dinging them. That's for us to do.

They look good. Solid wood, shaker, white, etc. They did screw up one thing, but I really don't want to mess with it. The back on one of the "bookshelf style" cabinets was supposed to be cut out so that we can expose our fuse box. Yes, it's located in the kitchen. Well the back is in tack, but we will cut out a hole and paint the fuse box white to match. Then we'll install adjustable shelves. This way if we ever blow a fuse, we can remove 2 shelves and fix the issue.



While the guys were loading in, I was busy with a Wonder Bar (get one of these) ripping up 3 layers of linoleum. Low and behold, Fir floors! Who in their right mind would slap on a thick layer of glue and then linoleum? Seriously, what were they smoking in the '60s? And they say meth will kill you....what about linoleum?

So after a few calls I can return my tiles with a re-stocking fee (of course) of 25%. It's going to cost me $150 to return my new floor and another $880 to get these re-finished. He'll patch where we're widening our door. The floor meets up with the oak in the dining room, so this will be tricky. Then, over the course of 3 days, he'll apply 3 coats of Swedish treatment...whatever that is. Hopefully it works out because we're going with natural stain. So all in all, the floor is going to cost about $1000.00. That's about $400 over budget. Really, we're only going over budget by about $500. I think that's probably pretty good. $10,500 for a new kitchen~


I'm hoping the Fir turns out well. I hear maintenance is a real issue, but how can you turn your back on that? I feel like the house is breathing a sigh of release . It's thinking, "Finally, someone who understands me." I wonder what four-letter word it'll bust out when Buddy slides across the floor and digs in with 16 toenails made of steal?


Here's Buddy helping with the plumbing. Notice the rubber band holding close the cabinet doors? Hopefully we'll never have to use that again.

Here's the truck all packed up with the old kitchen. $41 for that dump run, but it felt good throwing it over the wall. I thought about Craigslist, but the cabinets are sooo crappy.


While we were at the dump, the electricians were hard at work ripping out a strip of sheetrock to run new cables to the fuse box. It's insane how destructive they are. Seriously, I don't think they realize we'll have to do all the repair ourselves to stay in budget.


$1000 and 6 hours later, we have 5 beautiful new cans, several new switches and plug-ins, updated stove plug (220), 2 pendants above the sink, and a re-worked fuse box. And a LOT, a LOT of repair work. Here we are hard at work installing the first piece. First it required a run to Dunn Lumber for a new sheet of rock and a few bats of R-11 insulation. For the first time the fellas there commented about seeing us there before . They were interested in what we were up to. We have a Dunn family! Pretty excited about that!


See the wall to the right of Buddy? With the heat register? Well we've decided we're ripping that out. Seems like it's going to be another week of work, but it's probably better that we're figuring that out now than in June after everything is done.

Oh, we picked out the sink and faucet too. Be prepared for a few nights of that mess. Which type: stainless or white? Then you have to match a faucet: color, correct amount of holes, etc. We ended up with a stainless, double sink (8 inches deep, 18 gauge) and a stainless faucet (pretty standard, nothing fancy.) If you know why they make a yellow-er nickel faucet, please let us know. I feel like they don't match anything. We should have just kept the old one, but the man insists it's worth the $117.

Also, the appliances showed up. In our living room we have a new Whirpool dishwasher and microwave.

Note: Living without a kitchen is not fun. I thought it would be like camping, and it is, except that there's no beauty or fun involved. Imagine camping, but having to go to work, being dirty, taking care of two dogs!, and not having campfires or hikes or swimming. Crappy.

First weekend for demo

The first weekend of the kitchen is now just behind us. We started ripping out the uppers Saturday and then did some other odds and ends Sunday. Obviously, it's easiest to rip out the doors and small pieces. Loosen the nails and rip away.


This is our exhaust fan above the sink. I think it's from the original kitchen when the stove was hooked to our old chimney. It was a little too powerful, but did a great job. We only used it a few times.

I think the most annoying and important part of remodeling a kitchen is setting up a makeshift one somewhere else. In our case, the best idea was the dining room. Microwave, toaster, toaster oven, and everything else in the cupboards.

The hardest part about a dining room kitchen is keeping the dogs out. Of course, this happens to be when the neighbor lady needs to leave for 2 weeks and leave her dog with us. Crap.

We're working on more demo over the week. The floor is what I'm most worried about. This Saturday the electrician is coming out to move some outlets, install 6 canned lights, one pendent, and add a couple of new breakers. And Sunday dad is coming over to help us with the plumbing for the refrigerator water and the faucet.

New kitchen windows

Our new kitchen windows finally arrived Wednesday from Cascade Lumber on Camano Island. Oddly enough the brand name is also Cascade.

After a run to stupid Home Depot (I hate that place), we started demo, the best part.


The hard part is ripping out all the little wood trim pieces, but with a chisel, Wonder Bar, and hammer, it goes pretty quickly. It helps to first score the cracks with a box knife so that none of your paint rips off the spots you want to save.



Since it's January, I recommend taping up some plastic while you're cleaning, drilling, fitting etc. to keep the house from chilling. Either that or turn off the heat.


After you pull out everything, you get to cut the pulley ropes and let the weights drop back behind the wall. It's so fun!


Those weights obviously need a hallow passage to move up and down in, so if you're not going to use them, it's a good idea to drill holes and fill the area with insulation. We bought cheap expandable spray insulation. The stuff is nasty and sticky, so be careful and wipe up immediately.

The next step is to tear off the vinyl tabs most new windows come with. Some contractors may refer to these as "window nailers." They come with holes so that you can nail the window right up to the 2x4 frame, but we obviously don't have those exposed. You can sit and try to bend, pry, and cut them off with a box knife, but the easiest (and fastest) way to get them off is to use a reciprocating saw. Have one person hold and the other cut right up against the window. Obviously you will never see this part of the frame, so don't worry about smudges, little cuts, etc.

After some swearing and leveling, shim the windows up against the interior piece of trim. Now the question is "Do you level the window to a true level or do you eyeball it so that it looks good up against the sill?" We did these windows by eyeballing it. The first (north window) was fitted with the level.....and it now looks a little crooked. So it just depends on what you think is right.

Here are the new windows! They still need to be cleaned, but I'm waiting for the caulk around the sill and trim to dry.


The outside looks nothing like the beautiful inside. The outside is ripped up and there's a huge gap under the bottom because the sill is angled down. We will have to borrow a table saw to rip a nice, angled piece to fit under the bottom. Caulk that up and then fit some decorative trim around the whole thing to make it air tight (and hide the old wood).

Replacing interior doors

I'm thinking about replacing some of the interior doors. Ours are so crappy. They're basically hollow shells thrown up on a hole in the wall. Even the hinges and knobs look like something out of a horror movie. My favorite is slamming the door TWICE every morning because it won't latch the first time. That's after it swings close like a squeaky gate. Frank Door and Lumber in Shoreline is an excellent door company, but kind of expensive. So I browsed their scrap doors. Found a good one, but not really the look I was thinking.
I went to a salvage store in Ballard today and found they organize their doors by number of panels (one panel-BINGO, on up to six!). They also have the measurements written on the side. I figure it'll be a slow project....maybe a door per month until all seven are replaced. It's some minor sanding, planing, and painting. Knobs are another story.

Side project:: Scraping popcorn ceiling

Today I scraped a ceiling in our hallway. I sealed 'er up pretty well with plastic and tape. Bought a garden sprayer to soak the popcorn. A 3 inch scraper took the crap off very quickly. I was only exposed to possible harmful chemicals for about 45 minutes. As you can see, I did take some precautions. I even taped up my latex gloves so nothing could touch me. The picture doesn't show it, but I did wear goggles.
Here's the mess left behind. I sprayed it all again with water before rolling it up and properly disposing it at the King County Waste site. Wrap it up in A LOT of plastic. The dump sites require 6mm, but you can see that I have a TON on the walls.
Here's the hubby adding some mud to our millions of cracks and the holes I gouged in the ceiling. They'll probably need another coat and they still won't look like a brand new wall, but anything is better than popcorn.

Note: you should always send in your popcorn to have the local authorities test it for asbestos. Airborne asbestos can cause Mesothelioma, a type of lung cancer. I think the jury is still out to whether a slight exposure causes the cancer. I'm betting scraping one house worth of ceilings won't do too much damage, especially when compared to second hand smoke. There are services out there that will seal off your home and scrape your ceilings. They are VERY EXPENSIVE.

Shopping for appliances

So we just got back from shopping for kitchen appliances (dishwasher, microwave, refer). We bought a new Kenmore (white) stove/oven the day after we moved in because the old green one that came with the house wasn't even worth opening.
We have decided that since the stove is white, we will buy all white appliances. Yes, it's not the trendy stainless steel, but this house will always be a "first time homebuyer" home, so why waste the money?
Anyway, it's crazy how much a dishwasher and over the range microwaves cost. Here's a breakdown.

Albert Lee
Whirlpool microwave: $329
GE microwave: $359
Whirlpool dishwasher: $509
GE dishwasher: $559

Sears:
GE microwave: $218! but smaller (1.5 cubic)
Whirlpool dishwasher: $509
Kenmore dishwasher: $399! yeah

So at Albert Lee, we'll get about $50 off each appliance because we still have a contractor's discount (even the business no longer exists....shh). Just a thought: Would it be worth it to get a business license for $15 with the state and open an account at these places? You'd save money at the paint store, Home Depot, etc. Seems like a good deal.

Now the Fridge:
Side by side freezer/fridge? or drawer in the bottom? Is a door in the bottom better? It seems like room on the inside is diminishing compared to the 1980s versions. I'm almost tempted to buy the old school freezer on top version. And how important is water? It seems most come with an ice maker or the option to install the kit, but water is a whole new ballgame. Seriously, what's wrong with tap water? or the Brita? Here in the G. NW we have some of the best tap water in the world. Plus, it's fluoride injected. Of course, the significant other wants all the bells and whistles. He insists we'll be taking the fridge with us if we move, so it's an investment. We'll see what "the new buyers" ask for in the purchase. Ugh, thank god we don't remodel kitchens for a living.