Sawing Away.

Its not going well. The first floor layer came up great.  However, the 2nd layer has a million and 1 staples that look like they were put down with staple machine gun.  You can't saw over them and you can't rip our the floor because they are just too many.  So we are removing them by hand.  And they are so much harder to get out than the carpet staples.  Why don't they show this on HGTV?????????

Plus even though we plasticed off the doorways, our house smells like sawdust and its all over the kitchen now.  No more cooking in there for a while.  Crockpot here I come. 

Some pics:

 Someone is done having their picture taken.

 My artistic picture through the plastic sheet.

How the 2nd layer has to come up.  I'm investigating renting a floor scraper from Home Depot but I'm not sure they work well over a wood subfloor and all those staples.

My Wishlist

For this new kitchen, we are in desperate need of a new garbage disposal, dishwasher, and fridge.  Our oven and over the range microwave are in good shape but since we are upgrading everything else, the idea is to sell them and upgrade them too if we have the extra money.  If we upgrade the oven, we are going with gas. We'll have to have a plumber run the gas line up to the kitchen but I've been told its not that $$ since we already have gas lines in the unfinished basement for our heat and water heater.

Any appliance we buy from Ikea helps us reach our $2500 to get the deal on the countertops (40% off the entire countertop purchase making nice Corian the same price as the cheap laminate we were gonna do) and they also come with a 5 year warranty.  The appliances are all made by Whirlpool and are actually highly rated by Consumer Reports.  Any appliance we buy from Sears, Home Depot etc. only come with a 1 year warranty so I feel like its worth it to go the Ikea route for our fridge and our dishwasher.  They don't carry gas ranges like what I want since they focus more on wall ovens and cooktops but our kitchen isn't designed for those.  Here is what I'm thinking.

The Nutid French Door Bottom Freezer Fridge for $1499:

Key features:


Fully extending freezer drawer at a user-friendly height for easy overview and access to the contents.

4 adjustable tempered glass shelves with spill guard included. Easliy adjusts to suit your storage needs.

VINNA handles match the handles on the refrigerator. Use them on your kitchen cabinet fronts and create a uniform expression.

Factory-installed automatic ice maker with ice bin.

Energy Star® Qualified.


Refrigerator capacity: 17.3 cu.ft.

Capacity freezer: 7.5 cu.ft.

2 transparent crispers are included as well as a meat and cheese drawer.

We hardly use our freezer now and I'm always bending over for stuff in the fruit/veggie crispers since I pretty much cook fresh stuff and not frozen so I think this is a good option.

I can't decide on a dishwasher.  I have 2 options I'm considering.  What do you think?

The Nutid Dishwasher for $649:

Key Features:
Capacity: 14 place settings.


4 cycles; normal wash, light wash, heavy wash and rinse only.

Energy Star® Qualified.

Stainless steel cavity.

Extra option of drying dishes without heat available. Saves energy and is practical when drying plates and mugs in heat-sensitive materials.


Dishwasher with timer; can be preset to start max. 4 hours later.

Option of quick heating to extra high temperature (60°C or 140°F) available

The Renlig Dishwasher with Integrated Design:

Same capacity and cycle options as above but this one will match our cabinets(not the same shown in the picture) for a seamless integrated design.  You seriously can't tell its a dishwasher. It looks like an extra cabinet. Doesn't have the same quick drying option. 
*Both dishwashers are shown with a butcher block countertop on top. Not part of the actual dishwasher.


I haven't picked out a gas range yet.  I know I want Stainless Steel color with continuous cast iron grates.  I would love convection in the oven.  I've seen several options that meet this criteria for well under $1k.

Appliances are expensive!

More of the same but with Power Tools.

More demo tonight after dinner.  Tonight consisted of ripping out the carpet, padding, and tack strips and all the associated staples from the subfloor in the family room.  First, we had to take out the sectional and rug and coffee table.  The sectional was a b!tch to remove.  It is too wide to fit down the basement stairs or the upstairs so its now sitting in our dining room/living room.

The Cat is starting to freak out.  He's holding down his favorite couch.

 The best tool invented..the butter knife in action.

 A horrible picture of me but one of a few that actually proves I work too.  The husband isn't the photog in the family.

 Somebody was done having his picture taken and dared me to actually put this one on the blog :) 

Staples covered in rug pad that had to be yanked out with pliers.  There must a been a million staples. 

Once the family room was done we realized our floors aren't constructed that well and there are places where they aren't perfectly flat which is important for wood so we are looking into this issue. I'll keep you posted.

We decided to keep going and tackle some more of the cabinets.  The 3 wall cabinets we had left were screwed to the wall and also to each other and those screws weren't not coming out.  The builder had pretty much stripped them putting them in so we thought and pondered and decided to use my reciprocating saw to cut them apart with the "metal use" blade.

 But to cut through the wood parts, we had to switch the blade back to wood so we were switching blades a lot.  I really wanted to use the saw but the Husband wouldn't let me.  Next time that saw is mine. 

How the night ended.  Pictures tell the story.

Demo Day 2.

In the midst of watching the Ravens game, we tackled demo day 2.  The morning started with a quick trip to Home Depot to talk to the plumbing man about taking out the sink and to pick up some plastic drop clothes. 

We emptied all our cabinets onto plastic sheeting on the dining room floor in prep for demo and discovered that most things I have, I use but we do have like 100 cups, mugs, and glasses for 2 people...um can we say Goodwill?  I'm making a trip this week.  We took all the chairs from the dining room up to the extra bedroom upstairs for storage.  The husband says our dining room now looks like an estate sale that I'm so fond of.  Hey, at least this way, we can still access our cooking stuff.  I organized so that the things I think I will still use like the crockpot and grilling supplies are easily reached while the baking supplies are way in the back.

We then tackled more of the cabinets and took out the over the range microwave.

 We also set up our coffee and tea station in the living room so we can still have our drinks.  The little Ikea table is really perfect for this.

This is what the construction zone aka kitchen  looks like now.  We got down a few more cabinets and removed the first layer of vinyl off the floor in prep for sawing the underlayment and the second layer of vinyl floor and underlayment up.  The books suggested removing the top layer of vinyl before sawing so it wouldn't gum up the saw blade.  We would have gotten more done but Sunday is usually a lazy day.

 I'll leave you with the fun shots of the day.  Me doing the what we thought were the last dishes in our old sink but we didn't get it taken out like we planned so lucky me, I get to do more dishes.  And a snap of the Cat lounging while we tore apart his house and used his kitty condo as extra storage.

Demo Day One.

Its finally started after over 3 years of waiting!  The kitchen is now pretty much ripped apart.  Today we ripped out the top layer of flooring (snap together laminate) and taken out all the shoe molding.  We made a trip to the Depot to get a couple of chisels and crow bars and a level.  Too bad I didn't find any of these at the estate sales but I did use my $2 jig saw today.

Shoe molding nailed into the metal slider door.  Stupid previous owners. 

Revealing the 2 levels of vinyl and wood underlayment under the laminate.  I actually liked the vinyl better.

Piles of the laminate awaiting the dump.

After all this we also moved out the fridge and stove and got all the flooring (and cobwebs and random pieces of cat food).  After a couple of breaks, we decided to tackle the first cabinet to investigate how hard it was to remove those.  Not hard at all.  They literally fell off the wall even though I warned the husband that it would happen.  Missed my head by about a second.  

So we decided to live dangerously and see if we really needed the soffits above the cabinets (for things like air ducts) or if they were empty which is standard for builder grade houses to just fill up the space above the cabinets.  So I plugged in the $2 estate sale jigsaw and cut a small hole and looked in.

By the first look, they are empy!  Except for a wire running down for the electrical outlet that we can tuck behind new drywall since it doesn't run in the soffit at all.  So cross your fingers, but it looks like we are getting the fancy 39" cabinets and it will totally open up the space.  We'll check the other soffitt tomorrow when the rest of cabinets come down.
Next up, taking out the 2 layers of vinyl and underlayment and some more cabinets. 

Floored.

While the husband's away, the wife will play...or at least start digging up the old floor.  Our plan with the kitchen/family room reno is new wood floors.  Right now we have a mix of carpet and laminate over vinyl.  I finally got the guts to investigate how the floors are under the current craptastic stuff.  So I got out my handy butter knife (note to self-keep an eye out for a chisel at the next estate sale) and the hammer and pulled up the threshold piece, took off the shoe molding and peeled the carpet back from the tack strips and snapped out 2 pieces of the laminate. It was actually pretty easy.

What I discovered underneath is that there are several layers under the kitchen floor on top of the subfloor.  However there isn't any under the carpeted area so it looks like we are either taking out the multiple kitchen layers or to add another subfloor layer in the carpet area to level everything out.   I'm not sure why there are multiple layers under the kitchen.  The vinyl is the original builder vinyl since it matches the other vinyl in the house.  Any ideas why there seems to be an extra layer with some plastic stuff (looks like vinyl) in between?

Let's count the layers: 1. White/gray stripped vinyl. 2. Wooden subfloor. 3. White plastic stuff (vinyl?). 4. More thicker wooden subfloor. 5. Looks to be the actual base floor that sits on the studs.

Layer 5 seems to be the only layer the carpet area has (plus the tack strips but those are easily removed).

I think this flooring upgrade just got more complicated:(

Living room transformation aka sofa switcheroo

I finally got rid of my husband's sofa from his bachelor days that has traveled with us though this past 3.5 years of marriage.  It had finally gotten so uncomfortable that Keith was ok with looking for something new.  But I knew we couldn't afford to spend alot since we have a kitchen reno coming up. I thought about the Ikea Ektorp but decided I wanted something more substantial but I was in love with the white color and easy clean slipcovers for spills from future kiddos. 

Enter Craigslist and estate sale shopping. I lost the chance at a Pottery Barn classic sofa by being too slow on Craigslist but  I really lucked out this weekend.  An estate sale showed this lovely piece on their blog..I know it didn't look like much but I saw promise.

After some early morning investigating on Saturday, I discovered it was a Drexel Heritage sofa made in the USA and in impeccable condition.  I imagine it sat covered in vinyl for years.  But the $350 price tag was still too high for me especially since I figured I would have to have it recovered since the fabric was a smidge "old lady" for me plus Keith wasn't impressed by the picture since he didn't go to the sale. 

But lucky for me, Sunday is 1/2 price bargain day and it was still leftover.  With some neogotiating and Keith being hesitant over the phone, the sale knocked the price to $100.  I and the sofa was sold!  So Keith and strapped down the 85" sofa into the back of my Buick Rendezvous small SUV and drove over an hour back home on Interstate 95 at over 70mph praying that it wouldn't fly out.  We made it home safely.

And the best news is that I discovered that the Ikea Ektorp sofa slipcover fits this sofa exactly.  It was made for it!  So a $50 solution to update this great sofa.  You can see the progress and the difference it makes.

I know it needs ironing and a little steaming but you can see the before and after pics what a huge difference it makes in the room.  We updated the coffee and end tables and the decor awhile ago but it was still so dark feeling and now it feels like a huge weight has been lifted off the room.  I'm still looking for a loveseat to update but for now I'm keeping it until I can find something new.

Before circa 2007:

After circa October 2010:

I'm looking for cute throw pillows or cute fabric to cover the old pillows that came in the original fabric.  Keith thinks that our table set is too large now but we are holding off replacing these since they are in great shape and have lots of storage.