Kitchen Remodel...a progress report

Dear friends,

I've been putting this off, because I literally have thousands of photos to sort through, process, put in order, resize, clean-up, etc. That takes an incredible amount of time, although it's fun for me to go back just three months to see what progress we've made. Today I'll share some kitchen photos. There are more, and I'll add those later.

Now that I have wireless internet here, maybe I can keep up with the photos. We shall see!

To start, here are a few photos of the KITCHEN BEFORE:

On first glance, it's not in bad shape. The Shaker style cabinets are sturdy, handmade, and really only need a lot of scrubbing, priming and painting. The old Formica countertop (in a pattern that I recognize from my childhood) is good, although will have to be removed for new plumbing.

This photo shows the rest of the kitchen, looking in from the back door and dining area. On the left is an old frig. On the opposite wall is an old gas range. On top of that is the largest vent I've ever seen, and a built-in cabinet around it. The wall is covered with some faux Masonite-type product stamped with a ceramic tile design.

On the same wall as the frig, beyond it on the left, is a small pantry door. To the left of the stove is the tiny door leading into the original dining room.

The upper cabinets go all the way up to the 9' 6" ceiling. Yes, that's a strange height! My plan is to leave all the upper cabinets in place, remove the upper doors and use the space for storage of my antique bowls and such. Hopefully, that's a place that the cats can't reach.

This shows the door leading from the former dining room into the kitchen at the left. The other door leads out into a hallway. The dining room was enormous, and has the original longleaf pine floors that are in great shape. So we've decided to turn it into our living room, which will be off the kitchen. An opening will be made in the wall behind where the stove sits.

To the left of the frig is a small broom closet which we'll be extending to make a very large walk-in pantry. This will also add some wall space to the left of the frig for a piece of free-standing furniture, or perhaps more built-in storage.

This is the door to the original pantry, to the right of the frig. It wasn't very large, so we decided to open it up to the hallway on the other side, turn it into the AC closet, then close up the opening on the kitchen side. After that's done, we'll add another section of cabinets there, and move the stove and vent to that wall.

Once the stove was removed (hauled away by a young woman who sold the metal for scrap), I was able to start peeling off the old fake tile. This was not an easy task, since it had been glued down back in 1960 with some nasty mastic. I made sure to wear gloves (that stuff is SHARP!) and a HEPA air filter mask since the mastic flaked off into the air. Luckily, the tile board wasn't a problem, and broke into nice pieces without any dust.

Here, you can see that now the pantry is open to the hallway on the other side.

I went to work removing the trim from around the windows. We weren't sure if there was water damage around the window sill or not. Turns out, there wasn't. I got another nice suprise...the original planks were behind there. I plan on painting them, adding some small trim, making the sill larger instead of encasing it like the original.

As you can see, the window trim is HUGE. It wasn't easy removing the nails that have been there for over 80 years.

Here's a photo AFTER removing the trim, showing the amazing pine boards underneath.

Here's a photo of Rudy, standing, staring and pondering. We both did that a LOT. We're designing as we go, NOT gutting the place, trying to keep as much of the original charm as possible.

We removed the vent cabinets, vent and huge iron pipe in the attic. The cabinets will be reconstructed and used elsewhere--perhaps in the greenhouse.

Atter that was done, we were able to open up the wall between the kitchen and the new living room (former dining room).

You can see it is a mess of wires dangling down from the attic and open walls.

The pantry door was removed, and filled in with planks that were removed from the opening to the new bedroom closet. Since the doors were the same width, it was fairly easy with just a bit of trimming to use the wood in this way.

We still have quite a bit of work to do in the kitchen, but I'll share more photos later!

bobbi c.