Demolition Day

This is what the kitchen looked like Saturday morning, May 28. Andrew had been getting a little restless at different times (usually when I was late getting in from work or covering an event at night) so he had removed some of the wood paneling and dry wall.

   

These are a couple other before pictures that day. Andrew had already removed the cabinets on the living room side, so we just had to take out the other half, plus the one with the exhaust fan. 

We didn't get fully started until about 11 that day. We're living in Amherst right now--our good friends Brett and Jenna knew we would need a house, so they happily decided to donate theirs and move out to Cali for about a month. That's not exactly how it happened, but we were more than happy to take on the task of house sitting so they could take an adventure worry-free and we could have a place to cook meals. Since we pass Atkins on the way to our house from theirs, we stopped in for pastries for breakfast. 

Once at the house, Andrew got started on removing the remaining cabinets while I pulled off paneling and dry wall. I think I can now add "professional yanker" to my resume because yanking and nearly hanging on some of the paneling and the pantry cabinet was what it took to remove them.

I'm sure there was some sort of professional way to remove that delightful yellow countertop, but Andrew wasn't having it. He LOVES to use his saw-zaw anytime he gets the chance, and the counter provided him with yet another opportunity. So did some of the walls. And the floor. 

After several hours, a few trips to the dump in our neighbor's truck and some help from our friend Aaron, this is what our kitchen looked like. The black on the floor is the padding under the second layer of carpet. We spent a few days after this scrapping it to get down to the sticky tile before deciding to just cut out the top layer of subflooring. We finished at about 6:30 that night. I'll leave you with a couple more after pictures. We're going to try our best to leave the drywall intact on the mural wall and cover it with paint. Most of it will be covered by our refrigerator and new pantry cabinets anyway.