Demo/Delusions of Grandeur

We've been watching a LOT of home improvement shows lately. You name it, we're watching it and getting delusions of grandeur about our abilities to do a good amount of work ourselves.

"10 Grand In Your Hand" is the show that gets me the most riled up to grab the sledgehammer and just start knocking things out! It starts off with the host, a charismatic contractor, saying, "Contractors get paid big bucks doing jobs you can't or don't want to do. Don't write the check! I'll show you how to do work yourself and put 10 grand back in your hand!" From that point on, my pupils dilate as I watch average people like myself rip apart their kitchens, frame their own walls, install their own windows and stain their own floors saving thousands of dollars! It all looks so easy!

Then there's Mike Holmes' "Holmes on Homes".  A beefy Canadian perpetually dressed in sleeveless shirts and overalls, he's the white knight contractor obsessed with attention to detail who comes in to save families who hired bad contractors that did shoddy work.  He points out how to properly insulate a basement, how to drywall, how to install a sink all while I feverishly take notes!

So- how's our own demo going after all that inspiration...slowly.  Here's our list of to-do's:
1. Remove all hardwoods from raised section in kitchen and entryway.
2. Bash out our kitchen (including tile backsplash, cabinets and above-cabinet dead space area).
3. Take both bathrooms down to the studs removing fixtures and tiles.


All the contractors I'm vetting keep telling me I should just let them do it.  They say, "it'll be so much faster, we have our own dumpster, we have all the tools already, we know what we're doing, it's not that expensive"...it feels like I've got Louis Gosset Jr. whispering in my ear that he wants my D.O.R.  It sure sounds tempting but I'm going to try and stick it out for the time being. I may break once we pick a contractor but for right now I'm going to keep making a mess.

Here's a picture of the kitchen before I started anything. We need to have the refrigerator removed and other than that it's all on us to gut it. I always wonder why they left that gross mat in front of the sink. That mat, a ceramic snail on the porch and that grammatically challenged brick on the walkway are the only traces of life. So weird. Like farmhouse Chernobyle.

It's still really cold in the house but nothing warms you up like pulling up floorboards!

Here's what I accomplished yesterday. I only got half the kitchen done but in my defense I wasn't there very long. What you see is about an hour of work.  Getting those boards up is pretty tough. That beat up looking crowbar was shiny yellow and brand new 2 days ago!

You have to hammer the crowbar under the edge of the board and slowly pop it up from the nails along the edges.  Then you have to move down the side of the board and keep popping it up with the crowbar until you can yank it off the floor. It's a shame I can't salvage the wood but being tongue and groove, its all splintering to bits when I pull it up.  I still have no idea what kind of wood it is but it's extremely sturdy and the boards are thick.

I'm pretty sure we had that exact same linoleum pattern in my kitchen when I was little. There's no way to get it off the sub-floor and it doesn't matter since we're taking the sub floors out to make the floors level.

There's a fancier pattern on the entryway by the front door.  It really accomplishes a moroccan vibe don't you think? :/

I bashed a hole in the wasted space area above the cabinets to see what it's made of- drywall is the answer.  Just minty green dead drywalled space. I never want to see that color again once that kitchen is gutted.

The backsplash is tile that was painted over in the same minty green. It couldn't look worse.  I understand that bashing out tile is messy and time consuming but come on!

Furthermore, how lazy and indifferent do you have to be to put rusty outlets UPSIDE DOWN?!

It's bad enough they're not GFI outlets in the kitchen (which means they don't have the safety feature that stops sending electricity if something gets dropped in water) AND they've got too much power running to the kitchen anyway. What I'm saying is that the current kitchen is a death trap.  Maybe the outlets are upside down to make it harder to electrocute yourself. Just a thought.


I'm going back out to do more demo all day on Thursday so hopefully I'll get a lot more done this week!