The Kitchen Project. Part One.

The kitchen. Oh, the bloody kitchen.

The original layout of the kitchen was, lets say, less than convenient. Everything was crammed in there and didn’t leave much work space for cooking. The stove, fridge, and washing machine were all packed in to less than 100 sq ft.

Bedroom 3 on the listing isn’t really a bedroom in my eyes. The backdoor is in that room, and it’s directly off the kitchen, so when I bought the house I already knew that I was going to turn that into a “mudroom/laundry/utility room”. Since I was already having the plumbing done I went ahead and had them move the washer hook up and the new water heater into the room. The original water heater was in one of the only two closets in the whole house. And it was leaking.

 

Fast forward a bit, and my friend, Josh, was in between jobs, and offered to help out with some of the work. We did some math and realized that we could replace the whole kitchen for a fairly reasonable price with stock cabinets and counters from one of the major retailers. The kitchen is really small so replacing everything wasn’t going to set me back terribly and I would have a brand new decent kitchen to actually feel comfortable cooking in!

Step one was taking everything out. Cabinets, counters, floors, all of it, OUT!  That was the beginning of the “surprises”.

We started with the cabinets and counters, after moving all of the appliances out of the way, and quickly realized we were opening the “can of worms”.

 

What you see here is the product of a rodent infestation at some point in the homes life. Luckily there was no evidence of active rodents. Just shredded plastic bags, heaps of insulation pulled down for warm bedding, and NUTS, so many NUTS. Needless to say after finding this we knew we were essentially going to strip the whole kitchen down to bare bones (minus the walls, they are plaster).

To be continued…