Home Renovation Update #13 – Kitchen Renovation Part 1

Come along with us as we renovate our 75-year-old home! This home renovation update is part 1 of the kitchen renovation.

Before I begin part one of this kitchen renovation, I want to share some exciting news with you.

We looked at a house last week and we all fell in love with it. After a few days of talking about it, we decided to put in an offer. The seller counteroffered, so we countered right back.

And they accepted!!

Now we just have to wait to make sure the loan goes through and everything else works out. I’m so excited and so nervous all at the same time!

Prayers and good vibes are very much appreciated!

And after that little piece of excitement, I’ll move on to the kitchen renovation.

Kitchen Renovation Part 1

If you’ve missed any of our home renovation updates and would like to catch up, click here.

Last week I shared our latest bathroom update and today I’m going to share the kitchen renovation. I’m only going to share the before pictures and the kitchen renovation process this week so I don’t overwhelm you with photos. Next week I’ll share the after photos.

Our kitchen is not 100% complete yet, but there are only a few more things left to do. One of those is new flooring, and that’s pretty expensive right now.

So we’re holding off on that and just working on other things around the house that we can do without spending a lot of extra money.

I have to admit – the before pictures of my kitchen are embarrassing. I’m pretty sure the cabinets were the original cabinets that were built with the house. They were so outdated and quite a few layers of paint on them.

Brace yourself – these are pretty bad. And my kitchen is super super tiny!

I had no doors under the sink, but I had made a little curtain to go across to hide the mess. The bottom of the cabinet had actually sunk on the right side, making it very difficult to keep anything under there without it falling over.

The fridge kind of stuck out like a sore thumb along the wall with no cabinets.

Since I had no counter space what-so-ever, my poor microwave was stored in the small dining area. And you could see it from the couch in the living room. Ugh!

Finally, there’s the back door. Honestly, it was my favorite thing about the kitchen. I love the design!

I’m sure after that hot mess you’re ready to see it being torn apart. I know I was!

We started the kitchen renovation by tearing out all of the cabinets above the sink as well as the sink. The floor underneath was pretty disgusting. And so was the wall!

Next, we removed the cabinets from the stove side and scooted the stove over to the door. We left one cabinet floating around so we’d have something to put all our tools on.

Then we started tearing down the walls.

After the walls were removed on that side, we scooted the fridge over and moved the stove back so we could start tearing down the walls on the other side.

Once all the walls were removed we started tearing up the floor.

The floor underneath was a vinyl rug and I have to admit that I actually kind of liked it!

Just look at that pattern and those colors!

Unfortunately, it doesn’t exactly match the theme we were going with, so it had to come up.

I’m kicking myself for not saving some of it to make something with. Maybe cutting out the squares and cleaning them up to put in a frame or something?

The best ideas come to me after the pieces are sent to the dumpster, of course.

There was tile under the vinyl rug and since it was a 12’x12′ size tile that was more than likely made in the ’40s, we were concerned it might be asbestos. We put up plastic to block off the kitchen from the rest of the house, ventilated the area, and suited up.

The tile was removed and then we realized we were also going to have to replace the subfloor, too. So we had to tear up the entire floor.

I didn’t take a picture of that part for some reason. I guess I was over the kitchen renovation by that point. Taking up that floor was a lot of hard work! Mostly because I was just so nervous about the possible asbestos tiles.

That’s all for this week! I’ll see you next week for part 2 of our kitchen renovation!