Category: Kitchen Renovation

We’ve already made progress on our kitchen remodel, like building cabinets and buying sinks, stoves, and flooring.  All of which are easily stored until we’re ready to use.  But, on Sunday, we made some changes, and there’s no turning back.  You remember what our kitchen looked like when we last saw it.

Ben built drawers on Saturday, then climbed in the attic to reinforce the load bearing wall.  I thought we’d prime everything on Sunday.  After breakfast Sunday morning, Ben informed me of his plan.

Ben: “Yeah, I want to take down the cabinets and tear down the soffit.”

Amanda:  “Umm, why right now?  I thought we were going to wait until we had the cabinets ready to install.”

Ben:  “Because I don’t want to work over the new cabinets and damage them.  Do you think you can take everything out so we can get started?”

Amanda:  “O-friggin-kay.  Let’s start moving stuff.”

We moved everything in the upper cabinets either into the guest bedroom closet, the pantry, or elsewhere in the kitchen.  Then Ben the builder and Handy Sammy unscrewed the cabinets, occasionally cursing stripped Phillips head screws.

After unscrewing the cabinets, Ben pulled them all down.

Vincent and Everett loved the cabinets.  I actually looked at the old microwave cabinet and thought it would make a cute play kitchen if painted.

Then, the real demo work started.  Ben happily knocked a hole in the soffit.

Then, he used a utility knife to score the sheet rock.  We want to keep the ceiling as nice as possible to decrease repairs.

Roughly an hour later, the boys had removed the built-to-withstand-an-earthquake soffit above the stove.

Now onto the wall, door frame, and soffit along the dining side.  Again, he scored along the ceiling to pull out the crown molding.

The dining wall had two 2 by 12s as a beam, as well as soffit boxing.  Apparently, that was more difficult to tear down.

Then the soffit above the sink.  Ben cut a few pieces of sheet rock to fill the open areas and called it a day.  But not before we considered tearing out the wall between the kitchen and living room.  Go big or go home, right?  I hoped we could get the majority of the demo done in one day.  But I guess Ben still had some electrical work to do before that wall could go.  Since Sunday afternoon, we’ve been living with a half torn apart kitchen.

Taking the cabinets down made a huge difference, but I think the biggest change was removing the wall along the dining room.

We also have a hole in the floor where the wall used to be.

Hopefully we’ll tear down the rest of the wall soon.  Oh, and Ben picked up our range yesterday afternoon.  It’s still in the box, so we don’t know exactly what it looks like.

They fight to be the center of attention.  After several minutes of witty banter, the vent hood is the victor.  Which means the sink is left to mope in the corner.  If only Johnny came into say, “Nobody puts sink baby in the corner.”

So what does this lame story mean?  First off, our vent hood has arrived and it’s pretty.  Strike that, the under side is pretty.  Secondly, a little info on why our sink will remain off-centered.

Let’s discuss the range hood first.  When we open up the wall between the kitchen and living room, we’ll have roughly a nine foot wide by three-foot tall opening.  To keep the stove side of the kitchen as island-y (no, not tropical pineapple island-y) feeling as possible, we wanted a low profile range hood.  So, we couldn’t go with anything that hung low, like this.

So, Ben scoured the internet for a high CFM range hood insert with integrated lights.  We decided this 40 inch insert was best for us.  The low price was a bonus.  Now, I know $800 doesn’t seem like a low price, but we expected to pay about one dollar per CFM, or 1200 bucks.  Ben called to place the order and the kind gentleman on the other end offered Ben 10% off with free shipping.  Score!  So we saved 80 bucks for a total of $719.95.  About a week later, the FedEx man delivered a giant box.

Of course, Ben unpacked it right away, and plugged it in to make sure it worked.  Man, did it work.  And here it is.

Yeah, we know it’s not pretty, but we’ll build a frame around it and add trim for a more custom, less vent hood look.  Kinda like this one.

So all of that ugliness will be covered.

But from below, you’ll see this.

Not quite because the hood also came with six dishwasher safe baffles, so it will look more like this.

Now we’ve got our own little kitchen supply store in the basement, complete with a few hundred square feet of wood flooring and a vent hood.

All we need is the kitchen sink.  Oh wait, we’ve got that, too!

Now, here’s the low down on the off centered kitchen sink situation.  Currently, our kitchen sink isn’t centered on the window.  To the right of the sink, we have a dishwasher, then our refrigerator.

We plan to move the trash to the left of the sink.

Because we’re turning the drawers on either side of the stove into one large bay of drawers, we can’t keep the trash in it’s current location.  Here’s what it would look like to center the sink on the window.

Better, right?  Let’s get a closer look, though.

No, even closer.

We’d be stuck with a nine-inch cabinet, the same size as our current one, to the left of the sink.  One thing that Ben and I don’t like is that cabinet.  It’s pretty useless.  We only have so many cutting boards and cookie sheets.  What’s worse is the right side of the centered sink.

We’d have a really narrow six-inch cabinet.  If we don’t like the nine-inch, you can bet we’re not going to like the six-inch.  (Avoid the “That’s what she said” joke on that please.)  Because Ben is using 3/4 inch plywood to build the cabinet frames, you’re actually left with an interior of 4.5 inches.  Umm, no thanks.  As much as I’d like to put design over function, I just can’t do it in such a small kitchen.  Especially because we’re removing most of our upper cabinetry.  And because Ben has already built the cabinets.

That’s the dealio.  I guess neither the range hood or sink will be the center of attention in the kitchen.  What will?  You’ll just have to wait to see.

Now I’m wondering what you hate (or hated if you’re replaced it) the most about your kitchen?  Do you prefer for the range hood to take center stage in kitchens?  Perhaps the stove?