Out with the old.....

Our kitchen renovation is finally underway. We got the kitchen emptied out completely on Sunday night and the contractors came in yesterday morning to start tearing out the cabinets and floors. All the appliances were removed too.

So why did we jump into this venture? I'll tell you why...our dishwasher betrayed us. For months, it had been stealthily leaking into our subflooring which didn't extend under the dishwasher. So rather than having the water leak out onto the floor where we could see it, all of the water stayed below floor level, seeping further and further into the subfloor until we began to notice soft spots here and there. A quick check under the running dishwasher revealed what we didn't want to see. Water flowing out during the rinse cycle.

After much discussion, we decided that a full renovation was what we would do. We'd been contemplating it anyway but didn't feel the need to jump in right now to do it. But that all changed.

And after nearly three months of shopping, comparing products, picking a contractor and signing on the dotted line, the kitchen begins it's transformation.

This is the old kitchen. The patch of red, ironically called Library Red, is a test patch we did for the back splash. The rest if the kitchen will be painted a very faint peach which you can see a patch of in this picture.
And much to our surprise, the cabinets came out relatively easily. All but two bottom cabinets were donated to Habitat For Humanity. The two bottom cabinets bore the brunt of the water damage and weren't able to be salvaged. The fridge and stove were donated to another charity and the dishwasher and microwave went to appliance heaven.

When everything was removed, the room looks quite big and your voice echos.

Today, the floor was torn out. It was like opening a time capsule. First the old linoleum floor came up to reveal the heavily water damaged subfloor. But wait! What is this? Why it's another linoleum floor. A lovely 1970's vintage brick pattern. This was peeled away to reveal yet another floor which looked like it could have been the original tile. And finally one last plywood subfloor which was mostly in good shape despite it's years. Once the old tile was scraped up and removed the contractor was able to then lay down new plywood and begin putting in the new floor.Tomorrow the cabinets start to get installed. We can't wait.