Kitchen Remodel -- The Whole Shebang!

Before:

Notice how the left side of the countertop is completely taken up by my microwave and dish drainer. You can see my "pantry" shelf on the right, which sits next to my fridge. The stove is on the other side of the wall, and there is nothing anchoring it at all (which also is used as a dish drainer, since there is no dishwasher in the house. Also, notice the extremely useless cabinets, since I am short.

First step, remove tile: is it bad when that makes it look considerably better?!?

Then, I took the drawers out and the doors off, while I boxed up everything from the kitchen.. and Ethan had his own little playground for a little bit...

(Day One -- Thursday) Then came demolition. First, we disconnected the garbage disposal, then removed the sink and faucet. We removed the cabinets and the wall behind them, as there was no getting the cabinets off without ripping holes into the drywall.

***Disgusting alert*** Apparently, the people that installed these cabinets just built them into the house. As you can see, there are no backs to the cabinets. It is just a brace attached to my wall, hence the need to replace the drywall. Well, they built risers, but didn't block any of the holes that the water pipes ran through, so when we removed the cabinets, we found a monster-sized mouse nest!!! DISGUSTING!!!

Notice how there was no insulation in that wall at all. No wonder our pipes keep freezing during the winter months! We did insulate it, so hopefully that will make it better.

We got our big helper in there as well!

(Day Two -- Friday) Prep Work

We had to insulate the wall, and put up new drywall. We also had to re-do some electrical work, such as switching a two prong outlet to a three prong, which we ended up hard wiring for the dishwasher. I was hoping to get some installation done, but that was not possible.

(Day Three -- Saturday) On Saturday we started installing the cabinets. There were some major minor setbacks. First of all, we had planned on doing 30" tall cabinets, so that we could lower them to the height of the window trim. However, Lowe's decided that they wanted to order us 36" cabinets, which we did not realize until we were starting to install. Therefore, we ended up putting the cabinets all the way to the ceiling. Along with that, we had a heater vent that we ended up needing to cover up, since the cabinets needed to go up to the ceiling. So, we have to have someone come out and rerun the duct work for that. (Luckily, our neighbor does heating and air for a living!) Secondly, on the stove wall, we had decided to deepen the center cabinet, which sits above the microwave. However, with the way the cabinets sit, and the trim on them, it is not possible to have one cabinet deeper than the other and still be able to open the doors on the inset cabinets. So, we had to use the fillers for the other wall, rip them down, and make spacers for in between the cabinets. So all in all, it was a mess after a mess. We are going to be talking to the management at Lowe's as this should not have happened the way that it did.

The center (deepened cabinet) that caused considerable problems

You can barely see the spacer between the two cabinets.

The cabinets on the sink wall. We weren't planning on putting a cabinet over the window, but since we had to elevate them, I'm not sure what we are going to do...

The lower cabinets next to the stove:

The fully installed stove wall:

(Day Four -- Sunday) Installation of the sink wall and counter tops

(Day Five -- Monday) Jerrod had to go to work today, but his uncle came over and helped me with the plumbing. I also got the cushion close installed on the cabinet doors, and the cabinets secured down. After my mom got off work, she came over and we installed the shelves and put my kitchen back in order.

Now, all we have to do is get pulls for the doors and drawers, install a light fixture above the sink, decide what we want to do above the sink window, and install the microwave. Not bad for a weekend remodel -- with all the issues that we faced!!