KITCHEN OVERHAUL--THE BEGINNING

Actually if our kitchen renovation were a book, our official day one would be part of the preface. Real demo was not slated till midweek, but we've watched enough Renovation Realties to realize that DIY house projects rarely go as planned. So we wanted to get a head start, knowing there would be surprises but just not knowing what they would be. Oh did we find out.

But first, the first blissful hours of we-can-do-anything enthusiasm...

Taking those energizing "before" pictures.

Feeling pleased with our know-how in putting up a dust shield.

(Note: Chris may or may not have been pleased at the particular moment pictured above because he was trying to hand me duct tape, and I was trying to get a picture of how funny it was with him trying to pass through the shield. Oops.) But he was pleased with the finished result.

And finally, feeling ready for and initially victorious in demo and tile removal.

And then the surprises started rolling in.

Surprise #1: More water damage than we had exepected (or should I say hoped for?)

So not much of a surprise, I guess, although we hadn't anticipated ripping out all the tile in the laundry room or replacing portions of the drywall. Thus demo came to an abrupt standstill while we debated whether we had the materials/tools and enough salvageable tile to retile the laundry room. But we came to an on-the-fly Plan B: Instead of retiling, we plan to put down engineered hardwoods that are left over from the master addition. (We set this as our goal for Day 2 so we can get the washer and dryer out of the kitchen floor, lovely details that were not part of our Day 1 plan. Although I keep telling Chris I'm loving the extra counter space.)

Surprise #2: So that's why it's always getting hot in here.

While trying to remove the floor molding (or whatever it's called), Chris accidentally punched a hole in the drywall, which revealed...No insulation! And we thought the kitchen was always hot because of the oven and the toasty afternoon sun. (We however were not surprised by the intense peach wall color that existed before the current barely green one. We knew about that because the homeowners before us decided it wasn't important to paint behind the fridge or between a few tight but 100% visible spaces.)

Surprise #3: How many subfloors are there?

We felt we had conquered the first of many beasts when we finally busted through the existing subfloor. Only to find a second layer of subfloor? OK, we can chalk this up to overexcitement and limited subfloor knowledge. What appeared to be two different pieces of wood were really just the first two layers of the plywood subfloor.

Surprise #4: Amazing technicolor kitchen and an old door

Thankfully this one was more of a "hmm" surprise rather than a "So what's Plan B?" surprise. What appeared to be just 70s-tastic green laminate floors underneath our old subfloor is actually 70s-tastic green laminate floors plus a rocking red and tan border. Nice. Also, the pattern enabled us to see the old footprint of the house, including where the original door used to be. (You can see this in the picture above by the wood shape that is set in to the technicolor linoleum.)  Explains some things and yet still so many mysteries, like why there is metal flashing inside the exisiting back door. (I have no idea what this means, but judging from Chris's tone in talking about it, this makes whoever thought this was a good solution a complete idiot.)

We worked late into the night and were able to remove all the tile in the laundry room and up to the fridge, as well as the existing water damaged subfloor in the same area. All in all, not a bad day one, even with all the surprises and setbacks.