Welcome to Part 2 of our kitchen remodel, just one of our many home remodeling adventures as homeowners!
In part 1 of our kitchen remodel, we started to remove the dividing wall, cut out a spot in the counter for our stove to be relocated along the wall, removed part of the upper cabinets, and started working out the final vision of our master plan.
Get caught up by reading Part 1 of our Kitchen Remodel
As a recap, here are pictures of the before with the wall from September 2021…
And here is where we left off after removing most of the wall, cutting through the counters and cabinets to move the stove into that spot and moving the refrigerator against the wall where the old wall was.
October 2021 – We continued to remove the drywall up to the ceiling to get a better look at the joists…..and alas… the one thing we dreaded became very apparent.
It WAS a LOAD BEARING wall….
This was something we had a feeling about but of course, we had TWO home remodeling companies come in for a free inspection and estimate for removing the wall and asked them if it was a load-bearing wall…. and BOTH SAID NO.
After finding this out on our own, we were first very pissed off that these contractors were too lazy to truly give us a correct answer or just flat-out lied… either way, you know darn well that this little surprise would come up and their price would skyrocket because we would most likely be in contract with them.
Our Gut Feelings
Good thing we went with our gut and took this slow and never removed the structure so that JUST IN CASE we were protecting our home and taking precautions.
So there we were, with a see-through wall.
Moving Forward
To be honest, I was so happy that it was open enough to see into the kitchen area. And it brought SO MUCH LIGHT already.
It was progress and it meant we were doing a project we knew we wanted to do from the moment we looked at the house.
There is a hallway looking straight at the wall through to the window so it was amazing getting up every morning and seeing the window shining some light in the area.
Eh, but we had so much more to do.
Our gas stove wasn’t even hooked up yet because we needed to get a gas line run through to the new location on the wall… our refrigerator was across the room on the other side and all our cabinets were missing their doors and most everything from in those cabinets and drawers were sprawled out around the basement on our pool table.
It was chaos….
Create a New Location for the Refrigerator
November 2021 – After slacking off a bit in October for some Halloween and other laziness, we were back at it and ready to move forward with our kitchen remodeling project.
I didn’t exactly have a list of “to-do’s so it was more of what I felt like doing at the time.
Over the month of November, we were able to:
- Remove the door and wall of mini closet
- Put up temporary supporting walls
- Remove 2 beams and resupport
- Refacing cabinet doors – Fill in corners, add front flat slats
- Create cabinet face structure for left side w/drawer for garbage area
- Painting cabinets
- Cover counter with black peal and stick paper
We were pretty busy this month and it felt like we made so much progress.
The nice thing was that we weren’t on a timeframe.
The bad thing… was that we weren’t on a time frame…. so there was a lot more “not-doing” when we could have done more.
But, that’s what you get when you do your own DIY home remodeling projects.
One of the first items was cutting out one of the 2×4’s in the bearing wall so that we could walk through the wall into the kitchen instead of going around it every time… this gave a sense of openness which is the purpose of the wall removal!
We knew the refrigerator would be going into the spot spack dab in the middle of where the wall was.
Here is a picture showing one of the beams removed and also my husband and dad looking up and around contemplating how to put up temporary supporting walls on either side to add support when they remove the other beams towards the wall where the refridgerator will be going.
Here are some pictures of the November kitchen modeling progress.
After all their observing, we were able to remove the pieces of wood and put a new support to allow an open space to move the refrigerator into it’s new spot along the inside wall.
I couldn’t believe it!
It’s not perfect, but oh my gosh, we did it!
Here is a picture after I painted most of the cabinets, the refrigerator in its new spot, the new gas stove hooked up in its spot and the general mess of the whole process.
It’s a mess BUT IT’s GETTING CLOSER!
I removed the old cabinets and cut my own pieces of flat wood pieces from an old shutter blinds to make them look like the shaker cabinet style.
Here you can see where I am glueing the pieces along the edges and then I had to fill in with wood glue (not shown).
I sanded them a bit before I lined them up to spray paint them.
Yeah, I have no idea how I got paint in my hair, but I did.
I don’t know about anyone else, but choosing knobs is hard. I bought one of my favorites from all over the place like Home Depot, Menards, Lowes, Amazon, Walmart, and I’m not sure where else…. And buying them were not cheap.
Which one do you think we choose for the cabinet uppers? Which one for the lowers?
Here’s a reminder of what it looked like before we started and how it looked at the end of Part 2 (before the bottom cabinets were painted). If you’re interested, there’s a more recent picture at the end of this post.
Taking a much-needed break in our favorite place, the gazebo.
More Kitchen Remodeling Things We’ve Done:
December 4th, 2021 –
- Gas line put in!
- Resize shelves
- Put cabinet doors up
- Get hardware
December 21st, 2021 – …..move the water heater
April 16th, 2022 – redo pantry shelves
May 2022 – deep depression, video
June 19th, 2022 – put up gazebo
July 31st, 2022 –
- break ground
- make platform
- gather round stories
At this point in August 2022, Part 2 of our Kitchen Remodel came to a halt for a bunch of personal reasons and THAT’S OK.
As much as this is something we wanted to get finished, we had other priorities come up that this was set aside to complete.
The kitchen itself is completely different at this point already and we couldn’t be happier, well, we could if it were DONE! LOL
Here’s a picture of it at this point, very lovely and almost there!
It functions just fine and we will finish it up in Part 3, so check that out when it’s ready!
DIY Kitchen Remodel Home Remodeling Project
- Part 1 Kitchen Remodel – Demolition & Relocation
- Part 2 Kitchen Remodel – Clearing, Creating New Structure, Painting
- Part 3 Kitchen Remodel – Finishing Touches & Final! – coming soon!