Kitchen Remodel

This is a view of my kitchen before the remodel. It was getting very dated, but it had served us well over the  years. All the time that I was working on my outdoor kitchen/bar project my wife Dorothea was very patiently watching and helping me with my 'Man Project', and when that was done she told me in no uncertain terms that it was her turn now!
"I want my kitchen redone..."

So we went shopping and found out that the best way to go about it was to order the cabinets and have it installed. I would do all the tear-down, electrical, patching up and preparation of  the walls. In other words when the cabinet installers would come everything would be ready to go.

 



I decided to start out by removing the peninsula and the overhead cupboard above it. It was a lot of work especially the counter-top, which weighed a ton! It was constructed of a thick layer of mortar with wire mash embedded. Well after I finally got rid of the counter-top we decided that some of the cabinets would be good for storage and a work bench in the garage (another project...)!

  So all the cabinets had to be removed with minimal damage for re-use. I also quickly realized that we had to re-tile and re-carpet the house also, since the new replacements would of course not fit exactly in in the old locations.

 Removing the simulated bricks from the walls was so destructive on the wall boards that it was easier to just replace the wall boards. This also would make it easier to reach the  wiring. Notice the plastic sheeting on the right to block the dust as much as possible.

 All is removed now including the old floor tiles.














Here are the old cabinets temporarily stored in the garage. What a mess!

My neighbor Juan is helping me put the wall boards up.

The kitchen cabinet installers (two young men) came and went in less than a day!! I was impressed. Shows you what experience can do! I thought, wow this would have taking me days if not a whole week.

We chose cherry-wood colored cabinets made from Alder wood, because cherry-wood is expensive and Alder is an excellent alternative.

The installers installed the cabinets with enough room for the floor tiles by using shims.

Let me jump ahead in time and show you a picture of the old kitchen cabinets installed in my garage. The cabinet on the left with the red vise was the peninsula were I destroyed the counter top. But the plywood top comes in handy as a workbench.

We used to have a wet-bar next to the kitchen (on the left) and we hardly ever used the sink, so the installers fabricated this dry-bar in it's place that matched the kitchen cabinets.

 As you can see the granite people have installed the counter tops and installed the sink (black concrete sink, just to be different). Also drilled the holes for the faucet, which I installed later on. We didn't want a back-splash because at a later time I'll install a tiled back-splash.

There was some granite left over I was told by the granite outfit we bought it from and they offered us a freebie if we left the edge simple! So here it is a matching patio coffee table top standing just outside the kitchen.

I have started on tiling the floor and I'm standing here thinking why in heavens name did I chose such a complicated lay-out! As you notice I never removed the tarry glue from the floor so that the thin-set would stick. I tried and it would be a lot of hard work, besides the nasty chemicals I would have to use. So I started to experiment  with different materials available in the store and finally found a mastic paste (I can't remember the name; sorry) that worked real good. A hammer was needed to remove the trial tile!

With the tile pattern I was using I needed to know the middle on two opposite sides of each tile, so that is what my wife is doing here, marking the tiles.

Holy Moly, it starting to look good!!

Still have a lot of tiling to do... Remember I told you about doing the whole house, to make everything match. (Trust Me, I know what I'm doing...)

Lo and behold, I found a picture of the mysterious paste I forgot the name off. I still can't read it, but it might help if you are interested.

Tiling is done thank goodness and I've started to remove that outdated fluorescent light in the kitchen. The plan is to replace them with five flood lights and leave it open, no cover.

Inside all textured and painted white for maximum reflection. Also put trimming on to give it a finished look.

There it is folks, all done except for the back-splash. Wife is happy; I'm happy; life is good...
I'm gonna have a beer now. Till my next project.