Kitchen Remodel: Post #3

In order to accomplish priming, painting or adding crown moulding, we first had to remove the odd leftover wall above our new fridge. Here's a quick reminder of what that bad boy looked like:

I must admit, I was a bit nervous heading into this project.  Demolition is no problem.  I spent two weeks doing just that to homes destroyed by Katrina. I love demolition. It's the rebuilding/patching/making pretty part that had us both a little anxious.  So anxious, in fact, that once the wall was down we called my dad in a panic asking him to fly up here. Of course, we quickly realized that joint compound and spackle aren't that scary and now we've got a much more open kitchen to show for it.  Here's the start of the demolition:

I thought Mark had everything under control at this point so I went upstairs to put away laundry. A few moments later I heard, "Laurie, you should get down here.  This is so cool and will make for a great picture on the blog!" Out of the remaining duct work there was a pesky nail that wouldn't come out and Mark was sawing it off with a Dremel.  Sparks were flying everywhere, his face right next to the blade, with no goggles to be found.  I screamed, told him to stop and asked him where his goggles were, to which he replied, "I don't need goggles.  My eyes are beautiful." Exactly. Fortunately I got my way and he got back to sawing.  He was right, it did make for a really cool picture...of sparks flying at his face.

Then it became time to patch the walls. It was no big deal until everything dried and sanding began. Being the novices that we are, we didn't think to tape off the room and air ducts. We thought wrong. Very wrong. Our kitchen is drafty and that draft tends to move the air out of the kitchen and into the dining room. Mix a fine powder into that air, and you've got an impressively dirty home. So on day two we learned from our mistakes and taped our doorway and vents.

The air in the kitchen was caustic, but the rest of the house was no worse for the wear. We also learned a lot about joint compound and spackle.  I think the most important lessons include: over filling the holes to create a smooth wall by sanding, sanding with long strokes, and waiting for everything to fully dry before you sand. Also, if you're a first timer like us, we totally recommend the DAP Pink-to-White spackle.  It goes on pink and dries white, which kept us from constantly poking our wet spackle to check if it was dry. We also used Glidden's Pink-to-White ceiling paint with great ease.  It kept us from re-painting areas that didn't need it and knowing just how well the paint was covering (or not covering) the ceiling.

After we sanded, primed and painted, we walked away with an imperfect, but good enough, wall above our fridge.

That's not all we've managed to do, either. All of the walls are now painted in Glidden's Smooth Stone and we couldn't love it more. We could love the weather more.  Apparently if your exterior walls are less than 50F, paint doesn't dry correctly and peels off in sheets. Space heaters came to the rescue, but not before I exchanged a few "adult words" with the walls that I just finished a second coat on. FYI: the ceiling isn't trimmed in the above pic because we're adding the 4.5" crown moulding. The tile next to the fridge is also officially repaired. Thanks to Bo's help, of course:

The tile project really stretched Mark.  He had to bust out a lot of existing tile, move pieces around and learn how to retile a floor. I'm pretty proud of him for doing such a great job.  The finished product is seamless. In addition, all of the trim and doors have been given with a fresh coat of white, I knocked out that awkward shelf above the island (we plan to put built in cabinets up there) and repaired the wall, and we managed to rig a recessed can light over the sink into a hanging pendant light. Check out my sheer brawn:

The can light was interesting for a few reasons.  First, we thought we could use an adapter kit that they sell on TV, but our model was too old.  Then when we talked with the helpful folks at Home Depot they basically gave us a useless answer, so we created our own solution that involved a blue plastic electrical box and some 2x4s cut to make a bridge that held the box flush with the ceiling.

Most interesting was the discovery of construction waste inside our cabinets. Once we pulled out the can light, we found a variety of sheet rock, wood and debris tucked up in the built-out ceiling:

Frank really loved the exposed wires hanging from the box.  Like all good parents, we let him play with live wires and grabbed the camera.  Isn't he the cutest?

Here's the pendant, semi-finished.  We still need to paint the ceiling around it and caulk the decorative medallion to the ceiling (we had to add it to cover up the giant hole the can light left).

So there you have it folks, you're officially up-to-date on our kitchen remodel and yes, in case you're curious, we're exhausted.