1, 2, 3 Nights of Demolition!

A lot has happened since the last post.

Friday Night

Friday night, the lower "cabinets" were removed.  Cabinets are in quotes because there really was just one free standing cabinet, the one between the dishwasher and refrigerator.  The sink base, lazy susan, and end piece by the oven were just fronts and framing nailed to a ledger board.

It's really weird.  I think taking the top cabinets down was one thing... They could go back up if I panicked.  :)  Once the base cabinets were removed, it was pretty much the point-of-no-return.

The valve on the supply line that goes to the dishwasher now has a slow drip.  We've got a plastic coffee tub under there now, it takes a day or so to fill up before it needs to be emptied.  It's a compression fitting, so when we're ready to put the new cabinets in, I'll need to put a new valve on there.  Other than the obvious not-to-code running of electric cable through holes in the drywall, there were no surprises there.

Minor change on our temporary kitchen.  It was so much of a hassle getting the refrigerator down the step into the entryway, that that's where it ended up.  Not pretty, but I didn't feel like wrestling it back up a step into the living room, possibly damaging floors (or fridge), only to have to repeat the process when it needs to go back into the kitchen.  Also, one of the wheels broke off somehow, shortly after it was pulled out from the wall.

I captured a time lapse of the base cabinet removal.  Enjoy!

Monday Night


Monday night was drywall demo night.

Safety first!

Drywall is...  much more durable than I thought.  Broken into chunks, it also takes up a lot more space in the garage than I thought.  I had a nice 6'x8' tarp laid out to hold all the debris.  I was dreaming if I thought that would hold it.

As you can see by the time lapse video below, we started out slow, not quite knowing how to attack it.  Early in the video, not much progress, and then all the sudden, large chunks of wall are missing.  What finally seemed to work best was to either hammer the drwall just inside the stud, all up and down the cavity, and then tear out the large chunks.  Or, if you can, and depending on how the drywall is installed, just start pulling.

Again, no major problems discovered.  I did find out that our wall cavity insulation is "spun mineral fiber", or rock wool batts.  They're extremely thin, maybe 2", if that.  No wonder our plates were so cold in the winter!  I'm still researching insulation, but am thinking of going with Roxul, a similar, but newer and better insulation.  Mike Holmes likes it, so if it's good enough for his Canadian winters, it must be good enough for Ohio, eh?  

Tuesday Night

Okay, so at this point, drywall is off the walls.  The room is still the same shape, nothing super crazy has gone on.  I could feasibly panic, and re-drywall the walls as-is, and all would be well.  But it's Tuesday night.  And Tuesday night is the night the soffit comes down.  I bought a 2x12 board to use as a scaffold between the 2 ladders.  It worked perfectly.

The soffit, as was revealed, is pretty standard.  The main "frame" was made of horizontal 2x2s, attached to the attic joists by vertical 1x4s along the length, and vertical 2x4s on the corners.  Removing was a matter of busting out all the drywall, and then hitting and prying on the wood to remove it.

Now for the bummer.  Thankfully, the bummer had absolutely nothing to do with the project.  As was customary for the last 2 evenings of the project, I had setup a time lapse.  Unfortunately, my camera ran out of memory shortly before the soffit framing was removed.  Gah!  That was probably the one thing I really, really wanted a time lapse of.  Oh well.  For your enjoyment, I've at least posted the first half of the evenings' festivities.

Thank God, after removing the soffit, we have still found no evidence of mold, rot, moisture, bugs (besides spider webs), or anything else that would cause the project to increase in work time or cost.  Just a really well built, 1960s Columbus, Ohio ranch house.

It's hard to tell how much bigger it looks.  Sarah insists that it makes the room look huge, but I'm not sure how much of that is due to the fact that there's nothing else in the kitchen right now.

Next steps are to remove the in-wall insulation, remove the final framing members of the soffit, and figure out how to keep the attic insulation from raining down on us during the rewiring/plumbing portion of the renovation.  Then begins the electrical...

Sorry, no bonus cat pictures, we're trying to keep her out of the mess as much as possible!