Kitchen Renovation

WAY Before photo
This was taken when we moved into the house in April of 2016.
way Before Photo
This was taken when we moved into the house in April of 2016.
Way Before Photo
This was taken when we moved into the house in April of 2016.
Way Before Photo
This was taken when we moved into the house in April of 2016.
Way Before Photo
This was taken when we moved into the house in April of 2016.
Gross Sink
This is how the sink looked when we moved into the house in April of 2016. Thankfully Barkeepers friend resolved most of the issues, except for the chips in the sink. We replaced that nasty faucet too.
Way Before Photo - Pantry
We took the doors off the pantry to give it a fresh coat of paint.
Way Before Photo
This was taken when we moved into the house in April of 2016.
Way Before Photo
This was taken when we moved into the house in April of 2016, and after we'd cleaned up from the last tenants.
Way Before photo.
This was taken when we moved into the house in April of 2016, after we'd cleaned and replaced the sink hardware. Notice how uneven the paint is above the butcher block, and if you look above the sink there is a chip of paint missing entirely. It's hard to see in the photo but the paint was actually oozing down the wall in that area.
Way Before Photo.
This was taken when we moved into the house in April of 2016. At this point the pantry had not yet been painted.
Day One
The ceiling tiles are what really kicked off this project. We were looking for cheap and easy things we could do to improve the look of the room. I was thinking of changing the ceiling tiles out with beadboard paneling, but then found nicer ceiling panels in the attic. Total cost = $0.
We considered taking the entire grid down, but there was wallpaper on the ceiling, and the support boards were actually really ugly, so it was better to just keep all of that hidden. We also did not scrape the wallpaper that was above the grid.
The ONLY thing that bummed me out about not taking down the grid is that the pantry actually had a beautiful top on it that was hidden inside the grid.
Here you can see the wallpaper on the ceiling, and another layer of wallpaper that's above the grid. There was yet another layer underneath everything we scraped.
All the ceiling tiles (except for the one with the light) are down!
Cleaning off the grid so we could cover it in a coat of white paint to make it look less metallic. At some point we may actually hide the grid entirely.
More cleaning off the grid.
The painting got kicked off when we discovered the wallpaper peeled away from the wall pretty easily. We discovered sheetrock underneath.
We started putting up the nicer ceiling tiles but then realized with all the scraping / heat gun / painting that they were safer in the attic for the time being. These are the only ones that went up.
Scraping away wallpaper and paint!
This area cleared very quickly.
This was just a few minutes after the last photo was taken.
When I say most of the wallpaper came off easy, I'm not kidding. In many places it just came off in huge chunks like this.
Little artifact from the wallpaper underneath.
Uh oh. That isn't just sheetrock under the wallpaper...that's plaster.
Oddly there were areas where there was paint and no wallpaper underneath. In those areas the paint was much harder to remove.
More plaster. Also, our microwave was in a hole in the wall! You'd have to reach over the stove to get to the microwave, we had more than a few burns over the years. And you had to step over the microwave to get up and down the attic stairs.
Microwave out, looking into the attic staircase.
Backsplash is down! A better view at remaining wallpaper. Lost some sheetrock in the process, oops!
Beginning the patch job for the microwave hole.
Microwave is now on a cart! Another area on the wall where it was hard to remove the blue paint.
This area of the kitchen was one of the most embarrassing parts to me. The wood was uneven, tilted, looked to be patched in. There was a looooong heating vent cover, and there was a huge gap between the wall and the floor. Basically, it looked like trash.
We got new knobs for the cabinet above the stove! The originals had gotten lost somewhere.... the cabinet was actually painted before we started the project.
Pretty sure we're going with this color blue.
The amber frosting on the light dome was making the kitchen incredibly dark. You can remove the frosting with acetone!
I sat and picked at this with a dime all day while I was on the phone for work. Soak in acetone, scrape with a dime like a lottery ticket.
All done!
The microwave hole has been plastered! Still haven't gotten all of the wallpaper / paint off this wall, as we hadn't taken the cabinet down yet.
Scraping the lower walls has commenced!
Removing the wallpaper from around the sink. The backsplash couldn't be completely removed until the counter top was removed, as it went several inches below the counter.
Not looking so great, but still a little better.
Dastardly plaster. It was almost impossible to get the paint off of it.
More scraping! This was probably the easiest part of the kitchen to scrape. It gave me false hope for the rest of the kitchen, which was so much harder.
Trying to use the heat gun on the plaster area. We had mixed results with several different tools.
All the paint is off the plaster! One of the hardest jobs we faced, and Alan handled it.
An overview of the room from Amelia's birthday when Alan decided to hang streamers through the whole kitchen.
Mabel showing off how stripped the walls were.
More scraping success, but it was slow going. We eventually found a pretty good method with heating the paint, letting it cool, then scraping it off. But it didn't work everywhere.
These moldings were the absolute worst.... so many curves and edges.
This sort of shows how we were struggling to get certain areas scraped. The doorframe on the left scraped easily, the wood paneling ont the right fought me every step of the way.
The sink is out! It came out so that we could finish getting the backsplash out. We also went and got a new countertop on this day (to be used later) and used the current counter as a template for cutting the new one.
Backsplash removal.
Old rotted counter top. Another embarrassing part of the kitchen. Not only was it rotting but it was that gross formica material.
Backsplash is gone!
This was an idea Alan had, where if he sanded in an enclosed little area (which looked an awful lot like a Dexter kill room) that the dust wouldn't get all over the house.
He goggled and masked up for the job.
Here he is sanding in his plastic enclosure. Did it work?
No, no it did not.
Scraping the wallpaper (or maybe just very very old contact paper) from the bottom of the sink cabinet.
New counter top resting on the cabinet base. No cuts made yet.
It's more of a golden wood color than the photos show.
Using his new jigsaw.