Demo Day - and Days and Days and Days Series: Kitchen and Dining Room Edition!

The kitchen, as it was when we closed (aka, for about an hour before we started demo), was livable, manageable if we didn't have the means to renovate (the means being our brawn, baby, not our dolla dolla bills, y'all), or if we were fine with the style. 

Erm, nope.

Still nope.

I mean, the light streaming in through the dining room windows is so beautiful. SO BEAUTIFUL LET'S TEAR THE WALL DOWN!

Lucky for Birtha, she's got two go-getters here. Clayton, who's basically been building decks since he was two and is incredibly solution-oriented, and me, someone who easily follows the toddler-prodigy deck builder, has tons of design ideas and loves ripping things apart. Together, we are magic.

The kitchen and adjoining dining room were the very first rooms that we tore apart - and I mean really tore apart. Like our house went from a wholesome, albeit dated, place of residence to a holy hell, what cyclone ripped through this place in a matter of hours. 

We began by removing the upper cabients, peninsula and appliances, minus the fridge.

I think at this point Clayton had to go to Lowe's (oh, the many trips to Lowe's you'll go!), so I began to tackle the dining room, which had this view into the kitchen before I started attacking the walls with a hammer.

And away I started smacking with my hammer! Side note: If you smack the hammer to create the outline of a rectangle and then go at the plaster inside of the rectangle, it's an easier/more efficient way to get the plaster off quicker and in bigger chunks. 

I was kicking this wall's ass - but only up to a certain point, ha! Hitting plaster off above your head, even with safety glasses, results in plaster-y eyeballs.

We didn't even realize we had brick to uncover in the kitchen/dining room until a few visits in once we were under contract on Birtha, and we were so excited about this discovery! 

What we couldn't have known until we started demo was that someone had previously ran plumbing and electrical through the chimney, which was a temporary bummer. 

Over the plaster-y eyeballs from the dining room wall, I moved into the kitchen and began destroying another wall - HUZZAH!

After the plaster was almost completely removed on both sides of the smaller wall, we began removing the lathe, which is a certifiable projectile. Just ask Clayton's head.

Even with just that bit of the wall between the dining room and kitchen removed, it made such a difference light-wise. I remember standing at the back of the kitchen just amazed at how much brighter Birtha's kitchen was. 

Demolition can look very scary (that's where the good stuff is), but there is also such beauty in it. 

We continued working on removing all of the lathe and uncovering the brick chimney in the kitchen. 

And here's Clayster finding the newspaper from 1952 with my nickname on it!!

After all of the lathe was removed and no longer in danger of poking out our plaster-laden eyeballs, we removed the studs between the kitchen and dining room. This was not a load bearing wall, so removing these studs was okay and safe to do, but if you are wanting to remove walls in your own home, absolutely check to see if it's load bearing!

Kitchen cabinets were also completely removed now!

Our friend Matt came over that afternoon (what a good friend!), just in time to help Clayton remove the drop paneled ceiling. We were concerned that the ceiling may have been done this way to hide plumbing. As the boys started removing the ceiling by pulling the boards down one by one - hallelujah! - no exposed pipes! 

And here are Matt and Clayton having so much fun - NOT DYING WHEN THE DROP PANEL CEILING ALMOST COLLAPSED ON MATT'S HEAD BUT CLAYTON SAVED HIS FRIEND'S LIFE.

Someone get them "I survived the drop" t-shirts.

We cleared out the collapsed ceiling, removed the wood paneling from the back wall and tidied up some (tidied up, hahaha).

Minus some final demo (like removing the studs hanging down between the old wall of the dining room and kitchen once the electric was no longer live), we thought we were done with the demo of these spaces. 

Ahahahaha! Nice try, guys!

We were originally going to leave the plaster on the wall where the french door and doorway are, however, the more we talked about it, the more we realized to do this right (and considering all of the time we are investing in making Birtha the best we possibly can), we needed to remove that wall's plaster and lathe. We were planning to put new drywall up in other parts of the room, and if you go from beautiful new drywall to wavy, dimpled plaster, it looks junky. And we ain't goin' for junky! So, BRING IN THE HAMMER AND CROWBAR!

And that is a wrap for our kitchen and dining room demo! 

I am so anxious to hear what y'all think! Could you imagine doing demo like this yourselves? And what do you think the finished space will look like?

If you have any questions for us on the demo process, leave them in the comments below!