This Labor Day weekend, you could find us chipping away at our kitchen demo. Remodel time clock officially started ticking on Friday when we put down 50% allowing our guy to place the cabinet order. We have 5 weeks before they'll be here, meaning we have 5 weeks to completely gut the kitchen and prep the space! YIKES!
As you probably know (or at least you SHOULD) this will be especially difficult with Badger Football season beginning. We actually kicked off our four-day Labor Day weekend with a nice win over UNLV on Thursday night. Go Bucky! So with essentially 50% of our weekends already accounted for, we have a lot of work to squeeze into on Sundays! Fortunately, we know how to make the most out of an extended weekend. :)
Most of Friday was spent finalizing kitchen floor and back splash tile, purchasing our new TV for the kitchen (have to take advantage of Labor Day sales!), and packing up the kitchen for demo on Saturday. It doesn't sound like much, but we were both pretty much exhausted by the end of the day!
Saturday started off nice and early. By 8am Mike's dad was on the doorstep ready to offer his services. They began by taking Puppy to doggy daycare and picked up lunch stuff at the grocery store on the way home. So with the easy stuff out of the way, we dug in to the demo. While they worked on removing the appliances, I began taping up the trim we installed last weekend for caulk and paint. We had not been working long when the power went out! A tree had fallen over from the weight of the rain storm that morning! So without power, we had to put the demo on hiatus...
About 2 hours later we decided to get back to work and navigate by head lamps! I wish I would've gotten a picture of that :) By 11 or 11:30, the power was back on so we went full steam ahead. We also recruited some additional helpers- Eric (Mike's brother) and Nick and Sarah (friends) volunteered their time and energy as well! Here are some pictures of the crew in action:
Once the cabinets and counter tops were outta there, we had to do some work in the attached laundry room- the slate tile in the kitchen (which we were removing) went through the laundry room as well so we planned to replace it all at once. The washer and dryer sat on this ledge that was quite tall- I actually had to stand on my tip-toes to poor the detergent in to the machine! So we wanted to rip that down and build something a little smaller in its place.
Apparently, Eric had some experience moving front loading washer and dryer and recommended we try to drain the washing machine to lighten the load before we move it. Here's a picture of the boys getting rid of said water:
You can't really tell by looking in that bucket, but there was some water in there, although probably not enough to fill a water glass! You wouldn't believe it, but after that was outta there, Sarah and I moved the washing machine ourselves! Only kidding, I have to give the boys a hard time about it though. Fortunately, they were able to move the washing machine fairly easily and of course the dryer moved without any problems.
With those out of the way, it was time for the stand to come down. This whole process probably took about an hour and required the sawzall, the sledgehammer, and some man power in the form of jumping!
Once all the debris was removed and the W/D put back in their spots, it was time to call it quits. We ordered delicious Sugar River Pizza for everyone and had a few beers to celebrate.
Sunday also started off early. Mike was nice enough to make some egg sandwiches using our skillet which worked out very well. We ate breakfast out on the porch while we discussed our game plan. First stop- Home Depot to rent a demo hammer to remove the slate flooring. We used this in our front entryway a few months back and it worked fairly well, but it took a long time. Here's a look at the before and after:
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| Apparently this is the best "After" I could find! Oops, but at least you can see the baseboards! |
With the kitchen/laundry area being about 2-3 times the size we were pretty certain it was going to be a looooong day! To our surprise, it seemed to go much quicker- must've been due to the added help from John!
Here's a partial pile of all of the slate tile we removed:
I think it ended up being about 3 rows of slate. Someone came to pick it all up and haul away for FREE this morning. Gotta love Craigslist for that! After the slate was removed, Mike and I sent John back home and removed all the screws for the backerboard and swept up the mess we created. By the time we went to bed it looked like this:
I have no pictures from today's work yet, but Eric and Nick came back over to help take down the ceiling. We have some electrical work that needs to get done before the cabinets get installed so we thought it'd be easiest to take it all down. It actually only took a couple of hours, just long enough for me to see The Help with Sarah!
On non-kitchen related note, we did trim some trees and John power washed the house this weekend as well so I'll leave you with those picture for now:
Sorry this post got a little long, but we were quite busy this weekend :) Hope you all enjoyed your Labor Day weekend (and hopefully there was a lot less labor done!)
