It’s been a long time coming, but we’ve finally made it to our kitchen renovation. We’ve been planning this since basically the day we bought our house, and it’s the biggest undertaking we’ve gone through yet.

As of when this was written, we’re about halfway through our renovation. We both took off a week of work to get this done, and we’re both feeling pretty tired already. However, seeing the progress we’ve made each day keeps us going. We officially began our renovation on Saturday, the 14th. We started with a blank slate, since we had Habitat For Humanity come and take all of our cabinets, countertops, and appliances, which left the kitchen completely bare.

We had a pretty general plan, but since we had to shuffle around the electrician, plumber, and countertop people, we kind of broke the schedule before we even began. Although we had to change schedules, it almost made it better, since we were able to get the electrician to complete the majority of his work on the Thursday before our renovation started, and came back to finish a few small things on Monday afternoon.

Day 1:

We started out laying new plywood to fix the subfloor. We had already slowly removed the majority of the existing flooring in the week leading up to the renovation, so it would take a little less time when we actually got to the renovation.

We also began correcting some of the drywall, in areas that we had ripped out or that the electrician had to remove. Some larger areas were damaged because we found some hard to remove popcorn ceiling, and decided rather than spend hours sanding like we did in our bedroom, we would just replace the drywall sections.

We left our mark for whoever pulls up our floors 30 years from now…

We also built out the frame for the bar wall, which we wanted to put down prior to laying floors. Finally, after the bar wall was framed and bolted down to the floor, we started laying our brand new floors.

Day 2:

Day two started with more flooring, which Ashley handled while I worked on building the top of the bar wall – the part with the countertop brackets to hold the granite. I had found the brackets online a while ago and ordered them; they are made out of 1/2″ steel and are very strong. The first thing the countertop guy said when he showed up was how strong they looked, and how impressed he was with them.

Over the course of the day, we finished the floors on the kitchen side of the bar wall, added drywall to the kitchen side of the bar so the electrician could wire for the outlets and range, and painted two coats of the new gray that we changed the walls to. Progress felt pretty good, and by the end of the day, we were ahead of our tentative schedule.

Day 3:

Monday probably showed some of the biggest progress. We began by hanging two of the upper cabinets, so I could get a good measurement for the soffit, which I proceeded to build out over the course of the day. The electrician showed up mid-day to complete his wiring, which he hadn’t been able to complete on Thursday since the bar wall didn’t exist yet.

As the day went on, since we weren’t sure if the countertop guy would show up on Tuesday or Wednesday, we had to start putting in the lower cabinets.

We finished putting all the cabinets in, as well as the dishwasher. We left out the stove, figuring we had time in the morning to put it into place even if the countertop people decided to show up on Tuesday.

Day 4:

Day four showed significant progress as well. We finished installing the lower cabinets and stove. Ashley also finished the floors in the dining room area, which meant an end to the flooring!

Dexter got tired of all the renovations, and decided to go take a nap in the 80 degree weather we got on Tuesday!

While Ashley was finishing the flooring, I finished framing the soffit, and adding plywood to the bottom side of the soffit. We decided to do this to give the upper cabinets another point of contact for screwing into. This meant they would be stronger and less likely to start sagging or falling.

We also added the upper cabinets in the right corner, so that we could get up the refrigerator panel. We did this so today, when the countertop guy showed up to template the counter, he knew to end even with the edge of that panel. At first we planned on just telling him, but we thought it would be better to just have it ready, since we had the time to put it up.

Day 5:

Today, progress didn’t show quite as much as it did the past few days, but we did get quite a bit done that needed to be done. We screwed all the base cabinets into each other, so they should not move again, and we could know that the countertop guy would get 100% accurate measurements.

I also put up all the drywall around the soffit, while Ashley went around and added the corner bead and joint compound, so we can hopefully start & finish painting tomorrow.

In addition to finishing the soffit, we also finished hanging the drywall on the bar wall, and Ashley applied the joint compound to that as well. We also had the electrician move the existing bar light on Monday, while also adding another, which created another place in the ceiling to correct, which we also handled.

We still have another four days left in our tentative schedule, which will hopefully include trim work, like baseboard, crown moulding, etc., but we do expect rain for the next two days, so hopefully we don’t run into too much that requires outside work. As long as everything continues to go as planned, we should have a usable kitchen by the middle of next week.

Apparently the granite people have a packed schedule right now, so Monday was the earliest we could get installation, and we decided to have plumbers hook up the sink and dishwasher so we don’t mess anything up, but they have to wait until Tuesday. Hopefully once that’s complete, we have a fairly complete kitchen, and we’ll just have the little things left to complete.