The Kitchen Renovation Project
Phase 1 - Demolition


These are photos of the old upstairs kitchen and adjoining walk-in closet as it was in May of 2001. It was part of the house when we moved in, but never used it much. 

In the last 20 years, while I lived upstairs, I used it for storage space. Fortunately, the stuff I was storing was of no value, because a serious leak developed in the roof and water and mildew damage ran rampant. 

Building a new kitchen to replace the old kitchen and closet was the last major project in the renovation of the upstairs apartment. 
The kitchen seen from the living room.

Yep, that's a broken space shuttle, Goodyear blimp
and Robert E Lee, remnants from my earlier years
as a model builder.

Inside the closet area, looking through a sliding door
into the kitchen. More of my treasure trove of junk
neatly cataloged on the shelves.

This is serious! Severe water damage 
to the ceiling, down the sheet rock
walls and through the wood floor. 

I laid parquet flooring in this closet in the 80's, an earlier failed renovation effort. 
Around July and August of 2001, I started removing all of the damaged structure 
and the wall separating the kitchen and closet areas.
I planned to replace the damaged areas of the ceiling and the strip where the old wall was removed, but soon it made more sense to take the entire ceiling down. We couldn't replicate that silly 70's daisy plaster pattern anyway.
The brick section in the corner of the old closet is a part of the chimney 
from the fireplace downstairs. I spent a couple of days screwing new boards to the brick
so a new sheet rock wall could be hung.
I removed the parquet floor, a layer of linoleum and a fiberboard floor
finally finding a sturdy and level plywood subfloor.


The old kitchen consisted of this short five foot space. 
In the middle was a unit I dubbed "The Thing" 
an ugly, useless stove top, sink and refrigerator combination.

In early December 2001,
I escorted "The Thing" to the curb.
Good-bye, old friend!

I later demolished the two side cabinets 
with a hammer.
We considered refinishing these upper cabinets. Well, I considered it, 
I don't think Lisa ever did. She wanted all new matching cabinets.
It was the right thing to do.
By early February 2002, after a break for the holiday season, everything was out of the old space
and we were ready to enter the reconstruction phase.

That's on the next page.