we started the kitchen!!

16 years ago

What we've found so far:

Only 3 layers of floor - the top sheet vinyl, some type of ugly square something, very possibly asbestos based on the size, and the original wood floor with a big patch, possibly where a stud wall used to be. That would solve the question of why the bedroom closet protrudes into the kitchen - it didn't used to, they took a few feet from the bedroom for the kitchen. We are only removing the top layer of vinyl and laying down new sheet vinyl (yes, I'm sad about this, but that's the way it has to be).

The walls behind the paneling are shot (expected). They aren't totally crumbling though. We are going to drywall over them. Again, it's the way it has to be.

Venting for the hood runs through the soffit, so it stays :(

The floor under the leaky kitchen sink ISN'T rotted!!! Hooray!

A support stud (is that the right word? It's vertical, floor to ceiling) that has about a quarter of it resting on wood, the rest just kinda hanging in the air over a gap in the floor. I feel like I'm reading this old house ;)

What we thought might be a support wall doesn't seem to be :) though we will probably support that area just to be safe.

An oven mitt and some prescription pain killers up in the ceiling.

Pictures will hopefully be posted this week.

Here is a link that might be useful: old kitchen

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Comments (4)

kimkitchy
16 years ago
Yea! Good for you, blackcats. I know you are excited! I was smiling all the way through reading your post. Don't you love digging around and finding old things (like where walls used to be, and items left or hidden by people)?

Hey, I have a thought about your soffit. If the only thing running through it is the hood vent, you can rip the rest of it out and make the hood vent soffit a stand alone; kind of like a mantle hood or "chimney". I did that. I got the idea from MaryLynnNC's kitchen in the finished kitchen blog (I posted a link to her kitchen in the other post by thresse). Anyway, here's a pic of mine, so you can see what I mean.

Good luck with it, and keep us posted!
theresse
16 years ago
How exciting Blackcats! I can't wait to see more pics as they come. What the heck were oven mits and medicine doing in the CEILING? How bizarre! There are lots of little mysteries in your house it seems!

Kimkitchy - that is a sweet kitchen. This might sound strange but the word that comes to mind is "friendly!" :)
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blackcats13
Original Author
16 years ago
Kimkitchy - thanks for the idea, sadly our oven is not on or next to an outside wall. We could move the whole thing up into the ceiling, but then we're talking more $. This isn't going to be even close to a dream kitchen or anything, so any decision that increases cost gets cut.

Since that post we've ended up nearly gutting the room. DH went to take down the ceiling light and found TONS of wires up there. All cloth covered of course. And the second he touched them, all the cloth insulation just crumbled off. We now have no electric to any ceiling on the ENTIRE first floor, as well as the outlet in the guest room on the first floor, or the outlets in our bedroom on the second floor! It's kinda amazing how much those wires were feeding. Our simple 'just replace the old wires with new in the kitchen' electric work now encompasses nearly half our house, meaning we need an actual electrician to come out, etc. So, because of that delay it was decided that rather than drywall over the old/bad plaster, to tear it all out and put insulation on the outside wall. Might as well do it right, huh?

The good thing about that is it's something we knew was going to need to be done anyway, so, as far as 'old house surprises' it could have been much worse. Fingers crossed this doesn't turn into such a huge delay that the baby arrives before the kitchen is finished!

Oh yeah, DH also determined that the heat vent we thought we had to keep and box around actually goes upstairs and mostly heats INSIDE a wall! There's another vent in that room, so we'll keep the other and get rid of the one that is in the way.
slateberry
16 years ago
My "baby" arrived 11 years ago and my kitchen still hasn't even been started, so I'm very happy that you're already at this point, electrical hassles or no. Fortunately for me the kids don't care what the kitchen looks like as long as food comes out of it :-).

Hope you can get your electrical up to snuff. We have spent the last 3 weekends cleaning up the wiring on the 3rd floor, so many little things we didn't expect, like frayed wires that had to be replaced, but now it's much safer up there. We were able to pull new wires through using old ones, hope you get lucky that way too, but of course please bring in a pro if you are beyond your expertise--it's just not worth the risk.