After a two month hiatus due to Covid-19, I had Chris up to the house in the first week of June to discuss out next move. It was also when I started keeping a paper log of my trips to work on the house. So, it was June 8th.

We looked at the ceiling in the great room, as I was concerned about how we were going to get it to look flat over the entire area given the questionable framing. After some discussion we decided to pull down the ceiling and put up a new one. After so much demolition already I was not looking forward to that, so the plan was to bring in a crew. On June 10th I moved the tools into the master bedroom to clear room for the demolition. Between that trip and my next I decided to try demoing the ceiling myself rather than waiting on the availability of a crew. At least gravity would be on my side. On June 18th I climbed up into the attic and simply kicked the sheets down. It was much easier than I expected and I was able to pull it all down in one visit. On another trip up (June 20th) I removed the drywall screws and shifted the debris into the garage. I eventually hired a company to haul it off.

Before commenting on the real demolition, I should mention that I experimented with the existing cabinet doors to see if they could be rejuvenated. I wanted to remove the thermofoil wrapping, exposing the MDF beneath, and see if painting them would produce a decent result.

The result was okay, but not good enough to push forward. So new cabinets would be needed. Working with Chris, we worked out the new kitchen layout I wanted, which would require moving pipes to accommodate a new large island with a sink (a big job, as you will see in a future post).

Before the serious demo work started, I got going by removing the cabinets along the wall.

The week before Christmas, a dumpster was brought in and Chris got to work doing the major demo work, which involved pulling up the flooring and demoing the two bathrooms.

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Notice that we removed the rounded corner beads, which will be replaced with proper square corners when the drywall is restored.