Demolition of A Kitchen

I'm so excited to share this progress with you! I love projects like this that go from being a distant wish to a reality. We are one step closer to getting a kitchen in Wattle Cottage. Although, at the moment it may seem one step backwards because there is no kitchen at the moment. Hence the title of this post - demolition of a kitchen.

We had the electrician here on Friday and he disconnected the stove from the gas for us and that just left one thing stopping us start the demolition  - and that was us!

Here's what the kitchen looked like before demolition (okay, we had started a small bit, but...)

First we cleaned out the cupboards... and found lots of amazing finds like vintage tins and old plates. Oh yes, and a lot of rubbish and junk. Which all got dumped on the dining room table.. ;)

Treasure

Trash

 When I thought of demolition I thought tough, muscly men knocking down walls with sledgehammers and stuff like that, not girls unscrewing screws whilst wearing sunglasses as safety glasses.

The tiles were the first part of the demolition that we tackled. And it was probably the closest to knocking-down-wall sort of demolition we'll get.We used a chisel and hammer to separate them from the wall. Even so, the tiles still managed to tear off some of the gyprock it was attached to so we will probably have to replace a whole chunk of wall where the tiles were.

Always wear safety glasses (or if you're like us, sunglasses) because we figured that the corners especially send chips of tile flying everywhere.

Meanwhile, the cupboards were super easy to pull apart. The were only attached to the wall with a few screws at the back so after we had taken out the screws, the cupboard would pull apart from the wall. That was the case for the individual cupboard anyhow.

The other cupboards were attached together with one big benchtop so that made things a little bit trickier. We disconnected and took out the sink first. Big mistake. For some reason (maybe because the plumber is a farmer), the pipe leading to the drain didn't have a kink in it like it should have. Meaning the smell from the drain poured right in to the house. We didn't notice until the next morning, at which point it was nearly impossible to enter the house. Thankfully after we put back on the pipe and opened all the windows, a few hours later, we could enter the house again.

The big benchtop had to be separated from the cupboards to take the whole thing apart so some strong ladies (and men) lifted it off. Soon the room was looking like this. YAY!

Finally (a week or so later) the whole thing was loaded on the back of the ute, destined for the workshop. Which means the room now looks like this.

 

 

I've been so excited about the progress that only now I think about actually how sad I am. I was the one wanting this kitchen to be gone and now that it is gone I really want it back. This house holds so many memories and I don't want anyone to forgot about the memories. But then again, I want it to be a place where so many more memories can be made. The house will remain the same, it's just the look that will change. And it will change for the best. I know that, and I want that, but goodbyes are always hard. For people and, err... cupboards.