August 17 - Kitchen Demolition Begins

It's been a few weeks since the last update. We had a short hiatus during the summer to let some of the sub-trades come in and do their work - tilers created the dog shower and tiled the former carriage house (now a laundry/utility area), painters painted the walls and trim, carpenters created some shelves in the pantry and the electricians put in some fixtures for us. Today is the first day of the demolition of the old kitchen. I'll try to recap the past few weeks with some photos below:

Although not part of the actual renovation, we did do a bit of work in the back yard. This area used to have some really old Holly bushes in it. We hired a recent graduate from the NSCC Horticulture program, Aaron Ashcroft-Staples, to come in and help with creating a nice back yard. This is one of his creations - a conifer bed with a touch of Zen. Our Buddha statue found a new home here and has been getting rave reviews.

This new tile floor in the laundry/utility area (formerly the carriage house) is just waiting for the grout to be applied. In the background you can see the myriad heating and domestic hot water hoses that feed through the poured concrete floor and go into the barn.

Here the tilers are creating the dog shower.

Mike is inspecting the new shelving that was being built into the pantry.

We recently went to Calgary and visited the French Barn. This is the store we imported our Lacanche range from. Here, store owners Patrick and Florian, pose with Mike in front of a range similar to the one we bought. He also had a quick lesson on how to operate the new range when it's in the new kitchen.

The Lacanche range arrives.

Even on wheels, the 800 lbs range needed some combined manpower to wheel it up the ramp and into the garage.

This is home until we're ready to move the range into its forever home in our new kitchen. In the interests of protecting it while in the garage we decided not to uncrate it. It'll be like Christmas morning when we finally get to peel away the crate and see the stove inside.

And so it begins. Here is a shot of the kitchen as the guys begin the demolition.

After removing this counter we discovered this underneath. Matt said, "Shhhhh...Mousie is sleeping." This would explain why the cats were often fascinated with this section of the kitchen.

It would be awesome if we'd been able to salvage this old original floor but, unfortunately, it was just too damaged to restore. It was interesting to note that there was no mesh behind any of these tiny round tiles. Each on was placed individually by hand. I may try to preserve a portion of it for posterity.

We suspected that there was concrete under the kitchen floor but we didn't know how much. Once we moved the dishwasher we were able to see exactly how much concrete there was. It looks like about 2 inches above the floor joists with another 3 inches between each joist. Our 800 lb range will be supported no problem.

The cupboards and cabinets are out. Some of these are going to be sent away and repainted and then re-purposed in our laundry/utility area. The other ones will be installed in the garage and used there for storage and in my studio.

We weren't sure which of the beams in the ceiling were actual beams and which were simply decorative. Now we know. When the guys removed the oak exterior we found a steel beam underneath it. To make things even more interesting, the beam is resting on part of the brick structure that we are going to remove. So, we'll need to come up with a plan of how we're going to work with this new wrinkle.

Here is some old knob and tube electrical wiring that we found in one of the 2x4s that used to be part of a bedroom wall. The wiring probably went to light fixtures in the bedroom..

This was a bit of a surprise. The guys removed part of a wall and we discovered these heating pipes inside. They go through the wall and up to a radiator on the second floor. Unfortunately this wall is slated for removal so we'll have to re-route the heating pipes through another wall.

So, at the end of Day One of the demolition most of the cabinets have been removed and relocated to the garage. Some will be re-purposed out there and some will be sent away to be painted and then they'll be used in the laundry/utility room. 

Another view of the kitchen minus it's cupboards. Soon they will seal off all the doors and the dirty work of plaster and drywall removal will begin. Once all that is down we'll bring in an engineer to let us know what we're going to need for structural support.