Demolition!

We have had fun with all the nicely nice nice furniture and painting and easy peasy stuff.

But now......

It's gonna get UGLY before it gets PURTY!

That is what Steve said.

Well, before we put my lovely refurbished cabinets into the big kitchen area, we had a little "prep" work to do.  (Paula, one of the sellers who reads my blog....  Paula, you might want to close your eyes!)

First step.. the kitchen has a tall builtin cabinet that is going to come out, and get refinished, and later brought back in and installed in the pantry area when we make it into a first floor laundry.

Here is the cabinet.....    

and here it is GOING ---- GOING----- GOING--- 

GONE!!!

Actually it had been built on site, so we had to take it down into 2 pieces to get it out the door to the garage.  Later I will strip it and make it lovely to match the other cabinets and install it back in the house into one complete piece again. 

Wonderfully we found hardwood flooring underneath!  Whee heeeee  with visions of refinishing the hardwood dancing in our heads, then reality struck.  There are three layers of flooring and one layer of subfloor between them.  Plus----- about every 2 inches is a screw, nail or staple!   That is about 36 pieces of metal in every square foot!   OH MY!  that hardwood is going to be perforated every few inches with HOLES!   So Steve is thinking of tearing down layer by layer and putting new vinyl flooring on the bottom base... and I am thinking of new vinyl over the top.   The final process is still being debated -==  (heatedly, I might add) 

We went out and bought the new vinyl last night, and we think that it will look pretty nice.

Now Steve is thinking he would like to just go down 2 layers and skim off all the staples, nails and screws with a grinding tool???  Oh well, we will decide that tomorrow.  Because....

We had another project to work on tonight!   

See.... the kitchen has this white wall board kind of paneling all around about 5 feet high....  all around ... between each doorway on each wall section, all about 5 foot high.  It is glued on to the walls.

We decided it needs to come off before we attach our wonderfully refinished cabinets. In the other areas of the walls that won't be covered with cabinets, it needs to come off and get some new sheetrock put in place.

As we tore it off, we discovered underneath the white wall board paneling was a kind of plaster that is pressed into the wall with a grid pattern to look like bricks.  That was almost 100 years ago.  Over the years, the stuff has started to crack, chip, peel and fall off.  The wall underneath it is firm and solid.  It's just a thin coat of this stuff on the surface that is crumbling off.   I am sure as it crumbled over the years, they decided enough was enough and had covered it with the white wall board paneling stuff.

Off it came, along with a LOT of loose pieces!  So we started scraping off all the loose stuff with putty knives after dinner this evening.   What a mess!

Told ya it would get UGLY! 

Got most of it off, and tomorrow will finish.  

Now it's time for a shower!