I think we could all agree that usually the worst part of any remodel is the demo.  I mean, it’s messy, loud, hard physical work, and you just never know what you are going to find underneath.  Am I right?  Yes, thank you!  Well, unfortunately, there isn’t any way I know of to get to the good stuff of putting in new countertops, backsplashes, painting, etc. without the demo part.  So here is the first part of our story.

Let me see if I can explain to you our kitchen situation.  Our house was built in 1960.  Sometime in the 80s it appears that the kitchen was updated.  Well, updated for then.  It had light blue laminate countertops and that lovely, lovely orange-oak cabinetry.  Well the good news is the cabinets are in great shape.  Just a traditional style cabinet with the raised center panel but constructed really well and made of solid wood.  So it was a no brainer to me to protect those cabinets and keep them.  However, the laminate had to go.  When we first moved in here almost two years ago, we couldn’t afford to replace those ugly countertops so I treated them basically by painting them and sealing the heck out of them.  It was a great short-term solution.  But now, we were ready to replace.  The real problem lay in the fact that that laminate ran all the way up the wall to butt up underneath the top cabinets.  The trick would be getting it out without damaging the cabinets and hopefully without too much drywall damage.  Since we are always stretching our decorating dollars as far as possible, we decided to demo ourselves.  Well, more accurately my husband and soon-to-be son-in-law would be doing the demo.  The great day came and Jessica (my daughter) and I cleared out everything from the kitchen.  Luckily, when they started to take out the old countertops, they found they came out quite easily.  Whew!  Now came the backsplash….again, here we were lucky.  Whoever installed them didn’t go insane with adhesive so they basically popped right off.  Now, I’m not going to tell you that there wasn’t ANY wall damage, because there was,  but not so much that I couldn’t repair it myself.  So there was a huge sigh of relief at this stage of the project. 

Next they moved onto the bathroom counters and sinks.  These weren’t anticipated to be any great issue to get out and thankfully they weren’t.  We had initially decided to leave one bathroom sink hooked up and the part of the kitchen counter that had the sink also hooked up.  The rest was removed and the mess was everywhere! 

So now, I’m thinking okay, the first countertop person, who makes the actual templates will be here in a couple of days and then I will have a good two to three weeks to get all the walls repaired and painted to be ready for the countertop installation.  Hahahaha…..the joke was on me.  After he made the templates and left, I got the call to schedule the installation.  “How about this Friday?”, the gal asked me.  (This call was on late Monday afternoon.)  I said, THIS Friday?!!!  Okay, so I had a little meltdown because I had a whole lot of work to get done in a very short amount of time, but hey, what’s life without challenge?  So after discussing with my hubby, I called her back and said sure, this Friday would be just fine!  I suppose at this point, I should tell you that we had decided on white quartz countertops for the kitchen and both baths so the motivation to get this pretty new piece of the house in was great! In fact, it was the driving force to get me up and going three straight days and working all day to get everything patched, painted, and cleaned up before that Friday deadline!

Be sure and tune in for part 2 of the blog, where I will tell you all about the three days I had and my adventure of wall patching, painting, and cleaning!

Now, what will you do next to love where you live?