Behold the Destruction!

We had just had it with our ugly, out-dated, less than functional, dirty, old kitchen so we took the sledge-hammer to it. It wasn't really spur-of-the-moment, but we did demolish it. First we set up a temporary kitchen in our family room--all the comforts of a regular kitchen except the kitchen sink!
As you can see in the second picture, the walls of our "temporary" kitchen are lined with the boxes of cabinets we've had sitting around since February. But it was smart of us to wait--not only did we get a break from the remodelling (see past blogs), but the weather is much more cooperative now that it's not raining every other day. Also the black plastic wall is doing triple duty: it acts as a dust wall (ESSENTIAL), a support wall for when we remove the chimney behind it (also essential), and most importantly, a child resistant barrier to keep the kids (especially handyman Gavin) out of the dangerous mess contained therein!Our kids would love to help more, and Emma does help occasionally hauling garbage to the dumpster, but it's definitely not a good idea--to Gavin's great chagrin. There's actually been a lot of progress, not quite as fast as I had hoped, but quicker than I realistically anticipated. Neverthless, anyone (adult, that is) that would like to help is more than welcome: it can be a true stress reliever pounding away at these walls!

As with any old house project, you are bound to find some rather interesting things. For instance, the opening you see in the right of the picture was an old entry way that had long since been covered up and used to be behind the dishwasher. We opened it up because that is actually almost exactly where we were planning on putting a door! (Beyond the opening you can see the rock walls in the laundry room and get a better idea of what happened in the "broken toe" blog.) We found old plumbing from the previous location for the kitchen sink, plus a hole in the floor for the old drain. There was also at least 7 different wallpapers that had been used in the room at various times, including the one that had been on the wall when there was a chimney fire. (The one in the top left of the pict above; that's why it's rather dingy looking. We think the chimney fire may have been the reason for the last remodel--at least we are assuming it was from the chimney because there is a LOT of soot in the attic.) One of the more interesting finds was stuffed in a wall as some kind of insulation--an old Salt Lake Tribune dated March 1962. It's nice to be able to actually identify the age of the kitchen (which is almost exactly the date I was guessing). It is kind of hard to see, but the stuff inside the wall opposite the bright cherry wallpaper is original adobe brick. Basically, all of the outer wall in our house was built like the wall you see there (it used to be an outer wall before the garage and laundry room were added)--wood frame with adobe brick insulation. Not the thing you think of when you hear "adobe house."

The stone wall and chimney are the biggest time consumer. Yep, we are crazy--we are taking the WHOLE thing out. You can see a little bit of what it used to look like behind Gavin in the picture above. Basically they built a chimney in the middle of the wall between the kitchen and family room and then covered it and all of the space around it in rock (think Brady Bunch). It was approximately 5' wide and 8' long--now it's just a chimney! The next step is taking off the top of the chimney, but we have to do that in the morning while it's still cool enough to climb around on the roof and in the attic. When we are done, we are replacing that whole wall space with a single beam and will have a open kitchen/family room combination. Who knew that we could make a 150-year-old house have a modern layout so "easily"? It's a good thing we are taking it out anyway--if you noticed the hole in the chimney on the left, there is no liner inside the bricks. And the section above the roof is only liner with no outer chimney bricks and is cracked--all leading to a fire just waiting to happen. Personally, we think one fire per house is more than enough!

This last picture is basically from the same angle as the one with Gavin in it above, but taken tonight. It might look like we're done, but we still need to finish the wall opposite this one, take the chimney out, and take the floor out. Yep, again, we're crazy--we are going all the way to the floor joists and studs. The plumber needs access and there isn't access to the crawl space and the floor is two inches thick and not level--we need to lower it slightly and level it. So wish us luck! Or even better, come visit and join us in the destruction!