Day 217: Bringing down da house

Been a busy couple of days at the house, so just starting to get caught up on my blog updates.

The only thing more damaging than a man with a saw and a hammer is 4 men with 4 saws and 4 hammers. Today the calvalry arrived, Falcon Windows and Tom to move things along. The house was a complete construction site.

The last thing to take out of the kitchen was the countertop. The boiler piping was nicely weaved in and out of the countertop and well beyond my tool and skill capacity. Tom helped out with his Dewalt oscillating multi-tool - an amazing piece of kit that made short work of the counter

And that was it. The kitchen was no longer a kitchen. Not really sure what it was really. Just a mess I think.

We also started taking up the floor and found some nice disco tiling. It wasn't going to be Staying Alive for very long however. Problem was that it was nailed and glued down and didn't want to give up without a fight. We got there in the end and finally found the floorboards.

The piping underneath was a rats nest. Tom fixed it up with some lay flat plastic pipe. Also really cool stuff. Getting lengths of copper under the floor would have been next to impossible. Which is why the original was so crooked.

We (Tom) also drilled a new hole for the kitchen waste pipe to make it easier to connect the sink in the new location.

This will the worst the kitchen will look hopefully .. now the rebuild begins. As a taste, I've shown the wall that I've re-plastered which is where the new rad will be going. Overall, happy with the result.

Stay tuned. Lots of more updates to come .....

  

Day 215: It's going down

A busy couple of days on the kitchen demo front. It took much longer than anticipated to remove all our stuff and furniture out of the kitchen. The kids room is serving as a make-shift version for the time being. When everything is out of the cabinets, you realise how much stuff you really have.

 

Anyway, my task for the last 2 days was to "de-wood" the kitchen. While it must have been fashionable in the 70's, the wood looks pretty darn awful these days. The major concern I had was, "What was hiding behind the wood?" It's often used to conceal some nastiness behind. One way to find out though .... HAMMER TIME!!!!

 

As it came down, I realised a few things:

1. It was on there pretty good. Lots of glue, nails and screws. Grrrr

2. The walls were pretty darn awful in a couple of places - plaster and dry lining here we come

3. The ceilings are in pretty good shape. A nice surprise as I had planned on tearing them down

 

On the mini-extension however they were not. Not a big surprise with the giant crack down the middle. I used my trusty X-tex to remove the last little bit of Artex paint and started tearing down the plaster. What a mess. But I got it down eventually and could access the ceiling void above. Good thing too as there is absolutely no insulation up there. Something to put on before I plasterboard it over. With the new rad, flooring and window, this is going to be the warmest room in the house.

 

Also to come out was the cupboard. Silly me, I thought this was going to be an easy task. I didn't realise that the cupboard has been in place for over 70 years. I know this from advanced carbon dating (and finding a flyer from 1941). It was practically build into the framework of the house! One shelf was solid wood 2" thick hammered into the brickwork. That alone could have supported about 3-4 of me. I guess they built things well back in the day.

 

Not that everything is basically down (de-wooded). Time to start cleaning up my mess. Stay tuned....