kitchen demo

We've been planning on renovating our kitchen since we moved in two and a half years ago. It was the only thing about our new {old} house that I really, truly hated.  We set up a very functional "kitchenette" in the laundry room, which we are still using.

One of the first things we (Kevin) did after moving in was tear into the kitchen.  I had some trepidation about ripping the whole thing clean out right away, but the fact that we had two major plumbing leaks in the kitchen within the first few days of turning the water on really helped his case for demolition.  The first thing he did was take down the wall between the dining room and the kitchen.  In the process we took out the lowered ceiling that had been installed in the kitchen, which raised the ceiling about a foot and a half. We discovered several drain and heating pipes that could not be rerouted, but we were happy we were able to open it up as much as we did.  These pictures were taken a few weeks apart from about the same angle, looking into the dining room from the kitchen.

A few weeks later, I came home from work and found that Kevin had torn out the wall between the foyer and the kitchen.  I wasn't too sure about this either (can you tell which one of us is the cautions one?) but he was right...again.  With two walls gone and the ceiling raised, the kitchen was actually starting to feel open!
 

The other major demo we did in the kitchen was the staircase to the outside and basement. There was already one staircase to the basement on the opposite side of the kitchen (right next to the new foyer entrance). The staircase was behind a badly placed heater element and was camouflaged by a set of faux cabinets which had been decorated with artificial flowers.  We figured we could add some valuable square footage to our small kitchen by covering the staircase and moving the heater to somewhere other than the middle of the floor.  The staircase was split, with the external door halfway down.  Kevin ripped out the faux cabinets, moved the heater and covered the staircase.  Then he installed a set of french doors, with plans to build an external staircase from ground level up to the doors in the side yard.

Since then we have ripped out the old flooring, which was not salvageable and put down new sub-floor.  We knocked out the old plaster walls and did some drywalling, but we're now at the point where we need to hire some subcontractors for electrical, plumbing and HVAC for the gas range and hood we want to install.