We recently started on a Kitchen & Laundry Room remodel; we had been procrastinating too long and had to get over some work hurdles at the end of last year.
The Kitchen was one room that we didn't touch when we bought the house 16 years ago mostly because it was functioning and there were other spaces and items in the house that needed attention first. Well, time marched on and the economy took a dump and we procrastinated some more and blah blah blah...you know the drill. You've all been there at one point.
There are actually three rooms/spaces in all but are all connected along this side of the house: Laundry Room, Kitchen, and Breakfast Room. The house is a mostly original 1927 Transitional single story house pretty typical for the housing stock in the Hollywood area of Los Angeles. The house and garage were moved to its' current location (West Los Angeles) in 1950/51 when the Hollywood Freeway was built through the middle of the city; not knowing exactly where it came from, that move was approximately about 15 miles. (We recently did a major foundation & Living Room repair discussed here:
http://www.mye28.com/viewtopic.php?f=2& ... n#p1226645 and here earlier in this thread.)
Anyway, the spaces were in desperate need of a remodel since the last time it was done back in the '70's. We really wanted to get our Breakfast Room back (the small room has been home to the refrigerator, toaster oven, and microwave). The cabinets and sink were original from 1927 and were rather crude field built units, but made out of the clearest, cleanest Vertical Grain Douglas Fir you have ever seen. Pretty typical for this era house. All the tile work on the counters and backsplash were original as was the sink; all pretty beat up after 86 years.
A few right before photos just after/while we were emptying the spaces; it's amazing how long it took to pack these rooms:
Shot looking down with the Laundry Room in the background:
Shot looking up into the Breakfast Room at the top of the photo:
Demo: Boom
Bam:
Crash:
Here it was cleaned up:
The things you find hidden: The instructions written by the foreman 86 years ago:
Roughs are done: Plumbing, Electrical, and HVAC.
Framing for the new arches into the Dining Room:
Drywall and Plaster are underway and the finish coat is being put on as I write this:
One to the big hidden infrastructure costs was re-wiring this side of the house. We had a new 200A Service Panel installed last year but never parsed out the circuits and wire runs; with the new Kitchen needing a pile of dedicated circuits, we had to have this done now. It was an expensive, major PITA as they had to work in the attic and under the house running new conduit, isolating neighboring rooms, bypassing old ones and running new wire. A necessary upgrade.
Next up is cabinet assembly and base installation. We decided to go with Ikea cabinets with a custom wood fronts (doors, drawers, and panels). It's a good compromise and economical to boot; Ikea makes a pretty good cabinet for the money and all the hardware is Blum (one of the best German hardware companies). For the money, you can't beat Ikea; they are a fraction of the cost of any custom cabinets or even what you get at Home Depot. We were going to do Ikea anyway but we had a client who wanted to replace her Ikea kitchen last November and we were very impressed by how they turned out as was the high end custom General Contractor who assembled & installed them (the only reason for the replacement was a water leak took out pretty much everything in the house).
After that: flooring
Our Dining Room is serving as our temporary Kitchen for the next few months. This room has gotten the short end of the stick lately: last year at this time it was our Living Room while the real one was being remodeled.
Anyone want a nice used original 40" Wedgewood double oven? It's too big to go where the range needs to go in the new design. I hate to give it up, but we have no choice
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Works great!
