Kitchen

 View from the inside, just before the old window was ripped out.

The old framing was carefully dismantled, and most of it was reused as possible during the rest of the remodel.

Yet another place where we spent much more than we wanted to, but where it was worth it in the end.

We had originally planned to put in french doors, since we really preferred them to sliding patio doors. But once we really started thinking about how we would be using the doors, we realized that a sliding door would make more sense. Having a screen that you can slide into place is nice to have in the summertime, even though we really don’t get all that many insects here. In the end, we found these Marvin doors that were fiberglass outside and fir on the inside (“Woodclad”). Since we’d be able to stain them to match the rest of our fir trim, we thought that they would look fine in the kitchen. And they really do. We have had several people comment about how they didn’t think they liked sliding patio doors, but they really loved these.

Framing in progress for the new patio door.  The wall had to be rebuilt where the old window was on the left side.  The continous 12″ header that was put in during the last remodel made this job as easy as it could be.

This was one of the worst “surprises” along the way.  Much of the crawlspace area had been sealed off and had been inaccessible since the house was built in 1911.  We found that someone had gotten lazy and left dirt piled up under and against the main beam.  Definitely not what you want to find…

The good news was that the the old growth douglas fir that our house was framed with is an incredible wood.  It had been sitting against the dirt for 93 years, and it had rotted only about 1.5″ on the bottom edge.  And there was no insect damage.  If this had been modern wood, it would have disintegrated long ago.  When we opened up the back wall of the house, we found a piece of wood from the 60′s that had been chewed to pieces by insects.  The adjacent, original stud that it had been nailed to didn’t have a single bite in it.  The bugs just aren’t interested  in this wood.  If they were, the back end of the house would’ve sunk down years ago!

The back ceiling has been opened up, and the old, unnecessary header is now gone.

Julio, after a day of tearing apart the kitchen.  The old cellulose insulation mixed in with ancient dust was definitely the messiest part of the job.

Rather than run a few extra feet of wire, they had sealed up this splice in the wall. While it’s doubtful that it actually would’ve caused any problems, it’s not a good practice (nor does it meet code) to seal up a splice in a wall cavity.

Although this wasn’t as bad as the wire that was routed into the bathroom plaster (and skim coated over), it was one of many finds that led us to the decision to rewire the entire house. Since wiring is one of Julio’s strong suits, it was much more of a time issue than a money one. And in the early stages of the project, time seemed infinite. Months later, that sentiment would change..

This was our pile of old cabinets out on the back patio.  Since they were solidly built and in good condition, we wanted to try to find a new home for them.

We did end up getting a response from craigslist, and a guy took them with the intention of pulling them apart for the wood and creating new cabinets for a friend of his.  That felt much better than just chucking them.  We went to great effort to find homes for anything salvageable in this project.

This was the original, narrow cabinet.  We later expanded it after removing the chimney.

This is the header that divided the main kitchen area from the nook (which used to be a porch).  Once this was removed, we had the full height across the entire kitchen.  This shot was taken from the kitchen side, so the area behind the header is the cavity above the nook.  This was completely non-structural, so it was really surprising that they built it out of sandwiched 2x12s.  Obviously, lumber used to be a lot cheaper.