How We Remodeled Our Kitchen - Part 1

In 2010 we did a major kitchen renovation and home addition project. My wife and I did most of the work on the project ourselves. This will be the first in a series of blog posts chronicling the construction.

On March 14, 2010 we were ready for our contractor to break ground on the addition. Our contractor did the foundation, framing, removal of the outside kitchen wall and shingle installation. Outside of cabinet and counter top instantiation, we did everything else ourselves.

Along with doing quite a bit of online research, during the fall of 2009 we watched a lot of kitchen remodeling shows on HGTV (especially Kitchen Impossible and Spice Up My Kitchen.) Preliminary work on the kitchen began in early February 2010.

I drew the plans for the kitchen using a free trial of SmartDraw.

We ordered and bought windows and the door before breaking ground so our contractor would know exactly what size to make the openings in the framing.

We bought appliances and the TV so the cabinet maker would know the sizes for these openings. This is our actual oven sitting on the floor on clearance at Sears in Mishawaka.

The old kitchen floor needed some serious work in a few spots. In this area a copper pipe had a slow leak. The floor was warped from this leak when we moved in over 10 years earlier. The pipe had probably been leaking that whole time. We replumbed 95% of the entire house with PEX as part of the project. I sold the scrap copper at a recycling center in Elkhart. I felt really out of place at the recycle yard and honestly was a little scared. Anyway, I got $67 for the scrap copper. My van broke down on the way home. It cost about $267 to get the van fixed. There are no pipes running under the new slate floor in the kitchen now.

We stocked up on some tools we thought we might need before getting started. During the whole project we frequented both Lowe's and Menard's very frequently.

My father-in-law and a family friend helped us tear down the old deck.