The Dust Bowl

Two words to sum up Thanksgiving 2014: Turkey and Tile.  Jon and I have been in the middle of a slow kitchen remodel.  After this weekend, I think I can officially say the demo is done. 

 

Here's a couple before pictures from June.  Forgive me if I have showed you these before.  It's hard to remember what has been posted when the demo takes roughly five months. :) 

 

Motsinger kitchen, June 2014

Note the wall behind the table.

 

Here's another picture of the wall from another angle. 

We have plans to make a long farm house table and wanted lots of seating in the kitchen, thus the plan to remove this wall was hatched.  Now, if you have never stepped onto the slippery slope of remodeling, it is much like the classic kids' book, "If you give a mouse a cookie".  One thing naturally leads to another, and it's hard to find a good stopping point.  Hence, our weekend of tile removal. 

Here's the only really grainy picture I can find right now of a half torn out wall from the summer.

 

We also decided to take out the upper cabinets for a better sight line.  It's probably the best thing we've done yet in our demo stage.  It makes a huge difference. 

 

They weren't even too terribly difficult to take out. 

 

Okay, all this is background on our kitchen demo that was done previously. 

This is what we tackled this weekend.  Tile.

This tile really wasn't completely terrible.  The biggest problem with it was a rectangular concrete patch where a wall once stood.  The snowball continues.  This tile was also really weird in that it didn't have a standard thickness, making it really uneven and lumpy to walk on.  Ah, the 70's.  What were you thinking with your lumpy to walk on tile? 

Josh was here to help us, and I'm so glad we had three adults to tackle this project.  It would have been so much harder with just Jon and I.  Thanks, Josh!  Next year I promise we will just focus on turkey!  Here are Josh and Jon doing a little pre-whack prep to hopefully contain the dust.   

 

Everyone grabbed a hammer and tried to get a square out.  It was pretty much impossible.

Enter a jackhammer (officially a hammer drill) rental.

 

Mostly Jon jackhammered, Josh scooped broken tiles in piles, and I hauled a wagon filled with broken tile and two monkeys countless times to the dumpster, but Jon got a picture of me jackhammering, too.

 

And now we have a concrete floor! All it took to get here was a four-hour rental with a jackhammer to pop up the tile, a four-hour rental with a different bladed jackhammer to get up the remaining thin set, and four hours every day for the rest of our life to try and get all the dust cleaned up. 

 

And viola!  Demo done!  Now time for the fun part, putting the kitchen back together.  We've got picking flooring, counters, backsplash, and paint ahead of us!  Tips and advice welcome, especially regarding flooring options as that is likely what will happen next.