Remodeling a Kitchen

These are some of the things I learned while remodeling a kitchen. Since we wanted to keep using parts of the kitchen during some of the construction, I did it a peice at a time. I have put pictures on Yahoo photos.

Removing old cabinets

We removed the upper kitchen cabinets first. I did it myself by using a scissors car jack and jack stands with a brick and boards to get heights close. The cabinets were nailed to the walls, and were a single piece for each wall.

We ordered the kitchen cabinets from American Woodmark through Home Depot.

Ceiling

I replastered the ceiling. We didn't have the lower cabinets removed yet, but we put some pictures on Craigslist to see if anybody wanted them. We got about 10 hits, but only a few were interested. We ended up selling them for 350$. We tried putting the appliances out the same way, but didn't get any takers.

We received the new kitchen cabinets sooner than expected and since we don't have a garage, our living room was unusable for a while.

Installing Upper Cabinets

I installed the upper cabinets by using the old lower cabinets and countertop. This allowed me to use the old car jack approach to install the upper cabinets. Everybody says that the most important thing is to make the cabinets level. I don't beleive this especially in California where everything can move anyway. The most important thing is to get the cabinets so that the eye cannot see any problem, and that the cabinets are close to level. Our ceiling had a dip and was off from level by about 3/8" over a six foot run. Instead of making it level and leaving a 3/4 inch gap at one end, I compromised and left it a bit off level, and about a 3/8 inch gap at one end. This meant that the first corner cabinet had to be 3/8 inches from the ceiling if I wanted other cabinets to touch the ceiling. The distance from the ceiling will depend on your trim size, and the trim will cover up gaps. Putting up the first cabinet took me a long time because I started in a corner where the cabinet had to be correct in all directions.

An important point to the upper cabinets is to line up the hood with where the range will be. The Home Depot people that lay out the kitchen cabinets do not know everything correctly with where spacers are required. I had to put in a 1/8 inch filler strip so that the doors would open correctly. Luckily I had purchased a 4 inch wide filler piece that I thought would be required for the lower cabinets, but the end of the lower corner cabinets can be positioned away from the wall so that there is no gap up to the range.

Removing Lower Cabinets

I loostened up the countertops so that I could paint the walls behind them. Then I loostened up the lower cabinets so that we could give them to the buyers. Up to this point, we had new upper, old lower cabinets, sink and appliances all working.

We removed the old cabinets and sink, and got some more living room space since all of the old cabinets were gone. We used a few of the new cabinets while they were in boxes temporarily for shelf space in the kitchen. This also freed up the living room more.

Flooring

I started removing the flooring while my wife was on a business trip. I don't know how the contractors do it, but it was not easy removing the linoleum. I eventually just pulled up the particle board subflooring along with the linoleum. I would have had to do this anyway since I was going to install a tile floor.

I reinforced the flooring with some screws to try to eliminate squeaks. I also poored glue between where two pieces of plywood were touching to remove a sqeak. The Internet is full of ideas about squeaks. I could not get below the floor since there is a carport beneath the kitchen.

I used Hardibacker as a subfloor for the tile. I used the 1/2 inch type, but probably should have used the 1/4 inch so that the tile would have matched the height of the flooring that it butts up to. Purchasing a tough drill for mixing was well worth it, and was not all that expensive.

Putting in the tile was much easier than I expected. Most places recommend starting in the middle, but I started with the row that will butt up to the other flooring. That way I could make a straight line there. I bought a tile saw from Home Depot for a bit over 80 dollars. I put in all pieces of tile first without any cutting. Then I waited for it to dry, and cut all pieces at once and left them close to where they could be installed. Then I went and installed all of them at once.

One part I didn't really think about is that the flooring must be very level and flat. Otherwise some tiles may stick up on the edges compared to the next tile.

Installing Lower Cabinets

The lower cabinets went in easily with no trouble. Once again I made some 1/2 inch filler pieces so that the cabinet doors in corners would open.

We found a guy off of Craigslist that installed our granite countertops for about 1500$. It took him 4 days over a couple of weekends since we were on vacation during some of this time.

List of Tools and Materials