A few weeks ago I shared our kitchen “before” pictures. We’ve made some significant progress since then (more than I’ll be sharing today), but I thought today I’d show you the next step of our Kitchen Remodel : The Gutting.
Our original kitchen was a small-ish galley style kitchen with very little counter space and what we did have was tiled. And if you didn’t know – tiled, small counters do not work for cake decorating. At all!
So we decided to completely gut the kitchen and while leaving some of the layout the same. We’re also making a few changes and expanding the kitchen into our formal dining for what will become my “cake room”.
I won’t ramble on too much, but here are some pictures of the process of tearing everything out. I’m going to go one section at a time.
The original kitchen.
Here’s what the right side of our kitchen looked like before:
And here’s the process of tearing it all out:
Note… it’s nasty ya’ll. And my house hasn’t been truly clean since all this began. But I’m going to share all the pics anyway 🙂
Richy started by tearing down the soffit above the cabinets – then also the upper cabinets.
I was really glad to see that the ceiling had been finished inside the soffit – although it will require some touching up. Granted, the ideal would be to scrape down all that ugly texture but I don’t have the mental energy to think about that just yet.
Since we’re opening the kitchen up to the living room, he continued to tear out cabinets and the wall and removing cabinet doors. He knocked out some shelves on the end and moved my oven down there so I could continue to bake through this stage.
He threw up a temporary wall for support when he got ready to cut off the studs. When it was ready, he put a beam across the opening to support the ceiling.
I didn’t get a good pic of the beam at this point, but a couple of weeks later, the cabinet maker came and ripped out everything else and cleaned up the area. Oh and after they left – Richy put the oven back for me so I could still bake.
I’m not lying when I tell you that’s how I baked this cake and this cake and this one (and a few others!). It was an adventure for sure!
A couple of days after the pic above, we started thinking about our design and decided to just take the wall out altogether. Originally we were going to leave a the wall and have it come up behind the counter 6-8″. But then we realized we’d rather it be completely open… so we took the wall down!
That also allowed the cabinets to push back a few more inches toward the living room giving us a tiny bit more room in the narrow kitchen. I love it!!
The other side.
Now, for the left side of the kitchen. I don’t have the step-by-step photos because the cabinet makers actually cleared it all out in just a couple of hours. I wasn’t there to take pics 🙁
Here’s the before:
And here’s a couple of after pictures. Oh and they’re super yucky – I guess that’s what happens behind 40+ years of cabinets.
The cabinet crew took down everything, then my hubby took down the sheetrock and cleaned up a couple of days later:
At this point, I no longer have a sink or dishwasher or cooktop (still present, but unhooked). Only my refrigerator and oven were available. This is when things got really challenging – eight people to cook for. And all the dishes having to be done in bathroom sinks. Not. Fun.
The formal dining room doorways.
Then there are the doorways in the formal dining room. We didn’t so much “gut” or “demo” these rooms but we did make some changes to the original home.
First, we widened the doorway between the kitchen and dining room.
Here are the before pictures:
And here’s a messy “after” picture:
We also closed the doorway between the formal dining and formal living (known as our “piano room”). Here’s the before picture (looking from the formal living into the formal dining):
For whatever reason, I can’t find a single picture of that doorway from the other direction so I don’t have a great “before” picture.
But not long after Richy started working on it, I remembered to take a picture and got this. It’s just after we started closing the wall (because I’m going to have an entire wall of storage there!):
And here’s the finished wall all closed up and when we were using the room as a make-shift kitchen (new stove in the back corner):
So that’s that! Our demo is complete and we’re ready to start on the new stuff! As I write this, the cabinets are about 90% done. We’re still waiting on countertops, finished paint, then new floors and backplash. Oh, then painting all the walls/trim again.
It feels like it’ll never end, but I hope to share more pics soon.
Stay tuned for progress….

It’ll be great when it’s finished. Hang in there.
Thank you!
Looks great! It will be so worth it when it’s all finished 🙂
Yessss!!!
Airs fantastic your hubby can do so much! Big savings— Can’t wait to see finished project,
Thanks Margie!
The changes so far look wonderful even though messy. It always is during a remodel. You will get there.
Thank you Amy!
It’s looking great. I love your convention oven. Where did you purchase them ?
Lisselotte – we got it at Sears!
Nice. I will be checking that store in town. Thank you for replying back
It will be done before you know it! ..Hang in there..and you’ll love it!
Rose, I’m soo excited and happy for you and your family. I’m looking forward to seeing the final pictures. I’ve lived through house construction projects. The finished project is so worth all the dust, late dinners and craziness that goes with remodeling.You will all appreciate the effort and hard work you’ve gone through. It’s going to be beautiful!
Hi Rose, our house burned down on May 27, 2018 and we still have finished construction on it! I did get a totally new kitchen, we totally new EVERYTHING out of it, though I would say this is NOT the way to get that done, we literally lost EVERYTHING we owned and have had to replace it all. At this point we are using paper plates because we don’t have any dishes. I lost all my kitchen stuff, blender, food processor and so on and so forth. I realize that I don’t really know what I lost until I try to make recipes. I did replace my Kitchen-aid mixer, which was buttercup yellow, I think it was called with a pretty new pink one, I have nothing else pink in my new kitchen but I liked it because it was a breast cancer awareness color. All my new appliances are black stainless and I now have have Ubatuba color granite counter tops with a creamy white color cabinets and a soft, light gray color walls, called Spun Wool by Behr paint. Our new floors are a light gray and tan color laminate. I have all Samsung appliances, including a Family Hub 28.7 CF refrigerator and a new 3 bowl sink, with one large, one medium and 1 small sink that has a garbage disposal in it with a new Moen touch-less faucet and a new Instant Hot water heater that keeps the hot water long past what it used to be, it is also set really high at 140 degrees, it will burn you if you don’t add some cold water to it. I also have a new Samsung dishwasher which kind of sucks because it doesn’t hold as many dishes as my old one, which had quit working a couple of years earlier. We have an Insinkerator garbage disposal which is very quiet! The only place I chose to have a different brand, LG washer and dryer and I found an ice maker and cold water dispenser that makes “Sonic” ice. It was a $4500.00 machine that I got for $850.00, it was the only thing my husband was excited about.
So, basically be happy you aren’t replacing everything in your house instead of just your kitchen.
Sincerely,
Karla
omgoodness – we live in sf Bay Area and have the same cabinets in your old kitchen – that is so funny…our house was built in 1950’s
Question: I came upon your blog because I was googling ‘Intermintent Fasting……
1. Are you still doing it?
2. How much have you lost?