Old Kitchen Transformation - Phase One (Deconstruction)

The existing kitchen was a mess, and the more I looked at it, the more it became clear that it needed a complete gut job and rebuilt from scratch.  I started to think about the design of the new kitchen, but as time passed and I considered what I was going to do with the rest of the house, I realized I would have to think outside of the box.

The old cabinets were constructed from thin particle board, falling apart, with no decent drawers.  The appliances were mostly non-functional.  Thick concrete countertops covered with tile and dirty grout.  Everything was covered with a layer of grease that the seller's painters didn't even try to remove.

The windows were the cheapest I had ever seen: flimsy aluminum frames with a single layer of glass.

The base of the cabinets contained evidence of a mouse infestation,
but no sign of them since—not with five cats!

The old kitchen and small adjacent dining room just were not going to work well for the new kitchen (I had no use for a dedicated dining room).  I also wanted a pottery studio and was thinking about where I could put that.  It soon became apparent that the old kitchen/dining area would be ideal for my pottery studio, and the bedroom adjacent to the living room would make a much better kitchen.  So with that . . .

The kitchen had a drop ceiling (Why would they do that?) that left my 6'3" height feeling claustrophobic.  In California they mandate outside electrical breaker panels, with the breakers sharing the box with the meter, supposedly so the fire department can shut off power from the outside (but so can burglars).  The fire departments in the rest of the country seem to manage just fine with indoor boxes (they can shut power off from the outside by pulling the meter, if they have to).  So the breaker boxes are so cramped that most houses need subpanels for circuits that can't be accommodated by the outdoor box.  It also means that in a regular 2x4 stud wall, no insulation behind the box.  

So down came the drop ceiling, exposing a mass of loose wires that had been routed through that space.  Many were wires for kitchen circuits which were no longer going to be needed (garbage disposal, dishwasher, etc.)

I also discovered the water supply lines, haphazardly routed, and TWO sets of them, one gray plastic polybutylene, and one copper.  Which was active?  I discovered the polybutylene pipes were empty (a material judged to be defective); the copper were active but run without insulation in the attic for the full length of the house.  At first I couldn't understand why the "cold" water was scalding hot, until I went up in the attic where it was about 140˚ (no venting).  I ripped out all the old polybutylene and started on the copper, as I intended to replace all with PEX tubing, insulated, routed inside the house proper. 

The intense Southern California afternoon sun coming through the west-facing window did a great job of heating the room, so I deleted it, and also started to add a couple of inches of thickness to the wall for more insulation.

The sides and rear of the house were covered with stucco, but no sheathing underneath (just roofing paper over wires stretched across the studs.  I was shocked!  Went to old This Old House episodes and youtube for lessons on applying stucco. 

The little greenhouse window in the corner had to go; it worked as well as an oven to heat the room.  In fact, all the windows in the house had to go.  I ordered efficient Series 100 Andersen Windows (their value line, but very nice quality).

New window installed on the left; old one removed on the right.  In this case, the new
windows are the same size as the old ones, but installed 6" higher (because the drop ceiling was removed,
and my new countertops will be higher).  

So deconstruction came to a close, and the transformation of the old kitchen had started.  This first phase lasted late-July through November, 2013 (with other projects running concurrently).  Phase Two next time.