Well here we are. As you recall this began simply enough to fix a broken pipe one cold winter morning. Alas, that was not the house’s plan. As many of you I’m sure know, once you peel back, open up, expose, etc…one thing leads to another and now we found ourselves in the middle of a full on kitchen remodel, months ahead of schedule.

The broken pipe lead to exposing molded cabinets, which led to molded drywall, which led to drafts behind the wall and the discovery of rotten beams on that exterior wall. One thing after another and we’ve moved forward step by step into this to clean, remove, refresh and make the kitchen’s integrity secure. While we had things exposed it made sense to move forward with the rest of the kitchen remodel, rewiring and tear down of the walls we discussed earlier, adding support beams where needed.

SUPPORT BEAM: After meeting with the engineer, we tore down a load bearing wall and it was now up to us to get that support beam in place. So how do two people (one of them female) raise a 12 foot, 4 inches wide, 12 inches tall support beam you ask? One foot at a time (and with a lot of freak out faces on my part. lol).

Paul using his strength and myself using tools, support braces, etc…, we were able to lift the board, a foot at a time. As Paul would lift on one side, I nailed a small 2 x 4 (approx 8 inches long) board underneath. This propped up the beam on one side. Then Paul would go to the other side, lift that end, I would run over there and nail a second board underneath it. Now we’ve raised the board another foot. We kept this up, removing and replacing the small board, a foot at a time, an end at a time until we actually did it and raised the beam all the way to the top! Just the two of us!

Below are some snapshots of the board going up, end by end, foot by foot and finally, up and in place! At time I also used the scaffolding to help prop up the beam as we hoisted it. Between the small boards and the scaffolding “extra hand”, necessity is the mother of invention!

Done and in secure. Exhale!

SAY GOODBYE TO THE OLD GLASS CABINET: For those of you who don’t know, there is/was a small glass cabinet in the kitchen off to the side which no longer fit the room. It wasn’t anything special and was a fairly recent addition, so we decided to use the space differently. I got to take this out myself. By comparison, this was the easy job! LOL. Unscrew this and that, remove the doors (which yes, we saved for possible later use), bank on a few boards and now we have a space.

THE BUTLER’S PANTRY: Simply to see what it looked like, I slid the Hoosier cabinet into what we are calling the “butler’s pantry” to see how it might look. That area opened up really gives us some extra room for the kitchen now! Side note: after taking some measurements, we’re pretty sure it is not staying there but it is nice to see it in that space (vs the bathroom it was before). lol.

MORE WALLPAPER: And oh yes, as I removed an old board in the kitchen, look what I found underneath; more old wallpaper! I wonder what year this was put up. By the pattern and what was on top of it (different more modern wallpaper from probably the 40’s), this appears to have been prior to that. Maybe early 1900’s?

EXPOSED BRICK: Okay, now THIS below is one of my favorite discoveries of the kitchen. Since we know that this protrusion into the kitchen is the backside of the dining room fireplace, we knew it had to be brick. But the question was, what kind of brick and how did it look? One day, I couldn’t help myself and we started chipping away…and yes! Beautiful brick that seems to need only relatively minor repairs lay underneath.

My vision is exposed brick on this wall and strip that paint below and stain the wood. Between the beautiful old Hoosier cabinet we found, my favorite radiator in the house, the butler’s pantry and this exposed brick…this can be a truly amazing kitchen. More to come…