Demo Day

Since we have had the cabinets for about a week now, I thought that it was about time to start ripping the existing cabinets out. Luckily, my parents were in WI for a visit and they decided to come down and give me a hand. I actually wasn’t planning on getting any help. I thought that they wanted to come see the girls before heading back to Florida on Sunday, but when they showed up, my dad was ready to get into it.

I didn’t think it would be a tough demo once I figured out exactly how the existing cabinets were attached to the wall. There were no backs to them, the back of the cabinet was the actual wall, so I thought that would make things easy. But, no. There were a couple of boards that looked like they were nailed to the wall, so I got the impression those were attached to the studs and then the cabinets were attached to those boards. That was correct. However, it was a little more complicated than that.

These cabinets were nailed directly to the studs, and I think they were built to NEVER come out. The boards were doweled, AND nailed together. It took about 30 minutes to get the first the first one off the wall, and that was only because my father decided to smash it with a hammer. What appeared to be 5 or six separate cabinets was actually two. So we started by ripping the “dividing wall” of the cabinet out first and get the end cabinet off. After that, my father suggested a large pry bar, a sledge hammer, and a sawzall. I had a sawzall, but not the sledge or the prybar. And when I went to get the sawzall, I couldn’t find a blade for it. So that meant a trip to Menards.

Once we had the right tools for the job, things went pretty smooth. My dad went under the support boards with the sawzall to cut the nails, and then we pried and yanked to get the cabinets off the wall. After about three and a half hours and another trip to Menards (the saw blade got bent) the upper cabinets were down. The lower cabinets were much easier, except for the sink basin. That took a little more cutting to get around the water pipes coming up thru the floor. And as that final cabinet was coming off, I had a terrible thought that now I needed to figure out how to get the new cabinet (sink basin) in place without having to replace pipes. It wouldn’t be all that bad, except that I am really terrible at soldering, and I would hate to have to cut and resolder the pipes.

Then while we ran to Menards to get a second sawblade, Kris and my mother took care of ripping out the laminate floor. After a little clean up, the kitchen is now empty except for the fridge, and the stove. We have no running water, no sink, & no cabinets. We do still have the table though, I guess. Now I just need to rip the backsplash tiles off and then I should be ready to put the new cabinets up.