Out With The Old Cabinets

This is the last shot of the day. The dishwasher and a couple of base cabinets have been removed, and the peninsula counter has been severed to form an island, similar to what we will have in April. Jeff carted off this severed cabinet for the basement appartment of his duplex.

Note the exposed hydronic baseboard heater in front of the cabinet. In all there were almost 30 lineal feet of it in the room -- far too much -- so the decision to permanently remove this one was a no-brainer.

Here all the cabinets and exhaust hood are down.

This is where the corner cabinet used to be. Don't ask me why it got removed before the one to the right. Just fixated on working from left to right, I guess, however impractical.

Jeff is actually hard at work here, painstakingly removing the supporting screws in the far corner of the cabinet.

ATTACKING THE CABINETS

After the fireplace was fully exposed,
we began removal of the kitchen cabinets. Here, the hanging peninsula cabinets have already been taken down.

With everything fully exposed, it is apparent the fireplace was not centered and that is probably the reason for the empty box structure we removed on the right -- aesthetic balance.

Here you can see the exposed flue from the basement fireplace, too. It turned out that the boxed in enclosure to the right of the fireplace, where we expected to find a flue, was empty, wasted space. It has been an annoyance for 15 years, and now we find it serves no useful purpose. How many other goofy secrets does this house keep?

SECOND SATURDAY - Down with the Fireplace

On Saturday, Feb 24, the first order of business was to take down the mantel and tear out the rest of the wall and supporting structure. The small sledge was useful for this job. You see it here lying on the horizontal 2x4. Unfortunately, that is the last place I saw it, too, as it fell a moment later into the flue shaft to the right, to lie forever entombed behind the brick wall of the basement fireplace.

After cleaning up the mess from Johnny Jackhammer's phase of the job, what's left is a bare fireplace with a lonely mantel hanging in space. Inspecting the innards through the holes in the sheetrock, Roland was able to tell us what our options were. The verdict: remove this monster and put in a minimal-clearance gas unit on the wall to the right.

Enthusiasm undiminished, even after a hard day on THE HAMMER!

Under the rock, there remains an inch or more of mortar to remove, then sheetrock.

Look at the chips fly! Destructive behavior at its best!

FIRST SATURDAY: The Fireplace

Rarely do we see such enthusiasm for work in Johnny Jackhammer.

Last View of the Old Look

Here is the final view of the room, bare of all but the dining table, before demolition began the next morning.