Kitchen Renovations, Part 6

Lessons Learned

For the final touches, I finished up the trim around the floor, doors, windows, and ceiling and installed the dishwasher, oven, and microwave.

The one thing in this kitchen project that I had going for me when I started is that I had intended to gut the kitchen, as opposed to just doing part of it. I have learned in the past that often once you start on small stuff, you realize you need to do the big stuff. This being the case, I had all the drywall, cabinets, and other odds and ends ready and waiting for me to install. There were a few things, however, that presented a few learning experiences:

Lesson #1: Working Around Existing Fixtures

I did get hit a few surprises and snafus during this job. The first happened when ripping out the old floor and walls. The heaters in my kitchen are cast iron, baseboard heaters that run along much of the wall. When the kitchen was first decorated as it was, the heaters must not have been installed. This being the case, many nails were behind the heaters that were holding in the walls and the floorboards were around the pipes. None of this was a huge problem, but it did make it difficult. I thought about temporarily removing the heaters, but didn't want to deal with draining and refilling my heating system.

Lesson #2: Making a Large Sink Fit

I ran into another issue when installing the sink in the counter top. I had a double sink and it was slightly wider than the 30" wide cabinet under it. I guess you could call this bad planning, but when I bought the cabinets, I wasn't sure which sink I was going to use. The sink I chose was a white enamel, cast iron one that I had in my basement, but didn't know if it would clean up (it did). I ended up cutting out small portions on the sides of the cabinet where nobody will ever see them. Lucky for me, with these cut outs, the sink fit without me having to touch the adjoining cabinets.

Lesson #3: Houses May Have Unique Loopholes

Another surprise occurred when I opened the wall I discovered there used to be a window that was then turned into a door. This was in a brick wall that had been covered with the paneling. I've known that my house used to be more than one house, with each having two inner brick walls that were concealed by drywall. In updating some plumbing to the kitchen pre-demo, I also discovered that between the first floor and second floor under the kitchen there is a flat roof. While it serves no purpose now, it does make it easier to run plumbing or electrical stuff because there is a space between the second floor and the ceiling/roof of the first floor.

While this was a fun job to do, I am happy to be done with it and get on to other more inventive projects.