For a variety of reasons we have left our plumbing project 90% complete but untested, and have moved on to working on the kitchen. As many-a-home-renovators have said, one project leads to another, and so it has been for us.

My well-intentioned plan to leave the kitchen untouched has been tossed out the window (along with the window itself, I might add).

Installing kitchen windows

In concept alone, I adore the kitchen’s style and decor; the teal paint, vintage wallpaper, brown linoleum, cookstove and porcelain sink.

Whimfield kitchen - before

Unfortunately, in reality, the kitchen was beyond repair: rotten linoleum, rusty cabinets, leaking windows, and at least forty years of accumulated scum—even the wall moulding had disintegrated into a crumbly mass. Yes, I am sure some brave soul could have taken some Ajax and a box of Q-Tips and saved this kitchen, but with our desire to insulate the walls and our need to make the house livable as soon as possible, we started to dismantle the room.

Carefully removing and saving what we could (most notably the moulding around the doors and windows), we began stripping the room down to its basic elements so that we could insulate the walls.

As the removal progressed, we kept noticing that integral pieces of wood—let’s say, for example, important beams that hold up the house–were missing and in the beams’ place was merely a pile of sawdust. Likewise, the original hardwood floors underneath the kitchen’s linoleum were disturbingly thin, sagging,  and eaten. Note the hole in the floor!

Kitchen floor - hole!

Who has been eating the floors and structural supports, you ask? Why, the “powder post beetle”, that’s who! After much cursing and many calls to pest experts, we decided to remove the entire floor right down to its bare bones and lie down particle board in its place.

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With the new and improved floor in place, we’ve moved on to insulating the walls.

Insulating the kitchen
Insulated kitchen

Insulating has been pretty straight-forward and quick. We’re just waiting for our door and over-sized windows to come in from the manufacturer, and then we’ll install the vapour-barrier and cover it all up with fresh drywall.

In general, we’ve been spending all day at our house and sleeping in a nearby hotel. We haven’t quite figured out when we’ll give up the hotel and make the transition to living in the house full time, but we anticipate that once we can turn the water on that we’ll make the switch.

The days are long but things are good! We don’t have access to the Internet at our house or the hotel, so computer use is few and far between…

Thanks for all your positive comments!

Pssst: Since this entry was published, I later posted a sort-of “after” photo of the kitchen here.