The New House... #6: Kitchen Nightmares - No, not the Gordon Ramsay kind...

Well, it’s official, we’ve moved. This past Friday was the move day, and despite last minute issues, (the contractor who was dealing with the upstairs bathroom decided that he didn’t want to show up to finish the job, the company who we got the vanity from gave us totally inaccurate rough plumbing specs which required a complete re-do of the plumbing, etc. etc. etc… all will be revealed in coming blogs!) we were living in the house. There’s still enough to do to keep me going with weekend and after-work projects for the next year, but at this point the basics are done.

Let’s all jump into the time machine, and go back to recap how it all went down…

Kitchen Nightmares:

After clearing the super-nasty cabinets out, I started taking the old self-adhesive linoleum tiles off, and discovered that there was apparently a slow leak in the fridge that had never been fixed.

Under the tiles was a layer of 1/4” plywood, with two layers of linoleum under that, a 3/4” plywood subfloor and 3/4” planks below that. As I pulled up the tile, I discovered that the 1/4” ply was still damp, and the water had gone through both layers of linoleum at the wall, and had rotted through both subfloor layers below that.

I started cutting…


In order to get it all out, I ended up having to go back a full joist away

Under the sink was a similar situation, but I was able to save the planks and only needed to take off the 3/4” plywood:

I didn’t take any pictures, but when I started prepping the ceiling for paint, stripping off the peeling paint, I found that the layer of paint was pretty much all that was holding the ceiling in place under the tub upstairs! I ended up having to re-drywall a section of ceiling that was about 6 sq. ft.

When this house was built in the early 60’s, they decided to use 7/16” drywall in 2’ x 8’ strips, with a 7/16” layer of plaster skimcoat over the top. Makes for a very solid wall, but repairs are complicated! I found that using 5/8” drywall with a 1/4” luan sublayer was close enough, so I used that to repair the holes…

Speaking of holes, with the holes in the cedar shingle siding above two of the windows:

Water had been getting in and rotted out two sills, all the brick molding, and even had gotten behind the interior walls and caused significant damage:

Needless to say, I had some work to do to get it all patched up…

I’ll try to keep adding entries in the coming days, and will eventually catch up… Stay tuned!

-- Ryno