Out with the old and in with the new!

In the last couple of posts we've perfected our baseboards and painted.  Now comes the hard labor...removing the old cabinets.

I know, I know.  I should have removed them before we painted.  Yes, of course, in a perfect world I would have had the time and money to do it all at once, but I need to live in the construction while working on it.  Thus, we're only doing one project at a time.  Yes, it does take more time and effort to do it this way, but I wasn't blessed with a ton of cash to just go ahead and do the whole house all at once.  I wish I were.  On a side note, if you'd like to contribute monetary donations to help this wish come true, I'd be more than willing to accept. ;)

Getting back to it...

Here's a reminder of what the cabinets and windows looked like before:

You can see why they had to go.  They're old and outdated, first of all.  Secondly, we found this once we started removing the old cabinets.

Gather, students!  This is the remains of a termite den.  They ate all the wood they could and moved on to a new home.  

Actually, the termites were found out by the previous owner way too long after they started making a home for themselves and were then evicted via termite tenting and ground treatment.  Needless to say, I have a lot of patching to do all over the house.  On the plus side, I'm putting all of my culinary skills to good use since patching termite homes is similar to frosting a cake...lol.

The termites demolished much of the cabinets this way, but strangely (Or maybe not.  I'm no termite expert.) left all the cabinet doors in tact.  I feel like there's something romantic about keeping something from the old house and having it in the new updated house.  So I had my husband save the cabinet doors to eventually build a dining room table out of.  He was against the idea in the beginning and it took a lot of convincing to get him on board, but now I think he's really digging on it.  

So far this is the table design that we have come up with.  I love herringbone and chevron patterns!  I also love the various shades of wood due to use over the years.  I feel like this piece will have so much character and meaning to us down the road.

Here's the hubs taking all of the door hardware off the cabinets before hulk smashing everything.

 There it goes!

 Goodbye old cabinets and appliances!  Hello more painting!  Check out the old shelf liners.  That's legit, right there! ;)

 A better view of the wall without the oven or wall cabinets.

There's where the old island was.

Once it was all removed I had a better idea of what I wanted the space to look like.  First thing we did was replace the window facing the street with a larger one.  I'm a sucker for natural lighting.  The brighter and more open, the better.

Ahhh, much better!

I loved the new window so much that I decided we needed one more on the the adjacent wall.  We moved the old fridge out of the way and cut a hole in the wall to add the new window.

With so much natural light, the house was starting to feel more modern already!

After installing the new windows we decided that we wanted to drywall most of the kitchen.  It would allow us to hide the wiring and give it a more modern feel.  Don't get me wrong, I love the old tongue-in-groove wood walls, but the mix of drywall and those old-style walls makes my heart sing.  I will never let my husband talk me into drywalling the entire house, but I do love how the mix of both looks together.  Again, with the romanticism of keeping the old with the new.  I just can't get enough of it!

Up next: Staining cabinets!