1810 Dining Room and Kitchen Remodel Part One

The remodel of the kitchen and dining room of the 1810 half of the duplex is finally underway. Since the 1808 kitchen remodel dragged on forever and it is really inconvenient to grill out every night and wash dishes in the bathtub I'm putting a lot of effort into making sure that anything that can be done ahead of time gets done before demolition of the kitchen. With that in mind I spent some time over the holidays building the custom section of countertop that will be needed later.

This is the same process I used last time, a double layer of industrial grade particle board glued and screwed together and pattern routed to the correct shape. I applied laminate to the edges first making sure to hide the seam along the edge that will be hid by the stove. Once applied I trimmed off the excess with a laminate trimming bit in a palm router.

With the edging applied and trimmed I then glued down the oversized piece for the top and used a J-roller to press it down firmly.

I then trimmed it up with the router and went over the sharp corners with a hand file to finish it off.

Since the existing countertop was falling apart and didn't match the kitchen anyway I decided to tear it off and install the new one for a few weeks until the whole kitchen gets demolished.

This past weekend I started some of the preparation work in the dining room. This time I am planning to tile the kitchen and dining room all at the same time so it makes sense to make sure the dining room floor is ready for tile before I start anything in the kitchen. I pulled off the trim and removed the carpet and pad from the dining room area.

I'm not planning on replacing the remaining carpet until after I move out so I made sure to leave enough to make it to the edge of the future tile and will trim back the excess later on.

Since the particle board underlayment isn't rigid enough to support the tile it had to go. I set the circular saw to 5/8ths and cut a grid into the floor and then pulled it up in small sections.

Once the particle board was gone and Echo inspected my work I added some 2" deck screws to secure the existing plywood to the floor joists. This helped tighten up the floor a bit and minimize a few of the squeaks.

Finally I put down a layer of 5/8ths BC grade plywood and screwed it down roughly every 5 inches with 1 1/4" deck screws. This firmed up the floor quite a bit and should be a nice stable foundation for the tile.