1810 Dining Room and Kitchen Remodel Part Two

The kitchen and dining room remodel is now nearly complete. I meant to post more updates on this progress as it happened but my camera started flaking out and was out for repair for awhile (Huge kudos to Canon for standing behind their products and fixing an 8 year old camera for free!). Now that things are mostly wrapped up here are some of the pictures I did manage to take of the process.

The top layer of vinyl flooring in the entryway came out fairly easily.

The bottom layer peeled off nicely as well but left the paper backing so we had to soak it down with water and scrap it up.

Laura took care of most of this while I stood around and took pictures :)

Once it gets soaked through the adhesive releases and the paper backing scrapes up easily. Its a messy process but it works well.

Here is a last look at some of the old cabinets before demolition.

While gutting the bathroom I managed to punch a hole in the wall trying to get the vanity out. As much as I hate patching drywall you would think I would have been a bit more careful.

I cut the whole into a nice square and then added some plywood scraps to support the patch.
I then screwed on a scrap piece of drywall and then spent the next day or so taping, mudding, and sanding until the whole was no more.



With the drywall patched and the rest of the cabinets ripped out it was time for paint. It was nice to be done with demolition and start the process of rebuilding.

The bathroom looks quite a bit better with a coat of paint and a new light fixture.

After paint we installed the upper cabinets.

After the upper cabinets were in it was time to finally clear out the appliances and start the tiling process. The first step was to cut and install the Ditra underlayment.
When I remodeled the 1808 half of the duplex I did the tile in two phases. This time I wanted to get it all done at once. The biggest challenge with this was getting the entire kitchen and dining room completely empty. The living room was a bit cramped at this point.
I ended up laying the tile in a few stages over about a week. This allowed me to pre-cut a bunch of tiles and set them while still having access to either the front door or the garage entry.
Below you can see stage 2 of 3 complete.

After all of the tile was set Laura helped me prep and install the grout. In my opinion this is the hardest part of the process so the help was really appreciated. One interesting note is that we used microfiber cloths to clean the tiles after the initial grouting and wow does that work better than the standard sponges. Between Laura's help and using the microfiber cloths grouting seemed like a breeze compared to when I did the 1808 half of the duplex.
Once the tile was in and grouted progress really picked up and it wasn't long before the cabinets were in, countertops were installed, and the kitchen had appliances and running water again.

It's nice to have a stove again!

The lower bath is now functional again as well.

At this point I'm working on trimming out the toe-kicks and exposed backs of the cabinets and once that is done I can re-install the base trim and call this project done.