My Kitchen Is Destroyed!!

   It's true. It's almost completely demolished. My dining room too. Several months ago we had renovated our living room and refinished the solid oak hardwood floors. All of them were needing refinished, but one step at a time. We have wood floors throughout except the bathrooms. We have been putting off the ones in the kitchen and dining room simply because we wanted to update them but just wasnt sure how far we wanted to take it. We had thought about just removing wallpaper in both and just painting for now, but the words of our 33 yr old son kept ringing in my ears since thr last time we renovated the kitchen many years ago. We had a seperate kitchen and dining when we renovated before. And I had always missed my island that we had before. So now we decided to go for it and break down walls.
      We knocked down the two walls dividing these rooms. Removed my kitchen booth, removed wallpaper, and we now have one large room about 20ft x 28ft.

This was our kitchen and dining room before. Nice. I liked the booth. But it needed updated. We are more traditional than country.

This is my handy husband removing the walls. Where the old air conditioner is will soon be a new window to help bring in more natural light.

This is most of the debris.

We are also going to paint our old cabinets a fresh white. And the new cabinets needed will also be painted. After much research, we decided to use Sherwin Williams ProClassic Alkyd paint, and their shellac primer. We are very impressed so far with both. He started out trying to spray the shellac. NOT a good idea. This stuff dries fast and HARD! It started plugging the guns knozzle and the shellac was a bear to get off the gun. As for the paint, I tried it on a small area of a hidden part of my pantry cabinet. When dried for few days  I smeared on some ketchup,grape jelly, and kool-aid to test out its cleanability. I let it dry on for several hours then tried to scrub it. I figured, new paint, I need to be delicate. I soon found out that was false. Now this cabinet had no prep work. No cleaning, sanding or priming yet. This was just a test of your emergency broadcast system. Ooops, sorry. I got sidetracked. Any, I scrubbed with a wet rag and Dawn. It needed some scrubbing to get the dried stuff off, but off it came. It did not damage the paint but I was left with some staining. Now remember this was only one coat smeared on with my finger. So then I took a rag wet it, and added some bleach. The stains wiped right off. More importantly the paint was still not damaged. So it looks like all is a go.

This is how it looks after two coats of primer, sanded,then two coats of paint.

This is how the oak wood grain shows through after two coats of primer.  Its a big difference when you start adding the nice thick paint.

We started out spraying the shelac primer. It worked for a little while then quickly started plugging the gun.

After scrubbing with TSP and a sponge with scotch brite pad on the other side, sanding with power sander, rubbing on a deglosser,and rinsing off, the painting began. After the fiasco with spraying the shellac, we decided to paint everything on with a good roller and foam applicator to get into crevices. So far,so good. Most if the marks from the roller are flowing out as it dries. I am impressed.

   As I started trying to prep the pantry after playing with it, I tried sanding the previous area. It will be hidden, but hubs wanted it all painted anywhere. I tried sanding with a worn piece of 120 sandpaper. And then switched to the scotch brite pad. Nothing happened. No paint came off even tho no prep work was done and it was literally finger painted. Great! I let it go and worked on the rest of the cabinet. This is a 7 ft tall x 22" wide cabinet. The frame is now all primed and we are awaiting lining up more doors to get them started. 

      He also had to patch the wood floor and sheetrock walls and ceilings after removing the old walls. The ceiling got its new coat of paint last night.

Here is our projected floor plan. Notice a nice large island in the center. However, we have decided to turn it parallel with the stove. It will be 40" x 8ft. Also hubby is going to construct a large wood range hood for over the stove. One of these days we will replace the white stove with a stainless steel one. Now we need to decide on a white enameled cast iron sink or a stainless steel one.

More to come on this major renovation so stay tuned.