Major Changes: Kitchen Edition

The kitchen has been through some major changes.

View of the kitchen from the dinning room.

We felt like everything just needed to go. So we began by taking out the cabinets and the stove, then we moved to demoing all of the lath and plaster. We just happened to start demoing while a +95 deg. heat wave was hitting Duluth.

It was nice to clear all the crap out of the kitchen. The previous kids had piled up books, pamphlets, maps and movie posters in the kitchen. We think they were going to burn the papers for heat in the fire place.

Burn pile?

So much lath and plaster.

Destruction!

There was debris everywhere since we basically gutted the kitchen. We did leave the flooring alone because the tiles may contain asbestos. We will end up sealing the old flooring with beautiful new cork.

Behind all the lath and plaster was tar paper that the builders used as an early vapor barrier, buffalo board and balsam wool insulation.

All that was left of the kitchen was the blown in balsam wood insulation.

Balsam wool is shredded wood that was used as insulation. It seems that it was blown from the outside based on the holes in the tongue and groove sheathing of the house. One problem with this insulation is that over time it will settle leaving uninsulated areas in the exterior walls.

Also, the insulation wasn't really sealed against moisture. You can see mold on some of the insulation around one of the windows in the kitchen.

While we were demoing Kevin and I were trying to decide the most efficient layout for the kitchen since the room is only 11 feet by 9 feet with three doorways on three different walls and two windows. Every wall has at least a doorway and/or window to break up the flow of the kitchen. One of our first decisions was to remove the ironing board and its cabinet, this left us with more space for cabinets.

Another problem we faced in the kitchen was the windows. Based on the size and the instillation, the bottom of the windows would be behind the countertops and cabinets. So we ended up removing one window and installing a new, larger one and I will post more information on the windows later.

After I cleaned up all the debris, Kevin put up new fiberglass insulation and a modern vapor barrier. Now the kitchen was ready for drywall.