Kitchen Renovation: Nook Demo

Wednesday, December 15, 2021

The time has come to deal with this clutter-collecting mess known as the microwave nook. A fold out table we never use, cabinets that point inwards so you can barely use them. And then really high cabinets that I (a rather tall person) cannot reach very well. So we hung plastic drop cloths to keep the dust out of the main kitchen area, dug out our best P100 respirators, and J got to work doing demo (I was on nail-removing duty in the backyard).

Much wacking, sawing, hammering, and vice-gripping (not to mention vacuuming, washing, and mopping) later, and we were at this stage:

Cabinets mostly removed, except for the bits around the edges that were built into the wall. You see, these cabinets were not stand-alone, they were built with two of their interior walls being the actual wall. Hence, nice big pink splothces remaining. Another demo session later and J got the remaining bits of wall, then I started spackling & priming, and J eventually patched in some 1/2" drywall boards to fill in the holes left by the removed cabinets.

At this point, with neither of us having skim coated before, we called in for a professional who got this done rather speedily. It took 3 rounds of hammering wire wall mesh, and then joint-compounding & sanding, but eventually it got to a pretty good state, so I began priming the repaired walls and ceiling:

I noticed patterns of small bubbles in the joint compound that were too big for the primer to fill, so I spread joint compound over the bubbles, waited 24 hours for it to dry, and then sanded and primed again. Most of this work will be covered by the new cabinets, but it's nice to know that's what's going on behind them isn't so bad.