The demolition begins.

Well I pointed out a few kitchen problems in a previous post.

Thankfully, My Dearest Husband is a man of action– and had decided he bumped his head on one of the more dangerous kitchen corners in the house for the last time. A rainy day seemed like the perfect opportunity to smash the kitchen to bits.

So after a little of this…And a little of that…A little more of this…And finally a little of this (Thanks dad)

We were left with this:

and this:

And unfortunately, also this…

First of all, I’d like to say I was seriously hoping to find some fabulous retro wallpaper (underneath what I’m pretty convinced was somebody’s handy uncle’s work) that we could all have a good chuckle and take a picture to share before painting over it… but sadly, we’re just left with some dirt. Eh. Oh well.

Also, we had hoped to save the cabinets themselves but they were nailed in with approximately 1,000 nails… this baby wasn’t coming down without a fight, so there was no hope of saving the complete cabinet.

Re-Purpose-ers (yes I made that word up) will be happy to know that the actual cabinet shelves we were left with (pictured above) are now being used as shelving in the attic.  At least one of the cabinet doors will likely become a fold down shelf in the laundry room.  All other scraps will be saved for future projects or firewood.

As for the window trim.  Sadly, this could not be saved.  For one, the cabinet cuts into the trim on both sides, like this:

And of all things to replace, we’d rather re-do the window than the door frame, which was our other option. We kept the wood just in case we decide to try to salvage it.

Here’s a (fuzzy) picture of the kitchen today:

Next step: eliminate the cabinets on the left side of the door to match.

And on the right side of the window which I think comes out too far, is too low and blocks the afternoon/evening sunlight.

After they all come down, we’ll clean up and paint the walls (probably white) and install open shelving to open up the room and let in a little light.

I feel like we’ve added a foot of breathing room already as you can see in this fuzzy photo I was too lazy to retake.

So, what do you think?

Tell me about your cheapest mini-makeover. We’ve got lots more for the kitchen in store… can’t wait to share it with you!