Hopefully by now you’ve heard that we redid our kitchen. Last week we shared how we settled on an entirely new layout, but moving things around on paper is one thing — today we’re walking you through how it happened in real life, including taking down a wall to open up the sight lines to the living room.
This kitchen was our biggest renovation to date and fell somewhere in the middle of the DIY spectrum. It wasn’t entirely hired out (like our first kitchen mostly was) and it wasn’t completely DIY (like our second kitchen). For some tasks we chose to hire professionals to minimize time; for others, we handled the work ourselves to save money, especially the things we enjoy or can do quickly. After two prior kitchen renos, we have a clearer sense of what to tackle and what to delegate so we’re not kitchen-less forever. That balance saved money and kept the project moving — but enough talk, let’s get to the photos.
First, some befores. These are early photos from when we moved in. You’ll see two main vantage points throughout this post. The first angle is from the garage door looking toward the living room:
And the second view is from the living room back toward the kitchen. In this shot the view is blocked by the wall with the built-in bookcase and the old wet bar behind the closed double doors. We were a little sad to lose the built-ins, but we already had plans to replace them. The dated, never-used wet bar? Not sad at all to see that go.
As mentioned in our layout post, the plan called for opening up that wall to improve flow and sight lines between the kitchen and living room. Early on we confirmed with a contractor that the wall wasn’t load-bearing, so we felt comfortable removing it ourselves.
We handled the demo ourselves — it’s relatively straightforward and honestly pretty satisfying. Suddenly seeing the living room while standing at the kitchen sink was a great moment.
By the end of the first afternoon, that wall was mostly down and the desk area in the kitchen was removed. We left the main cooking area intact until the plumber and electrician could reroute pipes and wires so we wouldn’t be without a sink longer than necessary.
That photo also shows why we moved away from our original idea to convert the triple bay of kitchen windows into French doors. There’s already a door to the deck in the living room, so adding more doors close by felt like overkill. Keeping the windows preserved valuable counter and cabinet space and allowed Sherry to center the sink under the big bay of windows.
The day after demoing the living room wall and kitchen desk area we had a contractor help with framing — mainly widening the doorway to the dining room. That wall was load-bearing, so leaving it to a pro was the smart move. The contractor installed temporary supports to hold the joists while he put in a new header.
Widening the doorway about a foot made a noticeable difference in how connected the rooms feel. Below is the doorway before the renovation…
…and here’s that opening from the other side after widening. The balance between openings now feels much more intentional.
While the contractor worked on framing and the plumber and electrician prepared to arrive, we continued with kitchen demo. Sayonara functioning kitchen — no sink, no stove, things suddenly got very real.
Within a day the plumber had terminated old pipes, rerouted the gas line and installed new plumbing where needed. The electrician removed old wiring and ran new lines, including recessed light locations and pendant boxes. We also began framing the new opening to the living room. The contractor who widened the dining room doorway helped frame that opening so we could move faster.
Although it was exciting to see the rooms completely open to each other, we planned for a cased opening to feel more natural and to give the cabinets a clean termination point. We also needed wall space in the living room to add new built-ins.
Drywalling was a good example of balancing DIY and contracted work. We can drywall, but mudding and sanding is tedious and time-consuming. Our compromise: we bought and hung all drywall and handled the rough mudding on walls that would be covered by cabinets, tile, or built-ins. Then we hired a pro for the final mudding and sanding on the visible areas, like the ceiling strip, to ensure a smooth finish. This saved money and still gave us a professional look where it mattered.
If you wondered where our stuff went during demo — the dining room became a makeshift kitchen and storage zone.
We taped a tarp to protect the makeshift kitchen from drywall dust. Corner shelves turned into pantry and dish storage, a green buffet became our temporary counter with a microwave, and the dining table held anything and everything. Moving it all out again when it was time to do the floors was a pain, but necessary.
We decided to replace the old faux-brick linoleum with hardwood to create a unified first floor. That required refinishing and seamlessly blending floors across multiple rooms, which meant vacating much of the first floor while the work was done.
We hired professionals to match the new hardwoods to the existing floor and to seamlessly patch and stagger new boards into the old ones. The process took a couple of guys several days, and it was well worth hiring it out: now the entire first floor is level and matching hardwood without raised transitions.
The flooring and cabinet teams recommended installing cabinets before staining the floors. Freshly stained floors need about 10 days to cure before moving heavy items back in, so installing cabinets first sped up our timeline and avoided scratching new finishes during cabinet work. Getting cabinets in early also let us template countertops sooner and have those installed while the floors finished curing.
Before cabinets could go in, we raised the triple window along the back wall so upper cabinets could be installed beneath it. We replaced the lower-dipped windows with new ones set higher and added exterior trim. Inside, we drywalled and trimmed the area the afternoon before the cabinets arrived.
We chose white cabinets again because we’ve loved them in past homes and ordered them from the same local cabinet company we’ve used for other projects. Their installation fee was reasonable, so we had their team install our cabinets. The pros installed what would have taken us over a week to complete between family and work obligations, which was a huge time-saver since we were already weeks without a sink.
We didn’t cover every last detail here, but this post shows a big chunk of the transformation and the sequence of major steps: demo, plumbing and electrical reroutes, framing, drywall, flooring, window adjustments, and cabinet installation. To show how much the overhaul changed the sight lines, here’s the view from the front door when we made our offer…
…then during the beginning of demo…
…and now. Much better: no more awkward corner jutting into view, just a wide, open passage that connects the spaces.
Next week we’ll share a large set of before-and-after photos and dive into why we chose specific materials and finishes. We’re particularly excited to show the island: we tried something a little different and really love how it turned out (you can catch a glimpse of it in the first and last photos of this post).