Hopefully you’ve heard—we redid our kitchen. Last week we explained how we settled on a completely new layout, and today we’re walking you through how the work actually unfolded, including knocking down a wall to open up the sight lines into the living room.
This was our biggest kitchen renovation so far, and it landed in the middle of the DIY-to-contractor spectrum. Some jobs we outsourced to save time, while others we tackled ourselves to save money—especially the parts we enjoy or can do quickly. After two previous kitchen renos, we have a clearer sense of what to DIY and what to hire out so we aren’t without a kitchen any longer than necessary. If you want more on that decision-making process you can hear us discuss it on our podcast, but for now, let’s get to the photos.
First, a few befores. These are very early shots from when we first moved in. You’ll see two main viewpoints repeated throughout this post. The first is the angle from the garage door looking toward the living room:
And the second view is from the living room looking back at the kitchen—at the time blocked by a wall with a built-in bookcase and a wet bar behind the closed double doors. We were a little sad to lose the bookcase, but we already planned a replacement. The wet bar, however, was long overdue for removal.
As mentioned in our layout post, we decided to open up that wall to improve flow and create a clearer connection between the kitchen and living room. Early on, a contractor confirmed the wall was not load-bearing, so we felt comfortable demoing it ourselves.
We handled the demolition ourselves—it’s straightforward and, frankly, pretty satisfying. Standing at the sink and suddenly seeing the living room felt like a small miracle.
By the end of the first afternoon the wall was mostly gone and the desk area in the kitchen was removed. We left the main cooking zone intact until a plumber and electrician could reroute pipes and wiring—no point in losing the sink any sooner than necessary. Hi Burger.
That photo also illustrates why we abandoned our earlier idea to turn the triple bay of kitchen windows into French doors. There’s already a door to the deck in the living room, so more doors close together would have felt redundant. Keeping the bay as windows gave us more counter and cabinet space and made it possible to center the sink beneath a large bank of windows—the dream.
The day after that demo, we brought in a contractor to help with framing—primarily to widen the doorway to the dining room. That wall was load-bearing, so we relied on a pro. He installed temporary supports while he added a new header to widen the opening.
Widening the doorway by about a foot may seem small, but it made the rooms feel much more connected. Here’s the doorway before the renovation…
…and here’s that opening after we widened it from the dining room side. The symmetry with the adjacent foyer doorway now balances the kitchen visually.
While the pro worked on framing and the plumber and electrician were scheduled, we continued demoing the kitchen. With the sink gone, things got very real very fast.
Within a day the plumber had terminated the old pipes and gas line and ran new ones to their new locations. Our electrician removed outdated wiring and installed new circuits, recessed lights, and pendant boxes. The contractor helped frame the new opening to the living room so we could move faster on that stage.
We loved seeing the rooms completely open to each other, but we decided a wide cased opening would feel more natural to the house and provide a place for the cabinets to terminate. It also left room in the living room for new built-ins.
Drywall illustrates how we balanced DIY and contractor work. We can drywall, but we don’t enjoy mudding and sanding—and we’re not fast at it—so we hung most of the drywall ourselves and finished the less-visible spots that would be covered by cabinets, tile, or built-ins. Then we hired a pro for a few hours to finish the visible areas, like the long strip on the ceiling. The compromise saved time and money while ensuring the visible surfaces looked professional.
You might be wondering where all our stuff went—into the dining room, which became a temporary kitchen and storage area. The corner shelves served as pantry and dish storage, a buffet acted as counter space (with the microwave on top), and the dining table held everything else. We taped a tarp to protect it from drywall dust, so the set-up wasn’t pretty, but it worked.
When it was time to replace the floors, we had to move everything completely out of the house. Removing the old, peeling faux-brick linoleum was a relief. We wanted hardwoods to match much of our first floor and to create a more seamless transition between rooms. Installing new kitchen hardwoods meant refinishing and blending them into the adjacent living and dining rooms, so we ended up vacating most of the first floor for the work.
We handled upstairs prefinished flooring ourselves, but seamlessly blending existing boards with new ones was a specialized task we left to pros we’d worked with before. After removing the old slate and other flooring, the crew carefully chiseled and matched the boards to stagger in the new planks. It took two pros more than three full days, and the result is a unified, level first floor with no raised transitions.
The flooring and cabinet teams recommended installing cabinets before staining the floors. Freshly stained floors need about ten days to cure before moving heavy items on them, so installing cabinets first allowed us to template countertops sooner and then finish the floors while counters were being fabricated—an efficient staging choice.
Before cabinet installation we also raised the triple window that sat too low for upper cabinets. New, higher windows gave the cabinets room and allowed us to trim and drywall inside before the cabinets arrived.
We ordered white cabinets because we’ve loved them in past homes, and we used a local cabinet company we already trusted from working on builder spec projects. We had them itemize installation as a separate line, and their installation fee was reasonable—so we opted for their full install. Their team completed the job in about a day and a half, a task that likely would have taken us over a week around work and family commitments.
We haven’t reached a final, polished reveal yet, but the transformation is already dramatic. Below are a few progression shots showing how the view from our front door changed. First, this is the house as it looked when we made our offer, with the awkward wall jutting into the space:
Here it is coming down during demo:
And here’s what it looks like now: a wide, open passage with much better flow and no boxy corner obstructing the view.
Next week we’ll share lots of before-and-after photos and explain the choices we made for materials and finishes. We’re especially excited to show the island, since 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 images of this post.