Minor Kitchen Remodel

It wasn't exactly how I had planned to spend 5 weekends of the summer but......
It all started the first week of July, I knew we had a leak somewhere in the roof over the kitchen but I didn't realize how bad of a leak it was till the monsoons hit.
A small hairline crack in the ceiling that looked like a pretty simple fix quickly turned into this:
Leak-1.jpg
Which very quickly turned into this:
Leak-2.jpg

The weather building up to the weekend of July 13th and 14th went from rainy and stormy to temps well into the 90's, not exactly when you want to be on a roof, but that is where I spent the weekend.

The first evidence of a major problem with a roof that was only seven years old:
Roof-1.jpg

I didn't take a lot pictures of the roof but I wound up removing a good portion and replacing one full sheet of sheathing and another 4'x4' section. The roof was leaking in the valley where the low pitch roof meets up with the other steeper pitches. The water was running under the shingles and had caused a good bit of damage to the OSB sheathing. I had to redo the valley flashing and re-flash along the edge where it was not put in right.
Roof-2.jpgRoof-3.jpg

Next post: Kitchen ceiling demo.
 
On the following weekend we moved inside to do demo work. The house had been remodeled by a couple of amateur contractors, AKA 'flippers', so there were several shortcuts taken during the remodel process. When we (my son Luke B., my son-in-law Luke D. and myself) opened up the ceiling in the kitchen we discovered new 1/2" drywall over old plaster and sheetrock that was not in the best of shape so we decided the proper fix was to remove all the old ceiling and replace the drywall.

First step was to remove all the wall cabinets. I'm guessing this remodel would not have made it on DIY or HGTV because we took down all the cabinets and never used a sledgehammer once.

Demo-1.jpgDemo-2.jpgDemo-3.jpg

Once all the cabinets were done it on to the dirty work of getting the drywall down and cleaning up the joists.

Demo-4.jpgDemo-5.jpgDemo-6.jpg

Oh yeah, almost forgot the best part.....blown in insulation:

Demo-8.jpg

The whole demo process and cleanup took us about 4 hours. Never one to back down to a challenge or not take the opportunity to make lemonade out of lemons, we decided the ceiling could use a little more character. Once we had everything down and could see what was above the joist it was pretty easy to see how a nice vaulted ceiling might take shape. We headed off to the BORG to pick up some material and a few hours later we had a whole new ceiling framed up ready for some drywall.

Framing-3.jpgFraming-2.jpgFraming-1.jpg
 
The day after we finished the framing we didn't jump in to anything until about 2:00 in the after noon but still got a lot done. We ran new wiring for the lights and got all the insulation and drywall up:

Gyp Board-1.jpgGyp Board-3.jpgGyp Board -5.jpgGyp Board-4.jpg

Pretty much every evening through the rest of the week and into Saturday was spent mudding. Seems like it shouldn't have taken as long as it did considering the size of the room but all we could do was put a layer on on and let it dry till the next.

Mudding-1.jpgMudding-2.jpgMudding-3.jpg

It took about 1 1/2 hours a night for the week and a little into the weekend but we were finally able to sand and start painting. I had to make a special mounting box for the new pendant light in the middle of the room and then it was on to rehanging all those wall cabinets.

Custom Light Base.jpgCabinets-2.jpgCabinets-1.jpg
 
And the finished project:

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I couldn't be happier with the outcome. My wife chose the new color scheme and lighting and i think she made some pretty good choices. The cans and the pendant are all halogen and they light the work spaces really well. There is also undercounter light. The only thing I have left to do is a crown mold to hide the void above the cabinets but otherwise it was well worth the five weekends to get it finished.
 
Nicely done, I'd say it morphed on somewhat more than a "minor" remodel along the way! Looks like

The vaulted ceiling definitely opens the space up well and works well with the lighting definitely worth it from where I'm sitting :D
 
Morphed? I was thinking snowballed. :D

Man, that came out looking nice, Roy. :clap: I'm guessing you've done some of this kind of work before. ;)
 
Well remodeling work sounds great because the kitchen looks better then before. Thanks for sharing these photos, these are helpful for getting idea about remodeling. Please share more projects like these.
 
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