Kitchen Project

Kitchen has been demolished! Many thanks to my friend Adam, who came down to help on Saturday. To spend an entire Saturday hammering, breaking, cleaning, dumping, etc. in a cloud of dust is quite a lot to ask a friend, but he came through in the clutch!

Anyway, I learned a few things while doing the demolition:

• Not all water pipes have valves! We spent a good 45 minutes to an hour searching for the water valve to the sink, but we couldn't find it. We even opened up a couple of holes in the basement ceiling to see if it was hidden. Turns out that in older homes (ours was built in 1956) they didn't do that. So we turned off the water to the whole house, and then put a cap on the pipe. Actually, I had to first cut the pipe using this handy little cutting tool (think can opener, or wine foil cutter), and the caps just snap into place.

• Not all gas pipes have valves! Once again, we followed all of the pipes to the stove and nada. Same reason and same solution. However, unscrewing the pipe from the stove was impossible. The solution (after 2-3 hours of labor) was to dismantle the stove, detach the entire cooktop and basically rotate the whole thing until the pipe unscrewed. Think of it this way -- instead of turning the pipe to unscrew it, we turned the whole stove to unscrew the pipe! The leverage worked. And to cap a gas valve, you have to first put teflon tape around the rings of the pipe and then attach the cap. The tape is a thin, putty-like consistency, and it creates an air tight seal. Don't forget to turn the hot water heater back on or else it's cold showers in the morning!

• Older homes have really crappy insulation! I was shocked to find out that the kitchen insulation to the exterior wall was foil! One sheet of aluminum foil! Apparently this was the way it was done when oil was cheap and heating a home wasn't a cost issue. The insulation from the ceiling (attic) to the kitchen? Cotton!
  

Well, with all that said and done, the kitchen demolition went as well as could be expected. As a side benefit, I now have in intimate knowledge of all the piping in my house should anything ever come up. The whole thing is gutted and the electrician should be there Monday. I will post up pictures soon!