The Rogue Kitchen (part 1)

Plans, but...

Today may not have gone as planned, but I couldn't have asked for better results!

What do I mean?

My original intent was to spend half the day pulling up kitchen carpet - yeah, there was carpet in the kitchen - and the rest of the day in my new bedroom fixing up.  But I spent all day in the kitchen! Now, that's not as bad as it seems when you consider how the room looked upon our arrival: 

Carpet underneath where you cook or bake? Hard pass.  It probably looked okay when it was first installed, but of course, wear and tear got the better of it.

I can't tell you how much that dark green minimized the room.  Forget "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" - it felt like, "Honey, the Carpet Shrunk the Kitchen!" All that was about to change.  No sooner had I finished breakfast and drunk at least half my coffee, I set to work tearing up the tripping hazard.  Some of it by the entrance was already loose and certainly would have tripped one of us, and another spot was completely worn out.  Soooo.....

Up it came!!

Much to my dismay, there was a substantial amount of dust and evidence of multiple stains

Further grabbing and pulling revealed yet another layer of flooring: presumably linoleum from the 1950s and my absolute favorite, HARDWOOD FLOORS and they're made of oak!! If you were to give me a choice between laminate or hardwood, I'd choose the latter.

I also discovered something else of value...

Layers upon layers of newspapers from 1934 and '35

These clips, both from Dec 31, 1934, were in the best condition - so yes, I saved them! They are the oldest papers I've found so far in the house, thankfully the few lacking stains.  One thing I love about old houses is history usually gets buried until modern times.  It was like that at my old house in NJ where we found newspapers and coins in the walls and floors.

After my little escapade with old news, I continued pulling up more of the flooring until about lunchtime.  Here are a few snaps of my progress:

The linoleum was in pretty bad condition

Lots of sweeping and battling sticky paper and underlayment full of dust

At long last, the kitchen brightened up, but it needed one more thing...

Sanding!!

This little machine really gets the job done! 

Spent the rest of the afternoon sanding and basically suffering in a neck gaiter... 

I think Miss Ruby approves of my sanding job! If you're wondering what the random line is, that's linoleum stuck to the floor.  Yikes...

So therein ends part 1 of the kitchen remodel! This was quite a task which, aside from lunch and dinner and shopping, took me until 10pm and that's just being able to do half the floor.  The boards were tough to refine as some of them seemed to have some kind of finishing or dirt was trapped in the grain.  I did the best I could with my handy little sander, even with random loose wood pieces getting caught in the sanding paper.  Oy...

I'm glad the carpet is out of the way now as the stains and dirt and color were too much.  The goal in the near future is to have a painted floor as opposed to staining.  While stained wood is nice, the process for drying and polyurethaning takes too long, whereas paint is much easier to deal with.  My sister and I already chose a nice color scheme and I can't wait to showcase it!

The Call of the Bed!

Exhaustion is kicking in from today.  Every part of me hurts and my eyelids are heavy.  I'm not sure how I pushed myself 'til 10pm but as the saying goes, "No pain, no gain."

Stay tuned for the next part of the Rogue Kitchen saga!

~Gigi