Things I learned this weekend (NWR)...

AprilH81

1) Kitchen demo is NOTHING like HGTV.  It takes more than 15 minutes and you sweat a lot more.

2) Normally I am a big fan of people doing their jobs right, especially with construction/home improvement.  I'm not such a huge fan of properly done work when I'm trying to UNDO it because it takes a crap ton of time.

We are DIYing the demo for our kitchen remodel to save about $2,000 on our kitchen remodel.  We are donating our old cabinets (still in good shape, just not our style) to Habitat for Humanity, so we couldn't just take a sledge hammer to them.  The backsplash was cheap and kept tearing up the drywall when we took it down.  There were two layers of linoleum (one layer sheets of vinyl, one layer peel and stick tile) and a thin layer of plywood before we got down to the subfloor. 

Now that the flooring is up we now have to pull up EVERY.SINGLE.STAPLE before we can put down the cement board in prep for the cabinets and tile.  It is the easiest task so far, but sooooo tedious.  There must be thousands of them.

wandajune6

I've been there and feel great sympathy. It's painful doing demo work. We redid our kitchen last summer and it was miserable. I'm lucky that FI is very handy and has lots of friends who are handy and happy to help. One of the GM is a former electrician so we had a particularly lucky run.

Good luck!

AprilH81

So far we haven't had any issues, it has just taken us longer than expected. We were hoping to have friends helping us today, but friend's mom had a stroke recently and she is dealing with that (understandably so). Cabinets are being delivered on Wednesday, so we have until Thursday morning to finish up with the staples. The staples, baseboards and two more cabinets are all we have left. We should be able to handle it... We may just be a little cranky after working all day.

penguin44

That's awesome that you are donating your cabinets though! And the new kitchen will look great!

mysticl

We replaced some cabinets and counters a few years ago.  In the process we found a leak that was over 5 years old and basically destroyed a huge section of the exterior wall. The crack in the pipe went below the slab so they had to tear that up to fix it and found a sink hole under the kitchen.  Yeah, that was awesome.  On the flip side the contractor we hired to do the cabinets and counters fixed everything at no additional cost over his initial estimate.  He's amazing and gets all of our business now when we want anything done.  

WinstonsGirl

Good luck and have fun.  My parents redid their kitchen and bathrooms a few years ago.  They did dishes in the bathtub for 3 months.  So glad I didn't live with them at that point.  Post some photos when you're done