This blog chronicles my entire kitchen renovation from start to finish. Greentea Design has provided me with their solid wood kitchen cabinets, and I'm taking care of the rest.

If you'd like to be brought up to date, check out the archive in the sidebar for previous posts. I posted recently about the major purchases I've made for the kitchen, and now it's time for the fun stuff - DEMOLITION. I also have a flooring dilemma to figure out.

Demolition began recently in my kitchen, and it was a BLAST. I have no fear of tools (especially power tools), and love to get my hands dirty. I didn't do it all myself mind you, my boyfriend was as eager as I was to help with this demolition. We started with the wall between the living room and the kitchen. That had to go because the cabinets are ending about a foot into the living room and frankly, regardless of how the kitchen ended up being designed, I wanted that wall gone to open up the main floor. Here are a couple before photos to show you the wall (which I had an architect friend come by to check out and ensure it was not load bearing).



And here are a couple "during" photos. (During the demo of this wall we discovered mouse poop in the cupboard above the closet. Seems mice chewed/clawed a hole through the wall to get into the closet at a bag I had stashed in there of makings for granola. I have a couple pics in my kitchen remodel set on Flickr of this little surprise if you care to see the HORROR).



This is what the main floor looks like sans big useless wall. Actually, it wasn't all that useless. It was one of the few walls available to put furniture against and to hang art on. (The credenza found a new home in my bedroom, and looks really cute up there). This wall also housed the only closet on the main floor, so once the kitchen is finished, I need to start on getting a closet built in my office for coats/shoes/bags.





We have done more demolition since this wall came down, which I will show you in a future post, and the rest of it has to get done this weekend because my contractor is starting Monday. So I will have to create a makeshift kitchen in the living room to get me through the next month or so.

In the title of this post I mention that I have a dilemma. It's regarding the flooring. I had my heart set on painting the floors in the kitchen and living room white. But then I saw these photos on Design*Sponge of the home of Abigail Ahern, and I began to doubt my decision.


Perhaps a light grey could work in the space - it would show less dirt than white would that's for sure. I'm not quite sold on the idea so I thought I would ask you all your opinion. And I'd love it if you have ideas for specific colours and paint brands.

Here are some other spaces with painted floors I found for some more inspiration.

James Leland Day	Bo Bedre
Shoot Factory	Inspace Locations
Judy King	Bo Bedre

Also, I had a problem with the painted white floors in my office. I noticed a little while after I had done them that under all the furniture and rugs, the floor had turned yellowy. Anyone ever had that happen? I did 2 coats (BM's Oxford White) and waited 24 hours between each, but maybe it needed time to cure and I shouldn't have put the furniture down so soon after it dried. I don't want to run into this problem when I do the rest of the main floor.

Labels: demolition, flooring, paint