The idea of a "green remodel" started after I got laid off. Yup. Me no workie. Which the "no workie" part was quickly leading to insanity with all the time at home and me being, well, restless.

I've been intending to remodel my kitchen, living and dining rooms now for over a year. I decided to make good on those intentions with all my new-found time. But with no job, I was forced to seek alternate ways to complete the project without spending a lot on materials.

So I came up with the notion of doing the remodel with used materials. All of our kitchen cabinets can be re-used, and Portland has an amazing resource, the Rebuilding Center, where I can buy most of the rest of the materials I need at 10-30% of market value.

There will, of course, be some items I will buy new, for example the counter-top granite. But the bulk of the materials from flooring to sheetrock to lumber to the kitchen cabinets I will seek from stuff I already have in my house or from the Rebuilding Center.

This blog charts my progress and will log all my expenses along the way. Hopefully this experiment will be a good example that you can learn from for your own future projects. To learn more about my project plans, click here.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Day 1

Day one involved yanking the cabinets that are either going to be moved, or simply removed, and putting them in their new locations. The kitchen is now destroyed, but believe it or not, still functional. Everything works, it's all just a little hard to get to. And all the counterspace is still available too, just most of it is now moveable. That was part of the plan, to do the remodel in such a way that, except for dust, there would be very little interruption to kitchen usage.

This image shows the wall that will be removed, now missing most of its cabinets.




The cabinets shown above have been relocated to the wall here at the end of the kitchen. I can't tell you how much I enjoyed ripping down that smug little banister railing at the top of the cabinets above the fridge!!







I'm even reusing the screws from the original cabinet installation. So far my $$ investment is zero. Of course I haven't done much yet. Tomorrow I'll be installing the electrical and water hookups into the wall where the fridge is going. I'll also try to get the ceiling lights and their respective switches relocated. The lights were centered over the area that now has cabinets. With the cabinets in place they cast large shadows (which you can see in the picture above) and need to be moved toward the center of the kitchen. The switches now sit on the wall that will be removed, so they need to be located on the other side of the kitchen entry. If I have time after all that I'll shoot to remove the sauffets over the sink, and start tearing into the sheetrock that covers the wall that will be removed.
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