Kitchen demolition

With the bathroom awaiting completion, I began working on the kitchen. The first thing I did was to remove the vinyl tiles that layered the floor.

At some point, plywood had been nailed over the hardwood floor, but not uniformly. There was a big, cut curve extending from the sink over to the right side of the living room door (right side if you're facing that door while in the kitchen).

Some sort of pink chalky drywall or mortar had been used to fill in the cuts in the hardwood floor when the plywood was removed. I've no idea why the plywood was removed like that. Of course, until I made it to the section of plywood just beyond where you can see the shop vac, I had no idea why the plywood was even put down in the first place. Seemed like it was such a waste, hiding that beautiful hardwood floor like that.

You'll also notice the plywood was placed direction on top of the original linoleum. There were actually three layers of linoleum/vinyl on this foor: That green original layer, a layer on top of the plywood, and then the vinyl tiles placed on top of that layer.

While in the process of removing the plywood, I also removed the doors from the base cabinets.

My original plan was to replace the base cabinets but reuse the wall cabinets. After checking out the base cabinets a bit more closely, I've decided I can salvage them and save the expense of new cabinetry.

Back to the floor, I continued peeling (and that's exactly what it was like - peeling layer after layer off each sheet of plywood, which mostly refused to come off solidly) the plywood from the floor to expose the underlying hardwood. I discovered some areas that were slightly rotted:

That section is in front of the water heater closet. It's not really bad off, just discolored, with perhaps a crumbly bit of wood here and there. The main problem area is in the far corner of the kitchen, the corner tucked between the laundry room and my bedroom, where the washer and dryer were originally located, seen in the following pictures as the sheet of plywood covered with debris:

This floor took a couple of days to finish. When I finally removed the last sheet of plywood, I ended up having to remove quite a few rotted floorboards as well:

 Those pictures are a little out of date, as I've removed more boards in the meantime. I've yet to replace them (and I'll be replacing them with a sheet of treated plywood) because the kitchen floor is a little shaky. To correct that, I've purchased a 16 foot long 6x6 beam and two support jacks, along with the concrete foundations for them, and we're going to use this "natural" opening to get under the kitchen floor to put that beam in place. Once it's positioned, then I'll put the plywood in place and get that hole sealed up. After that, it'll be a matter of putting down backerboard and tiling the kitchen. The kitchen tile will match the bathroom tile (once I've picked that out!), so it'll be a continuous flow from the kitchen to the bathroom and vice-versa.