Peter and Kathy's Kitchen and Downstairs Remodel, Part One, the beginning!
Part 1, November 2024 through February 07, 2025:
San Clemente Kitchen, Bathrooms and Downstairs Remodel Timeline
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| The remodeled kitchen at Tanglewood, Irvine, CA, which we did in 2001. All that crown molding was crazy; fortunately my compound miter saw had indications for all those weird angle cuts. |
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The remodeled kitchen at Tanglewood, Irvine, CA, complete with tile flooring that we installed.
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| The remodeled kitchen at Soaring Hawk, Irvine, CA, complete with the bamboo flooring that we installed. We did this in 2011. |
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| The remodeled kitchen at Soaring Hawk, Irvine, CA. |
So, we weren’t complete novices when it comes to kitchen remodels, but our “new” house (built in 1988 or so) in San Clemente, has by far the largest (but not very large) kitchen as compared with the two aforementioned homes. (Caveat; I’m NOT a professional handy man, I’m NOT a cabinet installer, and I’m NOT a carpenter. Instead, I’m just a hack with power tools, and boxes upon boxes of screws, so when you see the pictures below, don’t judge me too harshly, especially if you are a professional). As usual, this is Kathy’s wonderful design, I’m just a guy with a weak mind and a (reasonably) strong back…
Now, when we moved to San Clemente in 2021 to be closer to our little grandchild John, I had promised Kathy that “I have one more kitchen remodel in me” before I hang up my tool belt (which I don’t wear; instead I run around looking for displaced tape measures and pens, when they should be in my tool belt). So, after having replaced our roof in May of 2024, and having done the re-piping of the plumbing in September of 2024, we decided that it was finally time to remodel the kitchen, so that Kathy could see her vision come to light. So, here is a little time line of events:
Octoberish, 2024: Went to Builders Surplus in Santa Ana, CA to look at kitchen cabinets. We had decided on Builders Surplus for the cabinets due to their great pricing and also availability; they have pretty much everything in stock. Kathy wanted white cabinets; consequently, at Builders Surplus there were really only two choices for us; either the Arctic White or the Moderna, both shaker styles, see below. The Arctic White is nice, built primarily from ½” plywood with doors and drawers that are overlayed in the frames, and the Moderna, built from 5/8” plywood with doors and drawers that are inset in the frames.
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| Builders Surplus, 1800 E Dyer Road, Santa Ana, CA 92705 |
Also, there is another store that’s worth mentioning; our local home improvement store, Lowe’s in San Clemente:
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| Lowe’s, 907 Avenida Pico, San Clemente, CA 92673. Our Lowe’s is about 7 minutes from our house, which is both a blessing and a curse. Blessing, because when you need something (and you can see below all the stuff we bought from Lowe’s in the last 4 months), but a curse because you will buy something! |
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| Arctic White Kitchen Cabinets, with doors and drawers that are overlayed. |
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| Moderna Kitchen Cabinets, with doors and drawers that are inset in the frames. |
Saturday, November 09, 2024: Went to Builders Surplus in Santa Ana, CA, to buy the cabinets for the little hallway alcove between the hallway closet / garage and the powder room. We choose the Arctic White cabinets, one upper and one lower to fit in the space. I wanted to start small, to get the hang of it again (hang of it, i.e. hanging cabinets), since it had been over a decade since we did our kitchen at Soaring Hawk in Irvine. I started by hanging the upper cabinet, but after we got it up on the wall, we realized that the Arctic White didn’t look that great, so I took it down (it now hangs in the garage), and we decided instead on the Moderna line of cabinets from Builders Surplus. We also went to our local Lowe’s and spent $105.95 on a laser level and tripod.
Friday, November 22, 2024: Went to Builders Surplus in Santa Ana, CA to buy the new cabinets for the little hallway alcove between the hallway closet and the powder room. This time we choose the Moderna cabinets, again one upper and one lower. Since the lower cabinet had to be modified to fit the space (I had to cut off 2” of the back of the cabinet), we choose a sink base cabinet, without drawers. The picture below is of the final finished alcove cabinetry, complete with the new countertop.
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| Before picture of the cabinetry in the hallway between the garage and power room. Granite, granite, and more granite. For some reason, when a former owner remodeled the house in 2010, they choose the same custom maple cabinets throughout, and the same gray, green granite throughout the whole house. We called it “the granite quarry”… Dark, dark, dark… |
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| November, 2024: Started the little alcove remodeling; the alcove sits in the hallway between the garage and the powder room (visible to the right). Note that this is the final product, complete with countertop. When I finished the cabinetry in November 2024, I just put a piece of OSB on top temporarily. |
Saturday, November 23, 2024: Went to Lowe’s and spent $54.59 on screws and a Masonite board.
Sunday, November 24, 2024: Went back to Lowe’s and spent $63.16 on screws and miscellaneous stuff.
December 2024: This is what the San Clemente kitchen looked like before we started the remodel:
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| The kitchen in San Clemente before our remodel. All custom maple cabinets, with a gray, green granite counter top, and Travertine floors. The maple cabinets had yellowed over time, and the kitchen was very dated. Also, the cabinets did not go all the way to the ceiling, which somewhat limits the storage space. |
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| The kitchen in San Clemente before our remodel. This shows the back wall with the refrigerator, and what we call the “coffee bar”, since that’s where the coffee maker goes. |
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| The kitchen in San Clemente before our remodel. This view is looking to the right of the kitchen, over by the back door. Granite, granite and more granite! You can also see the pony wall, extending over the cabinetry. |
December 2024: Like all our kitchen remodels, it starts with Kathy’s vision of what she wants, and a lot of planning, measuring, and figuring out which of the cabinets will go where. Here you can see some of her drawings of the new layout:
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| December 2024: More of Kathy’s plans for the new kitchen. This is the general layout. |
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| December 2024: Kathy’s plans for the new kitchen. |
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| December 2024: More of Kathy’s plans for the new kitchen. |
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| December 2024: More of Kathy’s plans for the new kitchen. |
After all the measurements were taken, Kathy figured out which cabinet goes where, using the Builders Surplus Moderna sell sheet, see below. The planning took hours and hours, and it had to be very detailed, since you can’t return anything to Builders Surplus. Once you buy it, you own it! As you can see, there are endless possibilities for a custom kitchen!
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| December 2024: Builder’s Surplus Moderna sell sheet. |
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| December 2024: Builder’s Surplus Moderna sell sheet. |
Sunday, December 01, 2024: Back at Lowe’s, bought a Kobalt mini tool box, and also a Kobalt cordless drill and driver combo, spent $120.66. That was probably the best purchase ever, especially if you are gonna drive 4,000 screws!
Tuesday, December 17, 2024: Spent $21.53 a Lowe’s, bought a drill bit and driver set.
Sunday, December 22, 2024: The soft start of the kitchen remodel. We start by taking down the cabinet doors, and cleaning out the cupboards and drawers. Just cleaning everything out, putting the stuff in boxes, and moving it outside took quite a bit of time… We set up a camping kitchen in the dining room, complete with air fryer, small microwave, and a hotplate. Don’t ever wanna do that again!
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| Sunday, December 22, 2024: Starting to take down the cabinet doors. This is over by the pantry. That’s the old oven/microwave combo, which is skinner than the new one we got. |
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| Sunday, December 22, 2024: Starting to take down the cabinet doors. This is over what will become the coffee bar; the only reason we call it the coffee bar is because that’s where the coffee maker lives! |
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| Sunday, December 22, 2024: Starting to take down the cabinet doors. This is above the old refrigerator. |
Tuesday, December 24, 2024: Back at Lowe’s, spent $6.44 on miscellaneous stuff.
Wednesday, December 25, 2024 through Sunday, January 05, 2025: Got pretty much a week and a half off from work, so this is a great time to get started (or “get Stuck In” like the Britts say, we watch a lot of British house shows)!
Thursday, December 26, 2024 (Boxing Day): Demolition starts, starting with the back wall cabinets.
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| Thursday, December 26, 2024: Demolition starts in earnest, starting with the cabinets against the back wall. |
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| Thursday, December 26, 2024: More demolition, taking down the old coffee bar. |
Saturday, December 28, 2024: With the help of my son Matthew, the old Travertine is being taken up. Since I got a Bosch Demolition Hammer for my Christmas present, I had to use it! Heavy work; one guy on the floor with the demolition hammer, the other guy taking the pieces of the old Travertine to the truck for the landfill. Took us a good couple of hours to take it all up.
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| Saturday, December 28, 2024: The old Travertine is being taken up. |
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| Saturday, December 28, 2024: The Bosch Demolition Hammer; the best Christmas present ever! |
Monday, December 30, 2024: A big demolition day; Matthew and I start in on taking down the old cabinets and getting rid of the old granite. We use hammers, prybars, a reciprocating saw, and whatever else we could use to get it all down. We started with the Back wall cabinets, ripping them out. Also went to our local landfill in San Clemente with all the demolished cabinets and flooring.
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| Monday, December 30, 2024: The old back wall cabinets including the pantry is gone. That’s the old pigtail for the old oven/microwave combo. |
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| Monday, December 30, 2024: Tearing out the old granite countertop over by the old sink. |
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| Monday, December 30, 2024: Tearing out the old granite countertop, on the right side looking out the window. |
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| Monday, December 30, 2024: More demolition… |
Tuesday, December 31, 2024: Matthew and I continue to rip out the old cabinets, this one over by the old cooktop. Also went to our local landfill twice (2 PM and 4 PM) in San Clemente with all the demolished cabinets.
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| Tuesday, December 31, 2024: More of the old cabinets are ripped out. |
Wednesday, January 01, 2025: All of the old cabinets are ripped out. In the picture below, you can see the range hood vent, the extensive damage to the wall behind the old cook top, and the old pigtail for the old cooktop. Also, to the bottom left of that wall, you can see a hole where the cast iron pipe ran (more on that below, see the entry for Thursday, January 09, 2025).
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| Wednesday, January 01, 2025: All of the old cabinets are ripped out. |
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| Wednesday, January 01, 2025: Gone, gone, gone!!!! |
Thursday, January 02, 2025: Buying the first kitchen cabinets from Builders Surplus in Santa Ana, CA, with the help of Ramon Plascencia, who is one of the sales associates at Builders Surplus. Over the next few months, he became our best friend, and he helped us a lot. A little note about Builders Surplus; their prices are very reasonable, and they have pretty much everything they sell in stock, either at their show room/warehouse in Santa Ana, or in another local warehouse, so you can get your stuff pretty much the same day. However, their policy is no returns and no exchanges, so whatever you buy, you own!!!! We had originally thought we would rent a U-Haul truck and buy all the cabinets at one time; however, we decided to just use our pick-up truck, and buy the cabinets as we went along. Good thing we did; just storing all the cabinets would have been impossible! So, we made a bunch of trips, as you will see in this little narrative.
We chose the Moderna line with inset cabinet doors and drawers. We really like the Moderna; the cabinets use 5/8” plywood, instead of the usual ½” plywood for sides and most of the backing. They are really nicely finished birch cabinets, with full wooden frames. These first ones were the 96” tall cabinets for the pantry and the oven/microwave combo. We had to cut a trench through the Travertine in the family room to get the cabinets in. Thanks Santa for the Bosch Demolition Hammer, it comes in handy!
We also went to our local landfill in San Clemente with more garbage.
Friday, January 03, 2025: The first new cabinets are in place (but not yet fastened to the wall), these are the 96” tall cabinets. Even with the Travertine trench, we had to cut off 0.5” of the bottom of the cabinets to get them in. We also made yet another trip to the local landfill in San Clemente, throwing away the old Travertine flooring. Also made another trip to Lowe’s, spent $64.63 on a new SKIL jig saw (this one I used all the time, a great tool), and another $105.61 on plywood and miscellaneous stuff.
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| Friday, January 03, 2025: Travertine trench. |
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| Friday, January 03, 2025: Travertine trench, continued (into the kitchen). |
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| Friday, January 03, 2025: First cabinets are temporarily put in place. |
Saturday, January 04, 2025: The first cabinet is installed and screwed to the wall. Since I had cut off 0.5” from the bottom of the cabinet, our son Michael helped us with putting plywood under the cabinets, to raise them up a bit. Now, as a rule, in order to reinforce the backs of the cabinets, and since not the full backs are 5/8” plywood, I use some extra 3/8” plywood on the back of each cabinet. This is probably overkill, but it makes me happy. Also, since the frame of the cabinets stick out about ¼” from the side of the cabinets, there will be a gap between two cabinets when you screw them together. Consequently, I use ½” plywood between each cabinets, so that when they are screwed together, they will fit nicely together. Also made another trip to Lowe’s, spent $10.19 on screws and miscellaneous stuff.
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| Saturday, January 04, 2025: The first cabinet is installed and screwed to the wall. This is the pantry. (You can see our husky Lars resting on the couch to the right). |
Sunday, January 05, 2025: I had to modify the 96” tall cabinet where the new oven/microwave is going, since the new oven/microwave combo is taller than the cabinet opening. I had to remove one of the bottom drawers on the cabinet, and put a “floor” in the cabinet for the new oven/microwave. Took pretty much a whole day to modify the cabinet, but now, with all the bracing, it can hold up a small car! In the late afternoon we took a trip to Home Depot in Mission Viejo, CA; spent $116.62 on plywood, screws, washers and lumber.
Monday, January 06, 2025: Leo the electrician is at the house to give us a bid for the electrical work. We want wires pulled for the new under cabinet lighting, and also more electrical outlets. We also took another trip to the local landfill in San Clemente to throw away yet another truck load of junk.
Thursday, January 09, 2025: Brent the plumber is at the house, to replace the cast iron pipe by the old stove with an ABS pipe. When we moved in to the house in 2021, we noticed that we had a leak outside, and it came from an cast iron pipe which had cracked longitudinally (crazy, I had never seen anything like it) which had to be replaced. So when we noticed that we had another cast iron pipe, we decided to have it replaced preemptively.
Friday, January 10, 2025: Back at Builders Surplus to buy more cabinets! We also stopped at Lowe’s and spent $8.58 on miscellaneous stuff.
Saturday January 11, and Sunday January 12, 2025: Couldn’t do much this weekend, since we need to have all the new electrical wiring pulled, before we can move on.
Thursday, January 16, 2025: Leo the electrician and his helper Jack is at the house, installing all the new kitchen wiring. They had to cut a bunch of holes in the drywall, including the ceiling, so we had to do some extensive drywall repairs. I cut and installed all the new drywall, and Kathy did all the drywall mudding, texturing and painting. Over the years, she has become quite the expert at drywall repairs, and you can’t even see where there were holes before! Also, when there is a hole cut in the wall, you can for sure find the studs! We also went back to Lowe’s, spent $27.03 on screws and stud guards, and $52.20 on miscellaneous stuff.
Friday, January 17, 2025: Back at Builders Surplus to buy more stuff; this time it is filler.
Friday, January 17, 2025: This picture shows you some of the drywall repairs we had to do, but pretty much every wall in the kitchen needed drywall repairs.
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| Friday, January 17, 2025: Drywall repairs over by the coffee bar. |
Saturday, January 18, 2025: Kathy is starting to do the drywall mudding, priming and texturing, her specialty!
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| Saturday, January 18, 2025: Kathy’s drywall repairs. |
Sunday, January 19, 2025: The cabinet that goes over the refrigerator is installed. Since this cabinet is both tricky and heavy, I used the old refrigerator as a brace to hold up the cabinet while I screwed it in. You can also see the new opening in the cabinet where the new oven/microwave combo will be installed, complete with new reinforced plywood floor for the heavy combo. As for the cabinet doors, as a rule I like to take them off while I work on the cabinets; this makes them a bit lighter, and also protects the doors. Caveat; make sure you identify each door, so that you know where it goes before you take it off! Since we wanted to make sure that the refrigerator would fit in the opening, I decided to install some scribe molding on each side of the refrigerator cabinet, which gave us ¼” extra on each side. As I’m trying to install the scribe molding, my old pneumatic stapler / brad nailer decided to give up its ghost, so I had to go down to Lowe’s and bought $3.98 of little nails to nail in the scribe molding. Ugh!!!! Same day went back to Lowe’s again and spent another $32.28 on miscellaneous stuff.
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| Sunday, January 19, 2025: In the left upper corner, the cabinet that goes over the refrigerator is installed. |
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| Sunday, January 19, 2025: Another view of the refrigerator cabinet being installed. I used the old refrigerator as a temporary brace to hold it up. |
Monday, January 20, 2025: One more refrigerator end panel is installed, this one on the left side of the refrigerator. Now the cabinet over the refrigerator is secured, and hanging from the refrigerator panel. As you can see from the picture, I love my drywall screws!!!!
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| Monday, January 20, 2025: The left refrigerator panel is installed. |
Tuesday, January 21, 2025: Back at Lowe’s, spent $10.48 on miscellaneous stuff.
Wednesday, January 22, 2025: Another hanging cabinet is installed, this is the first cabinet where the new coffee bar is going in. To the left of the bottom of the cabinet you can see the 1” x 2” wood strip that I use for temporary support while hanging the cabinets. This one is a 42” tall cabinet by 14” deep; only one of two 42” hanging cabinets. Originally we had planned to have all of the hanging cabinets being 42” tall, but after hanging this one, we realized that they would be too tall, and not leave enough room between the hanging cabinet and the floor cabinets. So, the rest of the hanging cabinets will be 36” tall. You can see Kathy’s expert drywall repair to the left of the cabinet. Also, toward the bottom left of the cabinet you can see Leo’s junction box that he put in, so that we can have access to the wiring for the future (I hope not…).
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| Wednesday, January 22, 2025: Another hanging cabinet is installed. |
Thursday, January 23, 2025: The second hanging cabinet over the coffee bar is installed. You can’t really see it in this picture, but before this cabinet is hung, it had a decorative end panel attached to the left of the cabinet. The installation of the decorative panel is a bit tricky, gotta make sure you don’t have screws coming out on the good side! Screws, screws and more screws… The screws on the inside left side of the cabinet are number 10, 3.5” screws, going right in to the stud… That cabinet ain’t going nowhere! Also went back down to Lowe’s, spent $112.58 on under cabinet lights, and more screws.
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| Thursday, January 23, 2025: The second hanging cabinet over the coffee bar is installed. In the right cabinet you can see a soap dish; I use soap to lubricate the screws, especially anything longer than 2". I use a little spit to loosen up the soap and rub the screw in the soap, takes a bit of time, but makes is that much easier to drive the screws. My DNA is all over the new kitchen! |
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| Thursday, January 23, 2025: The second hanging cabinet, with the decorative end panel installed. |
Friday, January 24, 2025: I realized that I wanted another electrical outlet by the coffee bar, so I called Leo back. We also went to Builders Surplus to buy more cabinets!
Sunday, January 25, 2025: Started the day by going down to Lowe’s; bought $204.60 worth of under cabinet lighting. The first under cabinet lights are installed. I would strongly suggest that you install the under cabinet lights before you install the lower cabinets; once the lower cabinets are installed, it is really hard to install anything under the hanging cabinets… Also went back to Lowe’s again, and spent yet another $37.69 on an under cabinet light.
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| Sunday, January 25, 2025: The first under cabinet lights are installed. |
Monday, January 27, 2025: Back at Lowe’s, spent $18.40 on plywood and miscellaneous stuff.
Tuesday, January 28, 2025: Leo the electrician is back at the house, installing another outlet, and also a new junction box for the Romex cables. I also went back to Lowe’s, spent $9.97 on some miscellaneous stuff.
Wednesday, January 29, 2025: This picture below shows the extent of some of the holes we had to repair on the walls after we had the new wiring installed. This one is over by the right side of the window. You can see the orange pipe for the fire sprinkler system. Note that the house was built with a fire sprinkler system, so it was already in place.
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| Wednesday, January 29, 2025: A hole in the wall waiting to be repaired. |
Thursday, January 30, 2025: Back at Lowe’s, spent $15.37 on screws and a jig saw blade.
Saturday, February 01, 2025: Got more hanging cabinets installed, this is on the right side looking out the window. The cabinet straight on is a 24” wide cabinet, and the cabinet to the right is a 15” wide cabinet complete with decorative end panels which I had installed earlier in the week. These were tricky; even though you only see two cabinets in the picture, there are actually three cabinets that we hung. Since Kathy didn’t want corner cabinets, and since I didn’t know what to do with the void between two cabinets hung 90° from each other, I came up with the brilliant idea to hang three cabinets. So, in the corner, there is a 15” wide by 14” deep cabinet, which is essentially a blind cabinet. This blind cabinet serves as a hanging point for the other two cabinets, while also closing off the bottom between the two cabinets that are hung 90° from each other. Lastly, the blind 15” x 14” cabinet gives a nice clean frame to hang the other cabinets from. Nevertheless, because the wall is not straight, hanging these three cabinets were a bit of a pain…
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| Saturday, February 01, 2025: Got more hanging upper cabinets installed. |
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| Saturday, February 01, 2025: The blind cabinet from the underside. |
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| Saturday, February 01, 2025: Having the blind cabinet gave me a clean edge to hang the two corner cabinets from. |
Sunday, February 02, 2025: With the help of our sons Michael and Matthew, and our son-in-law Patrick, we got the oven/microwave combo installed. Darn thing weigh in at about 240 lbs., so we needed all the help we could get. Luckily, the thing fit like a glove in its spot! I also installed two more shelves, one in the cabinet above the oven/microwave, and one in the cabinet above the refrigerator. And, made yet anther trip to Lowe’s, spent $7.52 on screws.
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| Sunday, February 02, 2025: The new oven/microwave combo is installed. |
Tuesday, February 04, 2025: Back at Builders Surplus to buy more cabinets!
Wednesday, February 05, 2025: Back at Lowe’s, spent $31.57 on miscellaneous stuff.
Thursday, February 06, 2025: Back at Builders Surplus to buy more stuff, this time a dishwasher end panel. We also went to Lowe’s, spent $40.88 on plywood, screws, and miscellaneous stuff.
Friday, February 07, 2025: Took a vacation day today to work on the kitchen (what else would I work on!). We started the day by going up to Builders Surplus again to buy decorative end panels, some scribe and some crown molding. All the back wall cabinets are installed, and the doors hung back on. Now we just gotta wrap them up in bubble wrap for protection! In the picture below you can also see some of the 2"x2" reinforcement that I put around the inside of the lower cabinets. This gave me a good solid rim to screw the plywood underlayment into.
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| Friday, February 07, 2025: All the back wall cabinets are installed, and the doors hung back on. |
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