Take Out That Wall!

I always hated the wall between our kitchen and dining area. Even when discussing buying the house, we agreed that wall had to go. We had the inspector investigate if it was load bearing when the inspection was done. We also got two other opinions on whether it was load-bearing or not after we moved it. You cannot remove a load-bearing wall unless you hire a contractor or know how to build an engineered beam to support your roof.

When the wall was there, anyone who wanted to talk to the person cooking had to bring a chair from another room. The kitchen was just not the open, friendly space I have always had. 

Since we knew we wanted to remove that wall, it wasn't load bearing, and it contained most of the kitchen cabinets, I decided I needed to live without the cabinets for a while before actually removing them. I have a pretty big pantry so for almost a year I used it for my dishes and glasses. When I finished my redesign of the kitchen they came back and it felt like I had gained so much more storage.

One morning in mid February 2020, two years after we moved in, I was having my coffee and just decided it was time. I told Mauricio I was going to start tearing out the top half of the dividing wall. The plan was to have a half wall until the new kitchen came to fruition. We also decided to have an eat-in bar temporarily.

As you can see from the photos below, no prep was done to cover our table or to remove anything to prevent drywall dust. That was a BAD idea. I highly recommend removing anything you don't want to clean and hanging a sheet of plastic around the work area before you start.

We started by taking down the cabinets. All that's needed is a hammer, crow bar and maybe a screwdriver. We took the doors off first, then removed the shelves and sides. Finally the trim piece under the cabinets. It took two people because the cabinet was one long piece.

Then I removed the tile backsplash using a hammer and 5-in-1 tool. The tiles appeared to have been glued so I just shimmied my 5-in-1 behind them at the top, hammered the tool, and they popped off.

Once that backsplash was gone, we started removing the drywall. First we disconnected the power to the outlets and switches on the breaker box.

I started by just hitting the wall with the hammer. If the hammer goes in, start tearing out the drywall. You will eventually get to a stud and there you can use the claws of the hammer to remove the drywall.

When we could see inside the wall and knew we wouldn't cut wires, we used a jigsaw to cut a hole. Just for the fun of it.

A mistake we made was not thinking about the height of the bar when we cut the studs.

We should have cut the studs to support the bar, not to counter height. Afterward we had to go back and add pieces of 2x4 as our bar supports. We also had to fill in that gap that would be exposed beneath the bar.

What we did with the wires and installing the bar can be found here - Reclaimed Wood Bar.