Kitchen re-shaping

 Had time to, and had already moved everything out of the pantry to a temp shelf in the dining room, so I decided to demo the pantry. As it was the kitchen and I suspected dust was going to go everywhere, I got some 9x12 sheets of plastic and some duct tape and blocked off the area. It turned out to work better than I expected too. I need to start doing that little bit of tedious prep work on projects, as at least in this case, it saved me time and headache later on.

 

Soffit hole open to attic...

All removed.

So, I still need to patch up the holes with new drywall, but there was a surprising amount of wood used to frame that pantry. Bonus is that I can reuse that downstairs, especially with lumber prices nowadays. Next on the list will be to remove all the kitchen soffits, which should get really messy. Luckily I stuffed batt insulation above the soffits when I was doing all the work in the attic, otherwise I'd just get loose insulation falling down.

The Big One

 I started to attempt to finish the stairs in the house, up to getting the "retro" wood stair treads in order to do it. As I pulled away the tile from the first riser step, I then clearly saw the levels of chaos underneath my kitchen floor. I always knew it was quite high, as the carpet in the living room had to be shimmed up to reach the height of the tile floor - but I was about to discover a whole bunch of fun news.

Layer of linoleum, then particle board, more linoleum, mortar, then tile.

So I got the bottom layer of linoleum tested for asbestos, and it came back at 5% content. Got a quote to pull it out and the guy mentioned the second layer, with its black backing was probably worse and had the usual 60% asbestos. So - the kitchen journey began with asbestos removal.

  

Snuck a peak at the original flooring.

Not terrible, considering all that was on top.

Still a bit of adhesive left over on the floor.