I am planning a kitchen. at this point it is an empty room with no ceiling and bare stud walls. We just finished ripping down the plaster and slat walls (4 pickup loads) and still need to fill in the old window holes and install a new window. I can't knock down the inside wall between the kitchen and dining room area until the window is in, the ceiling is up and the walls are insulated AND I can't finish the walls till I know where the wires go... Then I need to peel off the old linoleum and replace some flooring after the room is insulated and heated.

In other words, I have plenty of time to figure out a floor plan.

Here is a general floor plan. it's not to scale but it's as close as I can get from memory. (I'm 2 states away from home)
. all the measurements are within 2-3" of being accurate.

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At this point, all I have decided is where the bathroom door and the sink window will be. I don't know if I have room for an island but any island would help. I have a HUGE amount of attic storage so the stuff that only gets used 3 times a year can go up there. The kitchen only needs the stuff we will use. The only real questions left are how much countertops and where my oven and a future fridge will go.

I can buy 2 routers and tables and build the kitchen myself or I can buy cabinets from IKEA or Menards and slap them in. I have about $600-1200 extra money a month for supplies and plan to pay as I go and I have been able to stay busy so far with that budget. there's a lot to do. I will visit a home depot and measure fridges and get a common size to make the space for, so I don't have to drop $2k on a fridge before I start planning cabinets.

This got too long so I put the important stuff on top and the saga of fixing up my home below.

I'm in the middle of restoring a 1926 one room schoolhouse. The outside walls are 30x30. the original tin ceiling is 12 feet high. I ripped out all the drop ceilings and am putting in real ceilings creating 900 sq ft of crawl space storage. The wiring is all getting replaced. the entire house was wired with no ground wires. I'm starting from scratch and running all the wires thru the new ceiling. None of of the inside walls are load bearing so I'm moving walls around a little. I'm supporting the ceilings on the old and new walls and leaving the original tin tiles alone on the 12' ceiling. I am working my way thru the main floor thru winter then need to put up gutters and dry out the basement (with some fancy landscaping) next summer. then new insulated ducts and a turn around drive. then, next winter finish the inside, then back outside for siding and a garage (and maybe a bedroom added on to the back). I will be lucky to finish in 4 years. My wife wants contracters to do it, but I like doing it and I know they will not over-do everything as I'm doing. AND it would cost 3 times more than I paid for the house to get contracters in here.

I'm a truck driver by weekdays and a construction worker on the weekends. I pay a friend to assist me on the weekend work and we have had a busy summer. We got started and the first wall we opened had water damage from a leaky chimney. We had to rent a lift and tear down a 35 foot tall chimney, then fix the water damage and make the 88 year old walls a little stronger as we go.

The north wall was a full wall of 9 foot tall windows when it was a school, so I put 54" tall windows in the old holes in the livingroom and spent a month fixing that and the chimney wall. the roof is held up on the north side by 2.5" steel pipes every 40 inches and some fool thought it was a good idea to pull one pole out to put in a picture window, then the window leaked and rotted out 5 feet of wall. It's stuff like that I'm dealing with every time I open a wall. I have been here since 1993 and had no idea what problems were hiding right in front of me.

I have a 2 year old, so I have to keep half the house dust free as I go. That has made some strange setups. Right now the bedroom is in the new livingroom with rough walls because I cant run the wires till all the east ceilings are up. the kitchen is in the new bedroom.

This weekend we opened the old front door opening hidden in a south wall. it was stuffed with old clothes and black mold. My step daughter (now 30) grew up in that room! I had to drench it with bleach kitchen cleaner before I could even touch it (with masks and gloves), then soaked the whole area with cleaner and took another break.

One trick I learned. I pick something to do next week (flooring, studs, windows...) and tell my friend we will tackle that next week. then I watch a dozen vids on utube and the next week, I know how to do it. It's a quick handy cheat for DIY projects.
AND we are getting some great excercise
.

This post was edited by pinkelephant64 on Thu, Jan 8, 15 at 11:39