Well, that was fun. The DIY demo of the guest cottage was set for a random morning recently, and Brian and I had enlisted the help of my brother, Ken, who was “born to demolish” (my parents will agree). I had never done anything like this before and frankly thought I would take to it easily (I’m strong! I like getting my hands dirty!), which perhaps isn’t as true as I thought. So here’s how it went, how much it cost, how long it took, and what we actually demo’d out.

The “Kitchen”

The kitchen was teeny tiny and in very vintage condition. It all had to go, and only the floating shelving was usable.

The island was actually unattached and super easy to just throw in the dumpster, but the cabinets were STRONG, hard wood, and a lot harder. If they weren’t covered in lead, they would make fantastic firewood. I have no idea why there were two sinks, both of them super heavy and in bad condition.

During DIY Demo:

Turns out I’m much more of a homemaker than a home breaker. I just didn’t trust myself swinging the sledgehammer with the amount of force needed to do the job. I was hesitant, likely because I’m kinda clumsy. I’m also the type of person who picks up a piece of furniture without clearing the way or making sure that it will fit where I intend for it to go. In other words, I can be kinda reckless and not very careful, so I was scared that if I really went for it, it would bounce back and hurt me or worse, Brian or Ken.

Under The Stairs

The area under the stairs had the vintage wood-burning cooking stove, cabinetry, and old hot water heater. Thank god for Ken and Brian – these things were heavy and we needed some serious muscle.

During DIY Demo:

Now that it’s empty, I can lay out the kitchen with more proper measurements. I’m playing around on Spoak (a design program that is meant to be really intuitive yet powerful for people like me who don’t know AutoCAD or SketchUp). I’ll show you what I’m working on soon – it’s incredibly fun.

The “Canning Room”

BEFORE:

This room had all the aluminum cabinetry from the 40s or 50s, not in the best shape. They were actually super easy to remove and really lightweight. It’s a really big room with high ceilings and walls/ceilings that need to be repaired (and done properly).

During DIY Demo:

We were able to pull out the cabinets, and Ken or Brian could carry them on their own – VERY strong men, these two. These were a lot easier to remove than the wood cabinets in the other room, which were solid.

The “Gardening Room”

This room mostly just needed its old floor to come out so we can start fresh – either with a framed floor or poured slab (leaning towards framing it for plumbing reasons). More on that later. Now this part was really tedious for Brian (it was too dangerous for both of us to be doing it – he had to full force rip it out with crowbars, and no one could be within 10 feet of this man. This took him the longest, probably 2 hours just in here.

Here’s How It All Broke Down:

We rented a 30-yard dumpster – my brother thought that 20 would be enough, but we’d have to be more strategic on how we put things in because it can’t stick above the edges. He was right – 30 was perfect. It cost $950 + pickup/delivery, which I think totalled around $1,200. They dropped it off on a Thursday and picked it up on the following Tuesday.

We were done with most of the demo in 3 hours. Ken was gone after lunch, and then Brian stayed to finish the floor, which took longer.

I was not nearly as helpful as I thought I would be. I mostly schlepped things to the dumpster because I just didn’t love swinging that sledgehammer as much as I thought I would. I just didn’t trust myself not to hit something that would fling across the room and hurt someone. I’m naturally way more inclined to take care of something than use my brute force to destroy it. I was very, very, very grateful that Ken and Brian really thrive at using their strength to demo out this house – really takes all kinds 🙂

Now, this demo job was pretty easy because we didn’t need to open up the walls – no old drywall to remove or gross insulation. The walls are either paneled and so pretty (not removing) or are already open. We had already removed the asbestos (except the knob and tube wiring), so it was really just some cabinets.

Wait, So You Aren’t Opening Up The Walls At All???

If you are already wondering how we are going to put plumbing and electrical in without opening up the walls, that’s a fantastic question. My hope is that unless an electrician is willing to pop off some panels and thread through that, we’ll likely explore feeding electrical through exposed conduits. The UK has a lot of great brass conduit system options that go on the outside of the wall (they have a lot more stone/plaster/brick buildings, which they don’t want to demo out). So I’m looking into what is legal to use here (I’ve found Jim Lawrence and The Workshop Below). We can hide plumbing more easily since we are keeping it only in that kitchen corner of the house, OR feeding it under the house to the new bathroom. But the lighting and outlets will be more of a thing, which is an exciting challenge to solve. I’ve looked into copper conduit or painting conduit, but would love any and all suggestions. Is there an American company that does pretty conduit systems? I know I can buy the parts from the UK companies, but their plugs and light switches are obviously not compliant with our systems, so unsure what I would do for those.

What About Heating And AC?

For heat/cooling, we aren’t doing a ducting system. We are doing Quilt mini splits (have one in our gym and LOVE IT and excited that I can panel it to match each room. I might be convinced to put heated floors in the bathroom and not put a mini split there. GreenSavers is coming soon to quote and map it out, so I’ll know what we are in for soon.

Next Steps?

Well, I have the foundation repair scheduled for early December, likely 5-7 days of work (shout out to Foundations First, they have been super on it thus far). You can do simple repairs without a permit or engineering, so that’s what they are doing. I’m still figuring out what permits we need (or if the individual subs will pull them). It’s not my strength, but I do have so many design elements to show you that I’m really, really excited about. I’m pretty intimidated by the permitting process – I jumped on a free 15 minute consultation with the city where I felt like I was in trouble the whole time but I think it’s their job to have you try to get every permit possible (I don’t think anyone believes that we aren’t going to use this as a rentable ADU but we really aren’t!). I’m enjoying it firsthand and since this is such a public project, we aren’t doing anything that might not be considered 100% above board. I’m also not stressed about it at all, which is lovely (again, since there is no rush getting it done).

*Pretty Photos by Kaitlin Green