MCM Kitchen Makeover (One Room Challenge)-Week 2

I am back with my progress on the One Room Challenge. To refresh your memory, this is a twice a year blogger event hosted by Linda at Calling It Home, that consists of  20 featured designers and hundreds of design bloggers showcasing a room makeover that they have to complete in just 6 weeks.

Special thanks to my sponsors: 

Rust-Oleum, Aspect Tile, and D. Lawless Hardware for providing product used to achieve this fabulous transformation!

In my last post, I shared my current kitchen space, design board, and overall plan for the makeover. To refresh your memory, here is what the space looked like before we started:

This past week we removed the tile on the counter top and back splash, and removed the bar. The tile was not too hard to remove, as the hammer drill really does all the work. We bought this one from Harbor Freight when we demoed the tile in our basement. I always look forward to demo because you never know what you are going to find...especially in a house that is over 50 years old.

Once we took up the plywood that the tile was attached to, we found the original Formica underneath and confirmed what we suspected about the original kitchen layout having a pass-through window.  The Formica ended about 3/4 of the way across the peninsula and they had added plywood. It matched up to where you could see the patch in the ceiling.

Once we removed the bar, I scraped the caulk off the wall. We will sand it down and fill the screw holes before we paint. Luckily, the bar removal did not really do any damage to the wall.

The back splash tile was applied directly to the wall, so we will have to do quite a bit of sanding and probably add some type of backing before we apply the peel and stick tiles we plan to use.

Side note here...We had to pull out the oven to remove the tile behind it and it was GROSS! We had not cleaned behind there ever, and we found 2 pans that were not ours, dog hair, dirt, and the sides of the oven were covered in grease. Remind me to pull the oven out and clean once a year, K?

My "Victory pose" of ridding the kitchen of the nasty, impossible to clean tile, and reminding all you DIYers "Safety First!" I also wore a dust mask because the tile sure does make a mess. I cringe when I am watching renovation reality shows and people are smashing things with no eye protection or are wearing flip flops.

I'll leave you with a photo of what it looked like after this weekend. Even though the counter is Formica and plywood, it already looks so much better! Come back next week to catch up on our progress.

Now head over and check out the designers and other bloggers linking up to Calling It Home!

Catch up on my weekly ORC posts here:

Week 1 / Week 2 / Week 3 / Week 4 / Week 5  / Week 6