Spread the love.

Demo Day!

Unlike most people, not our favorite day. And if you’ve been watching our Instagram stories you know this day happened a few weeks ago and we’ve now just been sitting in demo for what feels like a year.

We’re actually kind of enjoying this though, you guys. We finally get to live through what we do to our clients on the daily. We’ll be able to feel their actual pain and sympathize with them.

But actually, it hasn’t been all that awful. Don’t hate me. And I don’t think clients will like if we tell them that. ha! We’re working on a post now about how to live through this madness that we’ll share soon. It hasn’t been fun by any means and scheduling a reno over the holidays probably wasn’t our best idea yet, but keeping our mind on that end prize is all that matters.

And if you missed what we’re doing here, we are renovating our very own kitchen. And you can rewind back to the first before post HERE.

So today we wanted to share with you guys how we’re demoing our space and tips for you to safely demo too. And the full budget breakdown.

Tools Needed for Demo

• Sludge Hammer
• Electric Drill
• Pry Bar
• Circular Saw
• Jack Hammer (if you have tile to break up)
• Poly
• Poly Stands
• Duct Tape
• Good Work Boots
• Face Masks

We started demoing our kitchen and then, because we’re living here, we stopped where the cabinets hit the sink being we aren’t taking out any walls there or covering anything up. We knew we’d be on standstill for a little while due to permits, inspections, and getting on our electrical and plumbing subs schedules.

A little background for why the delays…When you doing a remodel you have to pull a permit. Depending on the city depends on how long the permit can take. For example, Minneapolis gives us a permit the same day we apply for one; whereas Elk River took them a little over 2 weeks to get it back to us. Once you pull the permit, you get to work and demo and open everything up. Then the rough-ins need to be done for electrical, plumbing, and HVAC. Once they do that the inspector comes out, signs off (or doesn’t sign off, which would be another story), and then you can starting hanging drywall. And depending on their schedule or the mood that there in determines how quickly or slowly this goes.

Jamie once told me, that I think is one of the best pieces of advice you can give someone, treat your inspector like the police. Give respect and bite your tongue because in two seconds they can make your life not fun. haha!

So here it is, our kitchen demo in action. Check out what the guys have been up to…

All that 29 seconds, yep, that was actually a good 6 hours. Gotta love a good time lapse.

How to Safely Demo your Kitchen

• • Turn off electricity
  • Turn off water
  • Turn off gas
  • Poly
  • Tape your vents
  • Get a BIG dumpster

 

And most importantly, make sure to have a few cold beers ready to roll in the fridge because demoing your kitchen is a workout and you’re gonna deserve one!

Sometimes just emptying out your cabinets can be the longest task of demo. But being we had just moved in the year prior, I had pretty much everything already de-cluttered.

Once you get everything cleared out, and you’re ready to swing the hammer, make sure you have all power and running water turned off, because crap is about to hit the fan. Literally, haha!

We always start by taking off the countertops and then cabinetry. Remove all the doors and drawers. And then using a pry bar take off any moldings, etc. And then we start by first prying off the countertop. They are usually pretty glued on so you gotta use those muscles. If you have a lot of countertop space you’ll want to break up the countertop with a sledge hammer.

Once the countertops are off we move right onto the cabinetry. And if you’re not saving any of the cabinets you can take a sludge hammer to them and get to work. But being we are reusing our cabinetry we had to carefully unscrew them off of the wall and take them down and carry them out together. They are put up as one big unit so you just gotta start slowly pulling them off of the wall and you’ll see the portion that sticks together. When your cabinets went in originally the installers probably hid all their screws so its important to locate them for a clean uninstall.

After the countertops and cabinets have been removed it’s the flooring and backsplash. Depending on the type of floor will depend on how to get your floor up. If it’s tile, we take a sludge hammer and get to work. We’ve also used a jack hammer for the tile that really doesn’t want to move. Then you take a scraper and just scrape, sweep, and pick it up.

The most fun part, picking up all of the debris.

Hence why Jamie always wonders why people love demo?! He’s picking up millions of tiny pieces of tile and coughing up a lung. He hates it. And God bless his heart, all I can do is give him a good massage when he gets home. However, this is probably (besides painting) the only portion I can actually contribute in when we get behind. So (if you hire us) HELL YES, I will show up in my work boots and be running back and forth chucking things in the dumpster.

And appliances… depending if you’re buying new. The new appliance store will take your old, so we always leave until the end. But if you’re selling you probably want to make getting rid of those priority one so they’re not full of dust.

How much Does it Cost to Demo a Kitchen

We all know there is a big price difference between doit it yourself or hiring it out. And when you hire it out a difference between a handyman and contractor. And everyone charges differently. Their experience, skills, craftsmanship, etc all play a big part.

Hiring someone to demo your kitchen is going to cost you a lot more than if you do it yourself. However, if you don’t have all of the right tools or skills it might cost you a lot less to hire.

True side story. We had a client that wanted to save money, so they demo’d it themselves. And when all was said and done they actually paid $4,800 more because they took out walls that didn’t need to be taken out, so Jamie had to reframe. And then they hit pipes that shouldn’t have been hit. And we all know when a plumber comes out for lord knows what, it’s not cheap.

Costs also depends on the city permits, city codes and ordinances, size of space, if your taking a wall down, moving electrical…plumbing… you get it.

If your taking a wall down, we always tell our clients, your looking at around $3,000-$5,000 minimum. You never know what we’re going to uncover under that wall and once a wall is down, you’re touching up ceilings, putting headers in, sometimes needing a design engineer’s sign-off for plans and city permits, etc. It’s not always as easy as they show on TV.

But if you’re not removing any walls and hiring someone to demo your kitchen your probably looking at around $2,000 just for labor. As you can see below just for our materials, it costed us around $1K and this didn’t include our time. And then the dumpsters usually run around $500 plus permit costs which are different per city.

In a nutshell here is the breakdown for our kitchen demo…

Here’s our budget breakdown:

Permit: $291.00
Dumpster: $500 (per month)
Poly: $72.98
Poly Stands: $129.00
Face Masks: $98.97
Duct Tape: $7.36

Total we spent: $1,099.31

We already owned these tools, so if you don’t already you’ll need to grab them…this is what it would have cost us to buy for demo.

Sludge Hammer: $31.97
Pry bar: $24.97
Electric Drill: $85.97
Gloves: $45.00
Broom: $36.00
Shop Vac: $39.99
Circular Saw: $285.89
Jack Hammer: $1,209.99

Grand Total! $2,858.10

Now that our kitchen is demo’d and the rough-ins are done, it’s time to cover everything up, drywall, mud and taping and then onto painting! Next post up, our design inspiration and what we’re putting into the space. Make sure to subscribe to our YouTube Channel, HERE, to catch all the webisodes.