A Kitchen Taken Back To Bare Walls

Completed kitchen renovation with peninsula, dark cabinets and plank flooring by Valhalla Construction

There is a point in a kitchen renovation where the room looks worse than the day you decided to do it. Walls back to bare board, plumbing stubbed out of the wall, a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling, and the fridge parked in the middle of the floor because there is nowhere else for it to go. That is this kitchen, partway through. What came out the other side is a completely different room, and a different layout than the one it started with.

What the job included

Full strip-out back to bare walls and subfloor
Plumbing and electrical reworked for a new layout
New cabinets in a U-shape with a peninsula
Countertops and tile backsplash
Pendant and flush-mount lighting, new receptacles
Plank flooring throughout

This was a kitchen renovations project. If you are planning something similar, that page covers how we approach the work and what to expect.

How it came together

Stripped back

Cabinets, counters, backsplash and flooring all came out, down to bare wall board and subfloor. Supply and drain lines were left stubbed out of the wall while the new layout got set, and the old ceiling fixture came down to a bare bulb. A kitchen at this stage is the honest part of the job: whatever is wrong behind the old cabinets, this is when you find it and this is when it is cheap to fix.

Kitchen stripped to bare walls and subfloor with plumbing stubbed out before renovation

Rebuilt around a new layout

The room came back as a U with a peninsula, which is a different kitchen than the one that was there before. That change is why the plumbing and electrical had to move rather than simply reconnect. Cabinets set and levelled, counters templated and fitted, tile backsplash run to the uppers, then lighting: pendants over the peninsula for the working side, a flush mount for general light. Plank flooring went through the whole room rather than stopping at a threshold, so the space reads as one room instead of two.