“It’ll Be Just Like New!”

Camille and her sister Jenifer survey the estate on our initial walk-through. “Hey! This isn’t bad… Just replace the counter top, and it’ll be like new!”

It is tragicomic – when we first walked through, the countertops screamed out “REPLACE ME!” Now that we are here and using everything, I discover that all of the cabinets are cheap pressboard under melamine, not cabinet grade MDF. It is not possible that these are builder originals – not in this neighborhood, not in this kind of house, not compared to the rest of the construction quality of this house.  The base cabinets are neither level nor plumb, and some of them appear to have been hobbled together from some kind of Mr. Second castoffs.  A couple fo them are literally falling apart behind the façade.

This rules out slab granite until the base cabinets are corrected or replaced. Not just because of avoiding the whole “lipstick on a pig” waste of money, but because granite will break if it is installed on cabinets that are not level.

When the new microwave was installed yesterday (Nick from Albert Lee did a great job!), I had to remove some of the tile, which had been run up to the bottom of the previous microwave as a kind of hackneyed backsplash.  Removing three squares eliminated the need to drill through the tile and shim the top bracket out a quarter of an inch in order to mount the new microwave.

The tile is glued to the wall with liquid nails (surprise!), so it is almost impossible to remove the tile without damaging the drywall. But the drywall underneath is already pulverized in places (surprise!), so much so that it was not possible to use drywall anchors at all.  Obviously, when the countertop/backsplash is removed, new drywall will need to be installed as well.

And the hardwood flooring was damaged by a motard attempting a refinish with a runaway hand-held belt sander, so it would be senseless to replace cabinets without first leveling and refinishing the floor.

So, what began as a simple desire to replace the counter top rapidly expanded into a complete to-the-studs remodel. Given the dry rot I discovered next to the sink, I fully expect to find water damage under that mess, as well.

The primary problem in this house is not deferred maintenance, it is repairs and modifications done very poorly. For example, the old microwave was shimmed in place with a piece of baseboard molding under the wall cabinet.  It turns out that without this piece of baseboard, the two cabinet doors above the microwave cannot be opened.  Clearly, nothing about the cabinetry is “standard.”  Nothing can be assumed to be of normal or typical dimensions or configuration.

The only rainbow in this situation is that I know how to handle a almost all of these problems, and I’m tooled up to do so.  The things I have never seen before, well, those I can puzzle out with a Ouija board and a bottle of Absolut.