Being motivated by the delivery of our kitchen floor on Saturday morning, we began our invasion of the kitchen in earnest on Sunday. The first volley was fired across the um… flanks of the rear wall… and it umm… retaliated with a… salvo(?) of tile-adhesive and um…

…

Okay, It’s been a long day at work and I’m just not coming up with good war metaphors right now.

So, the long of the short of it is that I spent the majority of this past Sunday preparing the back wall of the kitchen for eventual plastering, priming, and painting. While there are some holes left over from my day of cabling madness, these weren’t my prime concern. We had previously removed the existing kitchen cabinets and wallpaper backsplash (yes, I said paper) to find a lovely mess of ancient tile adhesive all along the wall by the counter and behind where the stove used to be. It had to go.

With the use of mama-jama scraper thingy I tore and scratched at the adhesive for what felt like an eternity. The scraper has a reversible blade on it that you can alternate between a straight flat blade or a slightly serrated one. I kind of alternated between the two. The flat one seemed good for getting a smoother surface, while the serrated one was better for attacking the really tough stuff. When I was done scraping, I ran over the whole thing with a palm sander to try and smooth out any of the spots where the adhesive just wouldn’t come off or where the scraper did more harm than good. I’m not sure if the wall was actually any better when I was done - but at least it was smoother(ish). Here’s a before and after picture of the area behind the oven. It looks like crap, but it is smoother now. It also made a hell of a mess.

All over, the wall generally looks worse, but is ready to be plastered and patched now so we can get to priming it. Fortunately, most of this wall will be covered by cabinetry and/or new tiles, so if it’s imperfect, we can live with it.

While I was working at the wall, I took it upon myself to get the drywall behind the water feeds replaced. We had noticed some moldy looking areas along the bottom of this wall and thought it would be best to replace a section of the wall. It was a good idea. Here’s a picture of what was growing on the inside.

I cut a section of wall away to remove the moldy areas. There wasn’t as much as I thought there would be, fortunately. Having learned wisely from one of my favorite TV shows, I measured and cut the new drywall pieces to fit and shimmed them with some scrap 1×3 I had kicking around. It fit well and I screwed it all in with regular #8 drywall screws..

While I was in drywall cutting mode, I also patched the section of the wall where there used to be a short half-wall, which you can see in this photo. (That’s our real-estate agent leaning on it, by the way). Here’s a couple of before and after shots of where the wall used to be.

When I was all done cutting and screwing in the drywall, I ran around with the fiberglass tape and patches and covered the seams and various gouges in the back wall and the cracks between the old and new drywall.

With that, the first attack in earnest on the kitchen-to-be was done. The wall is not all that pretty to look at yet, but with the good stripping down I gave it, it’s ready to be dressed up again.