Our day started early on Saturday, waking up in our bedroom to our normal house that we’ve lived in for the past six months. But the difference was, Saturday was the beginning of demo to prep for our new floors. As I mentioned in this post, we are replacing all the flooring on our main floor (about 1700 square feet) with faux wood tile and will be living in our lower level during the process. By the end of the day, our house looked very different from the norm.

We had a few neighbors coming to help move ALL of our furniture downstairs at 9:30am, but there was some prep we wanted to knock out before that. Fortunately, my parents arrived around 8 and helped us empty our pantry, take small items (like pillows, couch cushions, etc) downstairs, pop off the island countertop and get the pantry ready to haul out to the garage as well.

You see, we’re not ready for a kitchen remodel yet–we’ll be planning this year and shooting for the actual remodel to begin first quarter of 2015–but we know for sure the island and pantry wouldn’t be staying where they currently are, so we wanted to rip those out before we put in the new floors. Sidenote: when Chris brought our demo debris to the transfer station, that tile countertop weighed in at 400 pounds!

While we’ll most likely replace the island when we do the full remodel, we’ll actually be putting the base cabinets with a make-shift top back in place once we have fresh floors. Without the countertop, it’s easy to see that they are actually just 3 cabinets placed at funky angles. Chris ripped off the backs (saved them for later) and that whole monstrous island actually, suddenly looked very small. We plan on putting the base cabinets straight when we move them back inside after the floors are done. No funky angles. No tile countertop!

It only took about 30 minutes, with the help of our neighbors, to move all of our furniture downstairs to the basement. We are currently holding a few pieces for my in-laws, too, so the whole thing looks like a chaotic furniture store. Greta was so excited about having our dining room table down here, she immediately wanted to have some crackers and cheese just so she could eat at the table downstairs.

And upstairs, it echoes.

After all the furniture was moved downstairs, Chris spent an hour removing all the baseboards on the first floor, which were two different sizes–sometimes in the same room!

And since the fan in the living room area didn’t work at all, we decided to take that down as well. You know, while we were filling up the truck with debris.

Of course the reading room, nursery, hall bath, and our bedroom are also empty–but the great room, without any furniture and newly rid of the pantry and island, feels especially bare.

We spent the rest of the day putting our pantry goods in the cabinets in the laundry room (right through that door above), sweeping up demo debris and setting up “camp” in our bedroom for the next couple weeks downstairs.

It was an exhausting day, but we’re so excited. Just really, really excited to be getting started. For us, sometimes that is the hardest part of a large project–beginning.

Psst. We’ve been nominated for an Apartment Therapy Homie award again this year! Thank you! If you read and enjoy our blog, we’d love your +1 next to Chris Loves Julia in the Home Projects and DIY category.