We're another pair of old house owners who redid our original kitchen....which also involved taking out the original exterior wall of the house...the wall which divided the original kitchen and 1980's family room addition.

Your post kind of glosses over this piece of your project. You mention that you are going for a complete gut and redo, but you also mention a $5000 budget. Even without appliances, I don't see how you're going to be able to pull this off.

As part of our solution, we ended up hiring a structural engineer and builder who ultimately installed 3 LVL headers to support our 2nd floor and our home's roof. Our town's building permits group required plans which very clearly detailed what was being proposed. While we are DIYers, identifying this solution and then the sheer size of these things made installing them something we couldn't/wouldn't do ourselves. Once the wall was out, we also found that we had height differences in the floors and they had to be corrected. To meet modern building code requirements, we had to make electric changes. Are you going to have adequate HVAC in your finished space? Are you going to have to move plumbing? Just more things to consider.

I think you're going to find that your budget is inadequate for this magnitude of work...unless you have some very knowledgeable family and friends who'll work for free.

I think your questions are all pretty much about "cosmetic" things. I'd get the structural things identified and build that budget first. Then add on the rest. Good luck.

Another old house owner here -- actually I am on old house number two. I agree with kec01 $5000 is nothing for a renovation and when you open up old walls you never know what you will find.

Whatever you do find out about your local building code and its requirements before starting. This will save you a lot of headaches because you will know what to expect in terms of cost.

As far as painting floors -- they look great but if there are holes their may be extensive rotting (possibly termites) so ... Do you have a basement or a good size crawl space? You should be able to see something from below about what is going on.

Here are a few examples from my renovation experiences.

As kec01 mentioned, you will need to bring the wiring and plumbing up to code and this is not cheap, especially if you have knob and tube wires and lead pipes. I speak from experience here. Plumbers in our state are required to remove lead pipes if they are part of a water system (waste water included). I had to destroy a beautiful double marble sink in my basement because of the lead pipes installed deep into the marble. I still shiver when I think of that sledge hammer.

A few years back I did a mini-kitchen reno. in my current 10 x 10 kitchen. We paid a contractor approximately 13K (labor and materials) and we did the following: swapped out an old formica counter, installed cheapy HD laminate tops (which are indestructable btw), removed three layers of linoleum floor and sanded and refinished original oak wood floors (in relatively good condition), installed a new sink and new plumbing, removed a 36" non-bearing wall (still installed a ceiling header to prevent floor sagging), installed a 7 foot x 25 inch pantry closet. In the process we had to update the plumbing and electric wiring (to the entire kitchen -- wall outlets and ceiling fixtures), and remove old plaster in some areas and drywall (mostly to update the electric).

In my previous house when we took out an interior bearing wall the city made us show engineering drawings before they would permit us for the work. The engineer had our contractor put in a ceiling header and two posts in the basement (sunk 36 inches into the floor) to support the house because our house was "lightly constructed." Even with extremely careful planning we went over our budget around 25% because of unexpected items (like two differents levels in the spaces on either side of the removed wall).

That said $5K is not much when you start taking apart an old house.

Remove weight bearing wall alone will most certainly exceed your 5k budget if done by a professional. If not done by a professional, I'd be a really scared. I think this is serious stuff.

We're renovating a 1924 kitchen and considered removing a wall like this that went out to the original back porch. We wanted to extend our living area in the kitchen by that amount. The wall is probably about 10 ft long? Anyway, too much money for the steel beam!! We decided to focus on making other less expensive structural changes inside the existing footprint- and even the smaller things add up quickly. One change involved moving a door in this same wall I mentioned above. We have the horsehair plaster, too. Between our exterior wall and horse hair plaster we found a ton of bricks!! Like a couple layers... required masonry work.

Your kitchen sounds too small to remain the way it is, but to fix it I think you'll need more money. I'm no expert, but based on our experience on this project it sounds unrealistic. Have you thought about relocating the kitchen to somewhere else? I can't really visualize what exactly is going on in your house, but perhaps your edition area that you are trying to incorporate should just *be* the kitchen. And make the kitchen area a sitting room or something?

We have an old house too (1890) and I think it will be very tough to accomplish your goals with a $5,000 budget -- even DIY. You will most likely find some "surprises" when you open things up (for example, we had 5 layers of flooring over the original sub-floor and ended up needing a new plywood subfloor before we can put in the new hardwoods). I wouldn't count on being able to salvage the original floors - ours were good in spots and not so good in others. Most importantly, you should try and get a professional involved before you tear down any load bearing walls - that isn't the place to save $$ by doing things yourself (I am assuming you are not professionals).
Also, once you start tearing stuff out everything will need to be brought up to code and, speaking from experience, that is expensive (and will probably exceed your budget right there). Not trying to sound discouraging but unless you know (or are) an electrician or plumber who can do this work it does mount up.

Hi, Hisgal. Exciting project. Old homes that have grown rather surprisingly over the years (why on earth did they do THAT?) like yours are my favorite. With no diagram, there's no chance to guess at what would be my own favorite layout, but:

1. Having fridge, stove, and sink on the same wall CAN work great. Instead of regarding your triangle squashed flat with dismay, consider food flow. It starts at storage, moves across water to prep, then to cooking, then gets served (then the used stuff back to water). All on one wall can work well--those standard-kitchen triangles tend to have their own drawbacks if they involve raipses back and forth across open floor instead of just sliding along continuous work counter, wasteful and sometimes messy.

2. Painted floors done well look fantastic! Lucky you if your wood's too awful for a simple finishing. :)

3. I've not checked into prices for this but once read they were too high to be a good alternative to solid. If so, there are options. One, a straight counter means you could use an off-the-shelf solid stone counter. For an old house, a sheet linoleum counter with metal edge would work excellently until you could afford something you wanted more. Or wood counters from a place like Lumber Liquidators or Ikea.

4. Backsplash is an issue for another day; just have fun mulling now. With your budget, you'll have to do your kitchen in stages, and by the time you're ready for a permanent backsplash you'll have changed your minds several times and likely refined your ideas of what you want.

5. We've done, and are still working at, various parts of our house, including electrical. What you don't know now you'll learn. Try hard to find a way to purchase wholesale or close to and also ask for bids on specific jobs. Truly, sometimes professionals can and will do it for less than you can yourself.

6. The others are right that correcting and updating structure are going to have to come first, and you'll be among the very lucky ones if that doesn't take your $5k and more. Good news is that creating a very functional and charming space you want to use from yucky neglected ones will yield by far the highest payback for your dollar. Back in our newlywed rental days, my main work counter in an old house was a piece of plywood on bookcases (my pantry). To this day that remains one of my very favorite and best kitchens, and that's because it was such a well functioning and bright sunny place to be otherwise. I always liked to go in there.

I agree with what previous posters have said. Unfortunately $5K sounds like a lot less than what you will need to do everything you are suggesting. The structural changes alone are almost certain to exceed that.

It's a little difficult to picture exactly how your layout is, you could create a simple layout in Excel, or something else and post that. To post a picture most people get a photobucket account, and upload the photos there.

With a very small budget like you have, making the addition the kitchen (depending on the size) might be the best way to go. An image of your layout would be helpful for people to offer creative suggestions.

Hi hisgal2, and welcome to the forum (and the joys and oys of old-house ownership). The kitchen in our previous house (circa 1916) had many of the same issues. I also wanted to knock down the wall between an addition and the old kitchen, which as you've found, required additional support in the form of a structural beam in the ceiling. For a modest redo, our contractor's price *started* at $25K. I hate to rain on your parade, but I think that you are experiencing the false expectations that most first-time owners of old houses fall prey to. I know *I* certainly did!

So to answer at least some of your very good questions:

1. I don't think sink-stove-fridge on one 17' wall is necessarily a problem if it's well-planned. Galley kitchens can be one of most efficient kitchen layouts when well thought out.

2. Rather than painting grout lines to resemble tile, consider a painted checkerboard floor--very appropriate to old houses. Or install a floating cork floor in a checkerboard pattern or plain planks--IF the subfloor is sound. I agree with everyone else that the holes underneath sound very worrisome. Did your home inspector say anything about that? Can you see the holes from underneath in the basement?

3. Have not heard of modular granite, but granite tiles can be a very nice answer to a budget crunch, particularly set togethes and grouted with a blending color.

4. Ceramic tile is so varied that you could almost certainly find something that would meet your needs--but if you're really on a budget, consider just painting the backsplash for now and installing tile later. That also gives you plenty of time to shop.

5. Instead of finishing the cabinets yourselves, consider Ikea cabinets--they are inexpensive but very hard-wearing and well-constructed. Many people at this forum have put them in and are very happy with them.

That said...I agree with everyone else that a budget of 5K is WAY too low for what you want to do--and too many potential problems for a total DIY job. (For instance--is there an upstairs bathroom directly over the kitchen? You may well find that those pipes have corroded and need to be replaced--otherwise they'll start dripping into your kitchen and deteriorating the ceiling. This is a VERY common old house problem--had it in my old house and dealing with it again now in a 1952 house.) Structural issues need to be addressed first, and yes, you need permits and engineering drawings, and everything needs to meet your town codes. Just rewiring the house will be a significant cost--have you priced that out yet, found a licensed electrician and gotten permits for that?

In the meantime, let's think about solutions to your current problem. I can't quite envision what you have from your description, but is it possible to put a sink in the room where the stove and fridge are now? Your sink is probably on the original exterior wall of the house; what's on the other side of it now and could it be moved to put a sink there? Do you have room to put a small freestanding butcher block for additional counter space? How about an old armoire picked up at a garage sale for storage?

Do you have pics on your computer? You should be able to open an account on Photobucket, upload them and then link them here.

I can't believe you just said "ick" to plaster. But we'll put that aside for a moment.

As the owner of a 200-year-old house, I also think $5,000 isn't going to get you a kitchen, it's more like going to get you a sound floor and some walls and some expert advice and some plumbing and electrics where you need it. So then you can plan Phase 2. Then Phase 3. Etc.

Or you can wait until you can do it all at once. But if you've got holes in the floor, that really should be addressed sooner rather than later.

If that's your budget for the moment, make that the Phase 1 budget, and stick to it. Figure out what you want the ultimate plan to be, so you're not painting yourself into a corner, but listen to the voices of experience here when we say you may suddenly find your whole budget blown by something crazy.

As for the all-on-the-same-wall configuration -- yes, it can absolutely work. I almost have it now (a little bump for the fridge), and it works well for me. I actually prefer shuffling down the line rather than pivoting and whirling and crossing and tripping over people. But that's just me.

Anyhow, good luck and enjoy your house!

I should have mentioned that the $5,000 budget is ONLY for the kitchen and NOT for electrical. We have a separate budget for that. We've pretty much already planned and priced the unfinished cabinets...$1200. We've allowed $200 in the budget for a double sink that I saw somewhere and would like. We've allowed $130 for the faucet that we like. The $5,000 budget is very doable.

The "holes" in the flooring are not termites...we had an inspection before buying the house and from the basement and crawl space we can see that there are no bugs. The holes are most likely just gaps in the flooring....we'll see. The subflooring in both rooms of the kitchen is older rough cut lumber (kind of like what you'd see on the floor of an older barn) and the joists were large...more like beams. So we are not concerned about the flooring.

As for the wall removal... In plank construction, there are only 4 components: 2 posts, a beam held up by those posts, a beam below those posts, and planks that were nailed from the top beam to the lower beam on either side of those beams...I hope that all made sense. So, finding anything in the wall is extremely unlikely. In the town we live in, most homes were constructed in this manner and we know quite a few people who have removed walls to enlarge rooms. There is a trip to the borough hall planned so we can find out what needs to be done for that.

Electric... DH and FIL are updating the electric. FIL built his house and an addition onto his house and is knowledgeable in this area. No concerns here....wiring already priced. We are planning on doing surface mount for the electric because there is no way whatsoever that I am opening up a plaster and lath wall!!!

There is a bathroom above the kitchen and we will be looking at the plumbing when we take down the tiled wall of the kitchen. There are newer fixtures in that bathroom, so we will see what is there. We were told by the previous owner that the piping is cast iron, not lead....and we can see some of it for the vent.

I will try to post pictures later. For now we are taking a break from the remodeling (just got finished building most of a fence in the backyard) and taking the kids to Knoebels for the first time. Ought to be a nice day. :)

Thanks for the advice so far. Also, I will try to play around with Excel or something to draw the layout for the current kitchen and for our plans.

Try drawing up your current floor plan on graph paper, take a digital picture of it, and post it here. One comment on your planned wall...if it's possible try for a "refrigerator - sink - range" setup...much more functional all around. Work flow is:

Refrigerator/pantry to sink for prep
Sink to range/oven for cooking
Range/oven to table for eating OR to sink for cleanup

Does the $5K also include changing the load bearing wall?

It sounds like you plan to do all this work yourselves...if so, you will save quite a bit of money!

hisgal2 -

There are some options that you could consider to avoid the surface mount wiring.

1) You can cut into the plaster down near the floor and run the wire through the studs at that height. Then you can just fish the wire up to where you want the outlet/switch. You can then just patch up the wall and cover it with molding. Our old house has baseboard molding that reaches up about 10" off the ground that would hide and work we needed to do to run wire in the wall behind it. Also if you are running wire behind the cabinets, then you could just patch it up quick and cover it with the cabinets.

2) If you have access to the ceiling area from the bathroom above, you could run the wire through there, and then fish it down to the outlet/switch.

Just throwing some suggestions out there for you to think about, they might not be possible or desirable for your house.

About the painted floor, I think I agree with the anna_chosak. I would favor a checkerboard pattern without grout lines. But that might just be because I've never seen what you were describing.

Here's a link to a blog where the author used granite tiles for the counter. If you look through the blog, you can see pictures of how it ends up, and how he went about doing it.

Here is a link that might be useful: http://10kkitchenremodel.blogspot.com/

hi hisgal
another old home owner here, but not quite as old a home. our kitchen is 10x10 and previous owners connected it to the former back porch, using a beam over head. i don't know if they did it right, but it's covered now. once we got everything in there, you don't really notice the beam. our back porch was completely uninsulated, just enclosed and they left the beadboard ceiling...watch for that you may need to remove the ceiling. under all that linoleum, we found splintered soft wood floors. they're gone, replaced by $2.55 sq ft home depot stock hardwood that happens to match the other wood in the house (luck there)
your plan of "all on a wall" sounds good to me. it's a nice setup, because it allows the other side of the kitchen to be used by someone else. i have not done unfinished oak, but have stained unfinished maple bookshelves. prepare to sand...hand sand....if you're ok with that, you'll be fine.

however, all of that said, i think i agree with dc charlotte about the budget, the beam, and the old kitchen issues. if there is a nice sunny room that is a little bigger you might be best served starting fresh with that. then you won't have to deal with uneven floors, really old pipes, structural issues, etc. you can spend the 5000 on unfinished or on ikea cabinets, plumbing, and maybe even an appliance or two. you can also keep cooking in the old kitchen while you build the new-- the old can serve as your temp kitchen, which is good for diy'ers, as we tend to take longer. if our house had been in worse shape, i would have taken the opportunity to make the sunny 10x12 guest bedroom into a kitchen. for us though, the kitchen was already sort of modernized, so couldn't justify going to another spot. good luck to you, i bet it will be very nice when you're all done... kren ps horse hair plaster is absolutely the worst, grew up in a house where chunks of it would fall on us randomly until my parents removed all of it from the ceiling.

maria410 said: "installed cheapy HD laminate tops (which are indestructable btw),"

I'm debating between laminate tops and the man-made glass/quartz. I want them to stand up to stains (coffee and red wine mostly, :-)) and some resistance to hot if one occasionally accidentally sets something hot on them.

How indestructable do you find the cheapy HD laminate tops that you have?

Sorry for the hijack.

La_koala the HD tops are indestructable to stains. I have not had any problems with stains or standing water. I have never put anything hot on them though. I tend to have bread boards around or layout a folded dishtowel before putting down a hot pot. I doubt that laminate can stand up to a hot pot. You can buy a scrap piece at HD and test it.

I put these counters in as a temporary solution (almost 5 years and counting now) until we redo the entire kitchen (still saving money). We have no complaints. I will probably use laminate in my new kitchen. I don't like stone (just a personal preference) and love some of the newer solid surfaces but they are expensive. I am not sure I can bring myself to spend the money. Laminate is very servicable and I can get it in a myriad of patterns and if it is contructed properly it will last a long time.

That is what has surprised me about the HD prefab tops. Because they were so inexpensive, I figured they would start delaminating but they have not at all in my kitchen.

We also have an old house and have done extensive remodeling. When we did our first kitchen remodel we took up the vinyl floor and the plywood it was attached to and found 3/4" oak under it. We were told it couldn't be refinished, but we refinished it anyway and it looked pretty good, even with the gaps, un-levelness and all the tiny nail holes from the plywood. I love the idea of painted floors but don't believe they'll hold up too well in a high traffic area like a kitchen. Having said that, it's easy to repaint them.

My biggest concern for your remodel with your stated budget is taking out that back wall. We were quoted $5k minimum to put in a steel beam to hold up the house if we took the wall out. As others have advised, I'd just make sure you research it well so you know for sure you can do it with your budget.

I also believe your should try fishing the new wires when you get rid of the knob and tube. Our house is also plaster and lath (which I love, love, love!!!!...hate drywall) with 22" exterior stone walls and three stories, and while it's time consuming, we've been able to find ways to fish the wires from the basement all the way to the attic.

Regarding the plumbing, we didn't find any lead but while the kitchen walls are open, you may want to consider replacing the soil stack running from the bathroom above. Ours were old and decrepit looking and our plumber said "Oh, it can last another 20 yrs or it could go tomorrow". Well, seeping sewage is a personal nightmare of mine so it was replaced!

You're so lucky to have your FIL to help and advise. Good luck and have fun. I'm sure it'll look great when you're finished.

If you have the patience you could always do what we did and remodel over a five year span. Not by choice... can't trust these old houses. Everything went wrong once we opened up walls. Owning an old house is not for the weak!

Good luck!!

We found EXTENSIVE (but at least very old, not active) termite damage in our cottage and had to remove and replace the main support wall (previous outside wall, florida room was added later.) It can be a do-it yourself job, but it is definitely not easy or quick. My SO has a degree in a related field of engineering and 40 years of DIY experience,but it is still a huge job and we ended up hiring semi-skilled laborors to help.

Basically, what had to be done was to build both temporary and new walls for one section at a time, jack the house up with hydraulic jacks and then slide the new wall sections in.

We also replaced an opening that previously contained two windows with a 6' wide archway and so had to add in new header there.

It is really not a job to consider DIYing if you have not done something of this magnitude before.

And we spend ~$2,000 on lumber, the jacks, and an inexpensive pnuematic framing nailer, he already had a full set of power tools, so if you need to buy tools, don't forget that expense.

During our remodel, we found evidence of termites. Fortunately for us, though, we must have found them before they did too much damage (in our GC's opinion, and that of two termite-inspection companies). Still, it blew our budget by $2K just to ensure that the termites would GO AWAY - - $1700 for the tenting of the house, and $300 to be away from the house for the required period of time.

Fortunately, I had braced myself for this possibility, though I never did convince my DH that you find things when you open up walls.

On the good side, when the GC opened up a different wall to move an outdoor faucet, the area underneath the shower stall in the bathroom looked leak-free! When he opened up an inside wall to move some electricity, we found some newspaper dated 1983 (the house was built in 1978) - so we finally knew when the peninsula in the kitchen got added!

Anyway, this is just an example of what could happen when you open up a wall.

DonnaR/CA