Kitchen is completely empty

Ok, so it's empty. This is getting scary, I'm doing two projects at once... Obviously, the kitchen won't get done first. The bad part about redoing the kitchen is that it involves 4 spaces: kitchen, half bath, butler's pantry, and mud/laundry room. We are going to attack all of those spaces at the same time, because they share the same flooring almost.

Surprisingly, we discovered that there are hardwoods underneath the linoleum, so we're going to have that refinished. I think hardwoods in the kitchen looks amazing - it's like an upgrade for potential homebuyers.

Shockingly, the plaster underneath the wood paneling is in incredibly bad shape. As bad as you can possibly imagine. The plaster is crumbling as we take down the paneling. There's no repairing it, but that was a cost we had budgeted in, because we didn't want to keep any original plaster in the kitchen anyway. Also, the laths are bad - that's going to come out and new framing must go in. I'm actually going to reuse the existing framing 2x4's that was used to cover the beautiful original beadboard and lower the ceilings on the front porch. It's in good shape, and it would be a shame to waste good solid pine wood.

Another challenge with the space(s) is electrical/plumbing work. The electrical wires for the appliances are coming out of the floor - which means there will be holes in the hardwoods, but fortunately, the cabinets will be covering them. All of the switches/outlets must be realigned and retested to make sure they all work. New electrical work must be done to add a light fixture in the butler's pantry (which will be renovated to relocate the fridge and surrounded by built-in cabinets for more storage - storage is the biggest issue in this house).

As for plumbing, it's coming out of the floor again, so we're going to see if we can get some advice from a plumber on how we can build the cabinets around it so it won't be so obviously retarded looking.

Here are some not-so-tasty photos of the current state of the kitchen.

^^View into the mud room: They wood-paneled this kitchen to DEATH. I can't wait to rip that crap down, and get drywall up. This wall will have a pantry cabinet, sink, dishwasher, and more cabinets.

^^View into the butler's pantry: This location will house the range, and otr microwave, also a peninsula countertop over some cabinets to store pots and pans.

^^This is what the plaster looks like when we tore off part of the paneling. I picked off some of the plaster by hand.
^^What the plaster looks like from a distance.

^^Scott wanted to see the chimney stack and the condition it was in. Definitely not good, so we're going to drywall over the paneling.