removing the soffit and tall cabinet

dad came out today with his jigsaw and helped me cut away the soffit that was above the upper cabinets. he looked around up there thru the hole from the vent pipe and figured out the easiest way to cut it down. left to my own, I would have done it differently and made far more work out of it than it needed to be, and a MUCH bigger mess.


we made a bit of a mess with the insulation and sheetrock.




all down except two long 2x2 boards on the ceiling and a third on the back wall


we got the soffit completely out!


and getting that out of the way made it possible to tip the tall cabinet over and haul it out to the garage since its too tall for the basement. part of the tall cabinet was under the soffit so it couldnt be tipped out until the soffit was removed, and it couldnt be slid over because of the flooring built up all around it.

hot indoor air was being sucked up and out the exhaust hood vent so i covered it with cardboard and taped it closed.


how much of the vent pipe is exposed now that the soffit is removed


there was a phone wire attached along the inside of the cabinet, tacked into place and run up thru a hole between the top and bottom of the cabinet. there is no back to the tall cabinet, it just sits flush against the wall. the bottom end snapped off and pulled right out of the floor when we tipped the cabinet, the other end pulled out of the wall by the disconnected phone jack.

to keep the sheetrock dust from going everywhere, I closed the door to the turtle/computer room. I tacked a sheet up over the doorway to the living room since there is no door. and I threw a sheet over the toaster, microwave and sink on the other side of the kitchen.

I ended up shutting the dogs out in the porch because they kept trying to lick up sheetrock dust. they did surprisingly well with the noise of the jigsaw. when I shut the dogs in the porch, puppy barked his head off. but at least no sheetrock was eaten.

its been 6 days since I last worked on the kitchen. its really wiping me out. but even so, I'm enjoying the doing of it. just not the recovering of it.

I can only imagine how hard it was on dad, standing on the stepladder holding the jigsaw above his head cutting thru the various parts of the soffit. *I* have a very difficult time controlling a jigsaw. it bucks and jumps in my hands and I cant hardly even use one. we were both pretty tired by the time we were done. and covered in dust. but the soffit is down!!! the mess is now cleaned up, and not too much work will be required to patch where the soffit was. just some sheetrock patches rather than having to sheetrock the whole area. the wall behind the soffit could use a little work because one of the studs seems to stand out from the wall farther than others. it looks like they used whatever bits and pieces of sheetrock they had left and called it done without fully filling it in. dad suggests sealing it with a good primer too.