Blessed Foundation: Post 36: Counters and Backsplash Demo

Last time, we showed you our kitchen electrical work. This week, we are talking about our counter and backsplash demolition (and showing you a look at our new counter tops).

We have really enjoyed our granite tile counter tops, but since we are trying to brighten up our kitchen, we decided to go with a lighter granite slab. We think it's really important that the kitchen makes a great impression since it is such a focal room, and we're hopeful that new counters will do the trick.

Our first step to new counter tops was to demo our old counters. We are getting our new granite professionally installed, but everywhere we priced, we would have had to pay extra for demo, so we decided this would be fun and cost effective to do ourselves. We took out our kitchen sink and our stove top and we were ready to roll.

What we discovered was that there were three layers to our counters. To take them off, we had to remove each layer, one at a time. I thought about drawing a picture, but this one from The Family Handyman was so good, I didn't think it was worth me trying to create my own! (This one actually has four layers.) So what you see is the granite tile, then a waterproofing membrane (we didn't seem to have this...), then backerboard, and then plywood.

We removed the tile layer by “chiseling” it off with a hammer and lever. (I should say, Alan did it this way. It was more efficient for me when I just whacked the counters over and over with a hammer, so I chose this method. To each his own.)

I definitely recommend ear plugs!!

Both methods worked fine. We had all of the tile off in about an hour.

Once the tile was off, we had a middle layer to remove. This layer kind of looked like drywall, but it’s called backerboard. This layer came off pretty easily with the hammer and the lever because it was basically just glued on.

With the backerboard gone, all we had left was a layer of plywood. I asked our contractor if we could leave this, but he encouraged us to replace it. (There was a lot of sealer left over and he said we would get a better seal with clean plywood.) We used a magnet to find the screws because so many were hidden by the sealer and then we unscrewed the plywood base. For screws that we couldn't quite see or get to with the drill, Alan used his dremel tool to sand down to it through the sealer. Then, we could easily unscrew them.

No more counters! (As you can see, we took this opportunity to paint the cabinets. More on that another day.)

To remove our backsplash, we basically had the same method: hammer and lever. This went horribly in some spots and beautifully in others. I think it’s because the tiles on our backsplash were so big. If you angled them away from the wall to get behind them with the lever, they pushed back into the wall on the opposite side, leaving us with huge, gaping holes.

Yuck.

At least we’re good with drywall, right?

This led to our next step... We cut out the yucky drywall and replaced it with new sheets. The walls on our kitchen were becoming quite the jigsaw puzzle, so we opted to take most of the drywall down and have large, solid sheets instead of small, choppy pieces. It was a little extra money, but it saved us a lot of time cutting out odd shapes and fitting everything together, so we decided it was worth it.

With the drywall up, the only thing left to do to prepare for our new counters was to install the decking. This was pretty straightforward. We measured the counter tops and cut plywood to fit over the top. We screwed the plywood into the counters and we were ready for granite!

A while back, I took a trip with Alan's (and now my) Aunt Christine to pick out our granite slab. I loved this one and though it would really brighten up or space. (We're in a shadow, but it looks much brighter in our kitchen. Keep reading!)