Removing the Upper Floating Cabinets

Woohoo!!
I am so very excited about today's post y'all!  

Today's post is all about our kitchen and how we took our upper cabinets down.
And I say "we" but I really mean my husband...because he did a lot of the work! No joke! I stood there and took pictures and helped out with the occasional little project. :) He did an awesome job though and we love how it turned out!!

Let's take a look at what we were working with before, shall we?

These cabinets totally blocked our view to the family room and just didn't make sense...except for storing more things...but we have a large kitchen island and 2 pantries, so storage was no problem once these were removed. Plus, I feel like I was just putting random things in those cabinets that we weren't using...and by not having them, I got to clean out and give away what we knew we weren't going to use. It was a bit freeing!

Little cuties with their (plastic) hard hats. :)
Those were gifts from one of our neighbors. 


And there is my hubby taking down the cabinets...look at him go! 
The anchors and screws came out easily, but we were surprised to find that the cabinets were still hanging up once we took those out! Basically, whoever installed them just ended up nailing/stapling them to this wood piece you see my hubby trying to separate from the cabinets. That was the worst part. He had to take his claw hammer and separate everything and that took a lot of time. He is so wonderful for doing that for me...
He was also a little skeptical of taking them down, but once they were down, he loved how it turned out!

It was actually more involved than we thought. We were told that it wouldn't be too hard of a job to do so we figured we would give it a go...but once the hubs got it started, it wasn't that easy. Turns out, if you are trying to take down cabinets that are about 20 years old or more, than you basically have to gut the whole thing....which means we wouldn't be able to save the upper cabinets and use them elsewhere like we originally planned. 

Here is what things looked like right after they were taken down....
please excuse the mess!! We vacuumed and cleaned up right after taking these pictures.

Ahhhh!!! So much more open! Can't believe it!
I smile EVERY time I walk in here!
My man did a fabulous job!

There is still some small patch-work to do and some other things...but those are smaller projects on the list to finish.

Still a ways to go in here and the family room, but I am so happy those things aren't there anymore. It's nice to be able to cook and see into the family room at the same time!

I will leave you with one more before and after side-by-side:

Thanks for stopping by!