Every wall we open, every board we pull up, every plank we lay back down – this is what six weeks of kitchen remodeling in Rockville, MD actually looked like, told through the people and pictures that made it happen.
This one came to us the way most of our Rockville projects do: a kitchen that had been doing its best since sometime in the last century, sealed off from the rest of the main floor and running out of patience with the family living around it. What follows isn’t the highlight reel — it’s the whole job, the parts most companies don’t show you, from the first bag of demo debris to the last coat of paint on a wall that technically doesn’t exist anymore.
Where we started
A kitchen that had stopped working for anyone
Original cabinetry, original tile, original layout – sealed off from the rest of the house.
3 problems we walked into
- A kitchen boxed off from the living and dining space, with one narrow doorway doing all the work.
- Cherry-stained cabinets and a full-size fridge eating into every inch of walking room.
- Worn tile flooring and a mismatched color palette running through the whole main floor.
Cherry cabinets on both sides, a fridge that swallowed the walkway, and a doorway at the far end that was the only thing connecting this kitchen to the rest of the house.
Same kitchen, other end – the skylight was the one thing already doing its job right.
Every cabinet original to the house, none of them original to what this family actually needed.
And this is the “main floor” half of the job – the hallway and living room just past that kitchen doorway, which is exactly the sightline we’d end up blowing wide open a few weeks later.
What actually happens behind the plastic sheeting
Gut it, open it, rebuild it
The unglamorous middle – and the crew that lives in it.
That’s Milton hauling out the day’s third bag of old flooring while his crewmate works a scraper over what’s left of the tile adhesive on the wall. Everything you can see here – cabinets, backsplash, flooring – was original to the house.
The corner where the old backsplash used to be. Nothing left to remove but dust.
Capping off the old wiring before that dining room chandelier came down for good.
Site lead Thiago runs the daily walkthrough on this one – arms crossed, checking outlet heights and blocking before anything closes back up, while Milton keeps working the fridge corner behind him.
5 things happening behind these walls
- Removing the load-bearing wall between the kitchen and the living/dining space, with temporary support posts holding the ceiling until the new header goes in.
- Replacing the subfloor across the entire main floor, not just the kitchen.
- Running new wiring for recessed lighting throughout.
- Adding fresh fiberglass insulation at the exterior wall and around the skylight shaft.
- Reframing and resealing the skylight itself.
This is the moment the kitchen stopped being its own sealed-off room. Those two posts are temporary – holding the ceiling load while the new header goes in above where the wall used to be. You can still see the old kitchen fridge through the opening.
Same opening, wider angle – you can see how much of the main floor this one wall used to cut off.
Plastic sheeting keeping the dust where it belongs while framing continues next door.
Marisol feathering the seam where the old wall met new drywall – three coats of mud and sanding before anyone walking through here will ever know a wall used to stand in this spot.
Stripped to the studs. You can see the insulation going in overhead and the skylight shaft reframed – this is as bare as this kitchen has been since the day it was built.
Yonas laying new plank flooring over fresh subfloor, one row at a time. This run doesn’t stop at the kitchen – it carries straight through into the dining room and hallway, which is a big part of why the finished floor plan reads as one open space instead of three separate rooms.
Flooring installation creeping down the hallway while the electrician roughs in the new recessed lighting overhead.
The Reveal
Same footprint, completely different kitchen
Six weeks later – and a wall that no longer exists.
Sage green lowers, white shaker uppers, matte black hardware, and a walnut-toned floor that runs straight back to the pantry wall – no more boxed-in fridge, no more tan tile.
A farmhouse apron sink and matte black faucet under the window that used to look out at a dish rack and a curtain rod. That’s a proper tree view now.
Same vaulted ceiling, same skylight – just cleaned up, repainted, and finally doing its job of pulling daylight into the room.
Hex marble backsplash carried across every wet wall, sink to stove.
The old pantry doorway is now a full wall of floor-to-ceiling storage plus a dedicated coffee station, with a frosted glass door leading back to the mudroom.
And here’s the payoff. What used to be a wall is now an open, beam-topped pass-through into the rest of the main floor – the exact opposite of where this project started.
6 upgrades that changed everything
- Removed the load-bearing wall separating the kitchen from the living and dining space.
- Full cabinet replacement: soft-close shaker doors in two tones, black hardware throughout.
- New quartz countertops and marble hexagon mosaic backsplash.
- Complete LG appliance suite: range, built-in microwave, dishwasher, and refrigerator.
- New flooring installation carried through the kitchen, dining room, hallway, and living room.
- Recessed lighting throughout, plus a fully reframed and resealed skylight.