See Inside: A Modern Kitchen Remodel for a St. Paul Foursquare Home

A remodel is underway. Take a look inside.

Follow along as we design and build a new kitchen within an American Foursquare in St. Paul.

Remodel Details

Design

Demo & Framing

Rough-ins

Insulation & Drywall

Cabinets

Current Step

Insulation & Drywall

We’re nearly ready to enclose the walls of this St. Paul kitchen once again.

When the owners of this American Foursquare came to us looking to completely reimagine their kitchen, we knew the cold interior and freezing pipes needed solutions. While improvements to plumbing and HVAC will help, insulation is another important part of keeping the kitchen at a consistent, comfortable temperature. So, let’s take a look at the insulation process in this 1919 remodel and the drywall that will enclose the walls of this American Foursquare once again.

Picking the Right Insulation for an Already Drafty Kitchen

There are many insulation strategies and materials to consider depending on various factors, including budget, local codes, performance, climate, and even general building detailing. To overcome the kitchen’s existing heating and cooling issues, we knew we needed to opt for a material with an excellent R-value, which measures how well a material transfers cold or heat from one surface to the next.

Knowing the clients already struggled to warm the kitchen without space heaters, we chose spray foam for its increased r-value, offering our clients and their plumbing more resistance to our harsh midwestern winters. While spray foam is more expensive, the quickly expanding foam will seal just about any opening that might have otherwise allowed cool air to enter.

Insulation Installation: Another Critical Process Keeping this House Warm

Outfitted in protective gear, a two-person team came out to apply spray foam to several key zones that had been major draft sources within the kitchen of the 1919 home. The spray foam duo focused on adding insulation to:

The kitchen’s perimeter walls
A portion of the flat ceiling that projects beyond the second-level footprint
The rim joists at the basement ceiling

The process of applying the foam, while seemingly simple, requires a well-trained and outfitted technician. The team first prepared the site by sealing openings and protecting any surface that we did not want covered in foam, like vents, recessed cans, or switch boxes. They then administered the mixture with a specialized spray gun nozzle attached to a hose that ran all the way to their rig, spraying between joists and framing. Before our clients could return home, the foam needed time to fully cure and harden.

“Insulation brings pretty significant value. That old kitchen was cold, no matter how much the clients cranked up their radiator.” – White Crane Project Manager

Prepping for drywall actually started with great framing.

Installing drywall for this St. Paul Kitchen remodel required forward thinking from our project manager and framers to better ensure level walls for painting. There were two areas our framers needed to adjust for.

While the existing walls within the 1919 American Foursquare may have been plaster, our remodeled kitchen walls will be covered in drywall sheets. Framers furred out new walls an additional 1/2” to account for the depth change from the existing 1″ deep plaster and lath.
Similarly, framers need to contend with the slightly pitched ceiling framing. Shimming the ceiling framing created the flat surface we needed to hang drywall.

Repetition makes for excellent drywall installation.

With insulation applied, we could finally enclose the walls of this new kitchen with drywall.

Drywall installation is a repetitive process that involves lifting drywall sheets and screwing them into framing. To establish a unified interior wall surface, the crew then taped, mudded, and sanded joints, screw holes, and other seams. With each subsequent mudding and sanding, the drywall team created cleaner, smoother surfaces for painting.

Here’s how drywall is maintaining our clients’ modern design aesthetic.

We needed a skilled drywall team to achieve our clients’ modern kitchen design. We were looking for ultra-crisp drywall edges at each window, given we specified sheetrock returns instead of traditional millwork details, like a sill and apron. With the team working iteratively, we successfully disguised seams without millwork to create perfectly squared corners.