Kitchen Remodel

When we bought our house it had the typical builder quality kitchen, which essentially means CHEAP, CHEAP, CHEAP.

After 10 years I was tired of the ugly now yellowing formica countertops, scratched and stained sink and pealing laminate that represents what they call wood.  It didn't help that we had a major pipe break a couple years back which caused damage to the base of the sink cabinet and the one next to it.

My dream kitchen which would have meant moving walls and replacing everything floor to ceiling would have cost between 40 and 50k... yep this was not in the budget.  This lead to research and compromise.  I found a highly recommended contractor that modifies and reinforces the existing cabinets, but builds new doors and can convert cabinets that had doors and covert them into drawers.  We did remove one wall of cabinets and contracted him to build new from scratch pantry cabinets floor to ceiling.

Of course you can't just do the cabinets, this also means new countertops and backsplash and if we were going to do all that then we definitely needed to get rid of the ugly overhead fluorescent light over the island.

We are now in the second week of this project - week one was all about the electrical updates which included adding 6 can lights on a dimmer, removal and installation of a new island light and adding two pendant lights over the breakfast bar.

Yesterday our contractor began the demo, but we somehow never  thought about the fact we wouldn't have a sink, dishwasher, microwave or stove for then next two to three weeks.  See until the new cabinets are built we can't have the granite company come in to measure - current estimate that will be Friday.  It will take 2 weeks from the order date to get the granite, once the granite is in then it will be another couple days before we can get a plumber out to install the new sink and to hook up the garbage disposal and dishwasher.  After that we have to have the tile guy come out and then we will be able to put the stove and microwave back... basically as all projects usually go, the snowball gets bigger and bigger as it rolls down the hill before it finally crashes against something and stops!

These are the pictures to date: