Monday, August 29, 2011

New Kitchen


We've lived in our current residence for over 28 years now. As we all know, over time styles change and things get old. So it is with our house. Ann has been wanting to upgrade the kitchen for a long time. Sure we've made some changes over the years. We've replaced the old drop down ceiling that had these 4 ft long fluorescent bulbs. We've replaced the flooring once before, but it was still linoleum. We've also have replaced the appliances once before. It should be said that Ann watches HGTV endlessly so it's no surprise the remodel bug hit her big time.

This is what our kitchen looked like before the remodel began. The kitchen is pretty empty as we had to empty everything out so the Contractor could begin the demolition.



After Day 1 our kitchen was pretty much gutted. All the cabinets were gone as were our appliances. The flooring was also torn up.


Day 2 saw the start of the cabinet installation. It was a slow process. Apparently our walls are no where close to square which required a lot of adjustment.


Meanwhile our garage became our storage area. It held the new and old cabinets as well as the new appliances.

Leading into our kitchen is the foyer area. We are going to retile that area along with the kitchen. Day 2 saw the start of the tile removal. I was surprised how easy it came up.

Done in almost no time.

Days 3 and 4 saw further progress on the cabinet installation. I was somewhat surprised they installed the new microwave early in Day 3.


By Friday the work on the cabinet installation was done. We're waiting on the counter tops now. They also took pity on us and put in our appliances so we had a somewhat functional kitchen for the weekend. We really needed the refrigerator. We still don't have a sink so we're really don't have a way to clean up if we tried cooking our own meals and we're not really into washing dishes in the tub, etc. Needless to say we've been eating out for all our meals.


We were also told on Day 5 (Friday) that due to the wonky outside wall, they needed to come remeasure for the counter tops. This time they brought this amazing looking measuring device.

He had it hooked up to a laptop and right after he finished measuring, he sent the measurements electronically to the factory in Maryland. All in all it was pretty cool.

We still have to pick out tile for the kitchen and foyer areas. We've tried. Oh we have tried, but our counter tops have this unique coloring and for whatever reason we can't hold the color in our heads long enough to pick out a tile. Not to mention we have no sense of style whatsoever. The counter tops are due to be installed on Thursday along with a new sink and by the end of the day we should have a fully functional kitchen once again. The plan going forward is to get a piece of the actual counter top and take it to the tile store with us. Hopefully that will allow the tile "design expert" to pick out a few styles/colors that will work and allow us to pick one.

I will say, this remodel has gone better then I expected. The crew has been super nice and have cleaned up everything after wrapping up every day. That's not to say there hasn't been noise and dust and chaos. There's been plenty, but its all been bearable. Even the dogs have pretty much gone with the flow. I figured they would be barking all day long, but again not so. They've just settled into our bedroom and chilled out. Even taking them out for walks, they've pretty much accepted the crew and not gone after them like the crazy maniacs they can be. But truly I'm ready for this all to be done.