I won’t lie there was part of me that was certain this project would never happen. Okay, that’s a little dramatic, but for real, we started this in May. We’re working with the same contractor who did our bathroom tile surround and way back in May, after about two weeks of back and forth we decided on and ordered cabinets through a local distributor.
Here’s our before (you can tell which are listing photos and which aren’t. Ahem, photoshop, the cabinets are NOT that bright and shiny.).
The project was set to happen while we were on vacation. Well, it didn’t. That would have been too good to be true, right?!
The weekend before we left for our trip we cleared out the entire kitchen. Everything moved into the dining room and it was officially a chaotic disaster zone.
Two days before we left for our trip our contractor called me. From the emergency room. Very drugged up and about to go into emergency surgery. And while I wanted to be selfish and whine and have everyone feel sorry for me I couldn’t because I mean he was about to be operated on very unexpectedly.
So not only was it not happening, he was going to be out of commission for quite a while. We reconvened with him when we got home and planned to start the project at the end of July. The countertops were back ordered until early August but he agreed to make some plywood counters so we could at least have a functioning kitchen. Perfect!
A few days after we got home the cabinets were delivered to our house. A very exciting day! Until 90% of them were the wrong color. The lady who placed the order at the building center must have forgotten what she was ordering in that moment because the first three were the right color. So they went back and more were ordered.
In early August we got word that the countertop material was in and the cabinets were in route. They arrived and they WERE the correct color but now there were two missing. Luckily one was an upper cabinet (can be installed later) and the other was a spice drawer cabinet (can easily be slid next to the stove when it arrives). Most important was getting the lowers in so the counters could be fitted.
Well, my friends, hell must have frozen over last week because on Friday demo started on the kitchen! Since then we’ve had the plumber and electrician in to do work and the cabinets have started being installed! We can actually see a kitchen starting to come together. Which is glorious because living out of the dining room in boxes is kind of getting old.
We decided to hire out for this project for a few reasons. It’s an old house. And there are a lot of quirks. And the cost to mess up a project like this isn’t a small amount. And to be honest, we kind of just wanted it done in a week versus us doing it and learning as we went. We looked at the material versus labor costs and the cost of labor was worth it to us to have it done by professionals.
Some things we’ll do ourselves – painting, changing out light fixtures, possibly the backsplash. On day one of demo we were SO glad we hired out for this project. Once they ripped all the paneling off the walls and saw the condition of the walls underneath we knew we made the right choice.
So, now we wait, and hopefully (fingers crossed) in another week or so we have a functioning kitchen!
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