Category: Kitchen Saga

I think our kitchen is now fully gutted.

The tile is gone.

The backer boards are up (thank GOD. What a process).

Kevin sawed our faucets off, capped them, and then replaced the flooring yesterday. He capped the pipes because:

1. The hardware was rusted and the shut-off valves were leaking.

2. To avoid having to punch a huge hole in our new cabinets to make room for the new hardware. Now, all the cabinet guy has to do is make two small holes and fit the cabinet down over the pipes. Then Kevin can take the caps off and put our new hardware on.

Isn’t he smart?!

(Actually, that wasn’t his idea – that was the plumber’s idea. Shh).

And speaking of the plumber:

The guy came over on Friday to give us an estimate on the plumbing work – i.e. running a line to our fridge for the ice maker.

Even though Kevin can do this, he really doesn’t have the time, nor the energy, quite frankly, to fool with it. So, we’re going to hire the plumber to do it. And even though the plumber offered to do the rest of our plumbing jobs for us (i.e. hook the garbage disposer back up), Kevin is going to do that to save us some money.

Because as usual, they wanted to charge too much.

Kevin also crawled under the house to brace the floor. After he did it, he wasn’t sure it was necessary, but now our floor is doubly reinforced.

While under the house, he noticed we had mold. He’s been struggling with trying to keep the underside of our house dry for years (putting in a sump pump, which helped, but still doesn’t quite do what he wants it to do) as our house is sort of on a slope and when it rains heavily, it’s like a river under our house.

Now we’ll have to research how to get rid of mold so we’re not breathing toxic fumes.

It’s always something, isn’t it?

I vacuumed down the walls yesterday. They were coated with dust and I won’t even tell you how many cobwebs we had – it’s quite embarrassing. But suffice it to say, I think they are clean enough to put primer on – which is what we have planned for today.

Kevin wants to paint the ceiling and I’m going to paint the underside of the soffits because they’re black and quite nasty.

I want to get those painted before the cabinets go in. I think, with the boys’ help, we can get all of that done fairly quickly.

We’re also moving the rest of our crap out today – the fridge, the range, the table with all the junk on it, and the washer and dryer.

Our utility room sits right off our kitchen and leads out to the garage. We’re going to have that room, as well as the pantry, tiled tomorrow.

That’s really all we have planned for today. I think we’ve gotten to the point where we are sick to death of this project, but we’re on the downhill slope now. The kitchen has been gutted, now it’s time to put it back together again.

We will be without a range and a washer and dryer for several days. This means we’ll be forced to eat out, though I’ll probably cook something in the crockpot one day and Kevin might grill something so we can save some money, but quite frankly, I’m now behind in my work, Kevin still has a job to go to and honestly? Eating out is easier and less messy so it’s a viable option right now.

We’re going to plug our fridge up in the garage so we’ll have a way to keep our food from spoiling while we wait for our new fridge to be delivered and hooked up. We plan on getting rid of the range, the washer / dryer and the fridge this week sometime. I’m going to call some charities (I think Kevin mentioned that the Boys’ Club was interested) so that they can take those items off our hands.

Kevin’s parents have graciously offered us Nanny’s (Kevin’s grandmother who passed away several months ago) washer and dryer, which are virtually brand new, so that will save us some money having to purchase new ones.

All of our appliances are fifteen years old and older and on the verge of conking out. In fact, we couldn’t have timed this renovation better because honestly, it was time for an overhaul (our dishwasher died the last time I used it).

Tile guys are scheduled to be here first thing in the morning. We’re really looking forward to getting that done and we’re praying we picked out something that will look good and we can live with for many, many, MANY years because trust me when I say, we will NEVER do another kitchen renovation again, at least, in our lifetime.

This has been a major pain in the butt and it’s not over yet. BUT, I think our hardest part is nearly over and we can sit back and allow others to put it back together for us.

11:37 a.m.

The kitchen is empty and ready to demolish. We have moved everything into the dining room and there it resides, in huge boxes.

Here is one last a shot of the kitchen before the demo.

We’re going to try and salvage the counter tops so we can use them while we wait for the Quartz counter top to get here.

If the guy is still here by the time I pick the boys up from school, I’m taking them to the library so they can avoid most of the dust. I think all of this tile dust has been getting to them – they are congested and feeling a bit under the weather.

This living out of boxes for a week is going to be … challenging.

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11:45 a.m.

I apologize for all the kitchen talk – I realize this is probably pretty boring. But I’d like to document this so we can look back, heave heavy sighs and say, “Remember what a PAIN IN THE ASS that was?!”

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11:52 a.m.

I can hear the cabinet guy sighing pretty heavily in there. I wonder if he’s getting frustrated? I mean, really, how can he not? That’s got to be pretty tedious work. I mean, we’re taking out tile and I’m not even doing most of the grunt work and I want to scream.

And the pounding begins.

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12:15 p.m.

Just had lunch with Kevin.

The cabinet guy found some stuff in the cabinets above the fridge. Oops! How embarrassing!

Kevin is now helping the guy carry out the counter tops. I’m so glad he came home! I don’t think … well actually, I KNOW I couldn’t help carry those out. They’re heavy!

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1:27 p.m.

Oops. The guy had to turn the breaker off that juiced the hood above the range and that also happened to be the same breaker that keeps the DSL box and router on so … I was without Internet for a bit.

Cabinets are half gone. The guy pointed out a couple of holes in our wall, they were behind a cabinet and we didn’t know they were there. He wanted to make sure we knew about them so we couldn’t blame him.

It also looks like we’ve had some mice living in our cabinets at some point – there are tell-tale signs and a few tufts of insulation lying about. Kevin won’t be happy to see those holes. In addition, the floor under our sink had rotted out, so that will have to be replaced too.

It’s a good thing we have some time to do these repairs before the tile guys get here on Monday.

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1:39 p.m.

I’ve been spraying Windex and Pledge everywhere. But every time I get one area clean, I turn around and it’s dirty again. It’s like I’m at war with the dust.

And I’m going to win, dang it.

And this is probably the most I’ve vacuumed in … well, ever.

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1:54 p.m.

Okay, he’s working on the other side of the kitchen now. I wonder what he finds behind THESE cabinets.

Let’s go for nothing, shall we?

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2:00 p.m.

The walls are vibrating and cracking – I’m going to choose to believe this is normal.

And I’m dying for a drink of water but I’m too shy to go in there and get some water from the water cooler. I could drink tap but ….

PSHAW! Right!

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2:15 p.m.

Afraid to look … afraid to look…

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2:24 p.m.

I swear, half the wall just came down …

Okay, not really. But it felt like it.

Maybe an earthquake?

Seriously, I’m afraid to look …

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2:41 p.m.

I hear sweeping. Do I dare hope he’s almost done?!?

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3:41 p.m.

And … it’s done.

If you look at the lower right-hand corner, you can see those two holes. You can also see that the floor under the exposed piping needs replaced.

It’s so WEIRD not having cabinets anymore! And it’s going to be a challenge working around that, er, little inconvenience this next week(s).

Next? The guys will finish taking up that backboard, Kevin will patch the wall and replace the particle board and this weekend we’ll move out the fridge, the range and the washer and dryer so the tile guys have a clean slate to work with on Monday.

Whew. Thanks for sticking it out with me. I promise not to mention the kitchen again for a few days at least. 😀

Here’s Kevin scoring the screws …

… so the boys can get them out.

And shortly after I taped this video, our cabinets arrived!!!!

Our cabinet guy called, he’s going to come by in the morning and start tearing out our cabinets, which means, now it’s time for my job – emptying out the cabinets.

Everything is moving fast!

We’ve talked about doing this for so long, I can’t believe it’s actually happening!!

I’m hobbling around like an old woman – THAT’S how much fun I had over the weekend.

*wink-wink-nudge-nudge*

Okay, let me banish the naughty thoughts I’m sure you all are having right about now.

We, and by WE I mean ALL OF US, worked all day Saturday demolishing our kitchen tile. (If you follow me on Twitter, this is old news. My apologizes). We probably didn’t have to do it ourselves, we could have hired someone (and I wish we did now), but we figured we’d save a few bucks by doing it ourselves and we had toyed with the idea of putting in the new tile ourselves but you know? No. I talked Kevin into hiring some professionals to do it.

In the meantime, we needed to get our old tile out of here so Kevin rented a tool from Home Depot, some sort of jack hammer looking thingie, and he broke up the tile into sections and while he took a break, me and the boys shoveled it out. (Well, Jazz had to leave after the first 1/3 to go to a birthday party).

Once we got the crap, er, chewed-up tile out, then Kevin came back in and started working on the next section, thereby giving me and the boys (i.e. me and Dude) a break.

We did run into a snag though – we didn’t think far enough ahead and once we got to the shovel stage and all of our buckets were full within minutes we thought …… now what?? We should have rented one of those big dumpsters from the trash company, but since we didn’t and we needed some way to dispose of our tile as soon as possible, we ended up making a run up to Kevin’s work and dumping it into his industrial-sized dumpster. (Hey, he’s the boss. It’s all on the up-and-up).

We did grab four huge trash bins from his office and were able to use those for the rest of the floor, so Kevin only had to make one more trip back to the dumpster.

Still, it would have been a much smoother process if we had thought to rent a dumpster in the first place. Oops.

Anyhoo, everything went like clockwork. I have lifted more these past several days than I think I have in the past several years and I was worried about my back going out, but as of today, I’m sore, but still mobile so it’s all good.

The worst part? Was by far … the dust. OH. MY. GOSH. We had (and still have) dust everywhere.

Luckily, the weather was pretty mild on Saturday, so we were able to open the doors and allow most of the dust out that way. And even though we hung dust cloths over the entrances, everything still ended up with a thick coat of dust. I’m going to be dusting for several days. (I’ve already dusted twice so far! And still, I find more dust!)

But, we were able to pull up all of the tile in our kitchen and return the jack hammer thingie back to Home Depot by the allotted time – Kevin was pretty impressed. He was pretty sure we were going to end up having to rent the machine for two days but nope, we all pitched in and we got through it pretty fast.

Here’s a shot of our kitchen before we took the tile up:

And a shot of the kitchen after we removed the tile:

See how the stove is sticking out? Kevin and Dude pulled the stove out to get to the tile under neath and couldn’t get it back into place. But no worries, that sucker is going to be hauled off in about a week anyway.

We can’t walk into our kitchen without shoes on. I’m too afraid there might be shards of sharp tile lying about and I don’t want anyone to cut their feet, so we’re taking our shoes off right outside the dining room entrance to the kitchen in the meantime. MAJOR pain in the butt, but remodeling anything is a major pain in the butt so we’ll deal with it.

My in-laws came over yesterday and we talked over a few points with them and they thought that having our entire kitchen tiled was a better option than having tile put in around our cabinets (Kevin was worried that we might want to change the tile at some point in the future but honestly? I’m done with tiling. We’re sticking to whatever we decide). So now, that’s the plan. Only, we don’t have anyone lined up to do our tile yet, so that’s where Kevin and I are heading today – to hunt for tile and to find someone to come in and tile our kitchen after the old cabinets have been taken out.

We plan on checking out quite a few stores and doing a lot of comparing because we want to pick out something we can both live with, well, for the rest of our lives. (At least, I hope it works out that way). I’ll let you know how it goes.

We’ve also decided to put in some heating elements under our tile too, especially around the kitchen table and one strip down the main part of the kitchen. Our kitchen is always the coldest room in the house so we’re really looking forward to having a toasty floor to step on.

(I wonder what happens if the heating element goes out. How could they replace it without ripping up the tile?! Hhmm … yet another question to ask. Do any of you know?)

So, that’s where we are on our remodeling project. This next week will be pretty busy. Our cabinets are scheduled to be delivered late tomorrow afternoon and the demolition will start a few days after that, I’m sure.

This is going to be tricky, moving old appliances out, getting our new tile put in, the cabinets installed and then the new appliances put in. I think I’m the most stressed about swapping out refrigerators; I’m just hoping I can coordinate it so that I’m not stuck with a garage full of food and no place to put it.

It’s nearly time to destroy our kitchen. And the closer we get, the more nervous I get. I am not looking forward to being without a kitchen for a few weeks.

So, the last time I talked about the kitchen, we had just finalized our cabinets and counter tops. We are very happy with our choices and now I just hope it looks as good in reality as it does in my head.

I scanned our plans and thought you might be interested in seeing them:

Our range will be different, more on that in a minute. Other than that, this side of the kitchen is unchanged, save for the microwave above the range. We have a fan over the range now and our microwave on the counter top so we thought we would gain a little counter top space and put it above the range. The doors above the microwave will be smaller than we have now (to make room for the microwave), but we’re willing to make that sacrifice.

Now for the sink side. The two cabinets on either side of the arch will be glass doors – but not any glass doors. I didn’t want something clear because that would mean I would have to keep “nice, show” dishes in there and it would always have to look nice and in essence, that space would be reduced to display only and … no thanks. So we decided to go with a more opaque glass. Only after Kevin and I started thinking about it and realized that the glass we picked out is a bit more “white-ish” than we would have liked did we change our minds, so now we’re dealing with trying to get something different.

The glass doors? Freaking expensive. Especially if you opted to put any sort of lead pane work in, which we didn’t. But we thought it would be a cool addition to our kitchen, so we swallowed the price and moved on.

The two small cabinets above the sink? Will be new. There are no cabinets there now, just an arch, so I’m looking forward to having a bit more space to store junk, er, useful kitchen items is what I actually meant to say.

*ahem*

And see that oblong drawer directly in front of the sink? (Which will be an under-the-counter sink so I can just wipe food directly into the sink and not worry about it getting caught under a lip, like a standard sink). It’s a wedge drawer. Meaning that it opens out at a slant and that’s where we’ll keep our dish brush, sink stopper and sponges. This way, we won’t have to clutter the counter top. LOVE that feature.

On the far right you see two containers: that’s where our trash bin will go. We will no longer have our trash sitting out for every one to see and sniff when they come over. And though it’s not on the plans, the end of the cabinet (where the trash bins are), will be closed off and we’re putting a bookcase there, complete with fancy spindles. (I think that’s what you call them). I plan on keeping my cookbooks there. This will also free up more cabinet space since that’s where I have them stored now.

When Kevin and I met for our weekly lunch date last Wednesday, we went to a builder’s store and picked out our new range, dishwasher, microwave and fridge. (HIGHLY recommend Metro Builder’s. They were phenomenal to us!!)

We weren’t initially planning on buying a fridge, but when Kevin pointed out that our fridge was 18 years old and that he had had to replace a component on the motor five years ago (I totally forgot he had done that) AND that if we bought the fridge as part of a “package” deal we’d actually get it cheaper than if we bought it separately, we decided it was in our best interest to go ahead and throw in a fridge. I mean, we’d have to replace it soon anyway, we might as well do it now. (We’re planning on donating our fridge to a woman’s shelter or some other charity that could really use it). We got all four pieces at a really good price, better than if we had bought them through Lowe’s, so we left feeling pretty proud of ourselves, actually.

Brace yourself – we bought black appliances. I KNOW! Stainless steel is so popular right now. And I think Kevin really had his heart set on stainless steel but I’ll be honest folks, I’m NOT a big fan of stainless steel. First of all, it looks cold to me, which sounds stupid because black doesn’t feel cold? But I don’t know, I’m just not that impressed with them. But the biggest thing for me, the real clincher on the deal, are the fingerprints.

We currently have a black and stainless steel water cooler. And the fingerprints on that thing? Drive me bonkers!! And they won’t come off!! And if every appliance in our kitchen looked like that, I’d cut myself. I simply can’t stand that. And there is no way I’m going to spend my time cleaning those things off every time I see a fingerprint – i.e. every time someone freaking touches it. In fact, the salesman at the store told us that they hired a woman to come in, every day, and clean their stainless steel appliances so they looked spotless for customers.

Now granted, it’s a store, and lots of people are touching them, but still, fingerprints that won’t come off. UGH!

When Kevin heard that, he waffled on the stainless steel. I gave him three reasons we should go with the black.

One, it will be a lovely contrast against our honey-spice cabinets.

Two, we have black specks in our counter tops and that will coordinate nicely.

Three, they are WAY CHEAPER than stainless steel. Hence the reason we got all four pieces for almost less than what it would have cost to buy ONE stainless steel fridge. And every appliance is Kitchen Aid, which I’m told is a good brand. (See? I know nothing about this stuff).

I still think Kevin is a bit disappointed that we didn’t go with the stainless steel, but he’ll get over it. I honestly think black will look better anyway and … since when do I give in to fads? Which is what I think stainless steel is right now. And honestly, I think black will work better for our lifestyle and our kitchen.

Oh, and the range? Won’t have the controls in the back, like traditional range. No, the controls will be on the front. I’m insanely excited about this range. I get so disgusted with the one we have now, because with the controls on the back, they get all greasy and are hard to clean. We’re hoping the controls don’t get so greasy and messed up if they’re in the front. It also has a warming drawer.

Our cabinets are supposed to be delivered February 16th. That’s like … SOON. I’m a bit freaked out by that because when the cabinets come, then suddenly this will all seem REAL. We have to take our tile floor up. Our new cabinets will be a tad bigger than our current cabinet configuration, which means the tile floor will have to go. So, Kevin is going to rent a machine (I have no idea what it’s called – some tile remover machine thing), and he will remove the tiles while the boys and I follow behind him and clean up the mess. We’ll be walking on backer boards for quite some time as our new tile floor (that we may, or may not hire someone to do, we’re still discussing that part) won’t go in until the very last.

We’re also waiting on our back splash. And we’re holding off on that because we haven’t decided what we want yet. I’d rather just paint and then put that in later so I can see how the whole thing is going to look before deciding.

I still can’t believe this is all coming together. We’ve been talking about doing this for so long that it was sort of reduced to a “one-of-those-days” dreams. You know?

It looks like that faraway day? Is here.

Now.

Stay tuned. This is going to get interesting. And messy.

I feel like one of those moles in the “Whack-a-Mole” game.

The one who got clobbered in the head and who now lays dead, on it’s side with X’s over it’s eyes to indicate that it can’t BE any more dead.

Ugh.

Yesterday was … busy. Since the kids started back to school after a four-day weekend, the schools had a ton of updates for me, which kept me very busy in between folding laundry and mopping my floors. After school, Dude and I went driving (because that kid has GOT to get his driver’s license before March 25th – when his permit expires – oh sure, we could renew it, but seriously, it’s time) and though that wasn’t exactly stressful, let’s just say there were stressful moments.

Then, the Lowe’s guy called to say that he was done with our kitchen redesign, so after dinner, Kevin and I went up there to iron out some details.

It only took THREE HOURS.

Ugh.

However, since this is our kitchen, and a room we will be using every day and a design we will have to live with for the next twenty years, we wanted to make sure it had everything we wanted, and then some. And that’s fine, and would have been fine, if my head didn’t feel like it was going to explode.

Whenever the weather changes, my sinuses get cranky. As in, make one wrong move b*tch, and I will blow the top of your head off cranky. We just endured massively cold temperatures, as in twenty below zero wind chills and now that our weather as oscillated to the other side of the spectrum and is now running in the mild 50’s and 60’s? Yeah, my sinuses have pulled a Soprano on me.

But whatever. Life goes on, right? So, I just sort of ignored the full brain assault and focused on trying to make our kitchen the best it can be … without giving me a heart attack, price wise.

We sat down with Bill again (who was just the nicest guy, by the way. He is an older gentlemen and reminded me a lot of my dad). He pulled up our design and we started going over it with a fine-tooth comb. Everything looked great, except for the bookcase we want to build into the end of our bar. I never thought, in my wildest dreams, that I would care so much about what happened to these things:

I mean, we ALL know I don’t cook. That I LOATHE to cook, but we have to eat and let’s face it, macaroni and cheese and sandwiches can get really old after a while (well, not to ME, but my guys need something with a little more substance), so, there you go. I am forced to think about cooking.

Our cookbooks are currently stored in our cabinet, as pictured above. Though out of the way (and out of sight, which suits me just fine), they aren’t exactly convenient to pull out at a moment’s notice (and I’m already cranky because I have to cook to begin with, I DON’T relish the thought of fighting with the stupid thing just to pull it free, sort of adds to the crankiness level). So, we thought it would be cool to have them out on a nice little bookcase.

(And as an aside? Our cookbooks are, erhm, well used. I’m not about to put these dingy things on our brand new bookcase so that means we’ll have to have some “show” cookbooks which really doesn’t solve our problem because A. we’ll still have to store our useable cookbooks somewhere and B. we’ll have to spend more money on duplicate copies and …. ugh, I’m making my head hurt. Suffice it to say, it’s a pain in the butt, okay?)

We must have reconfigured that bookcase about ten times before we finally got what we wanted. And we’re still unsure how that counter top is going to look and now think we need to curve it a bit otherwise it’s going to be this sharp pointy edge that someone is sure to skewer a spleen on so … we’re close, but not quite there yet.

But it’s going to look cool. And I’m pretty sure will be my favorite thing in the entire kitchen. We ended up putting built in columns on either side of the book case (which cost an INSANE amount of money, but is going to really add a little oomph to our kitchen), but wow, it took forever to pick the style that we liked and then to get the measurements just so.

In addition, we changed our minds about the cabinets – we’re now going with a honey/spice maple cathedral arched color/door. We also changed our counter top – we’re now going with this instead. It’s called “Monet” (and listed in the top row at that link) and is a more brown color than the other color we choose, which had a lot of yellow in it. It’s funny, but Kevin and I looked at the Monet sample probably a 100 times but it was only after we switched the color of the cabinets that a giant light bulb went off over our heads and we suddenly KNEW that’s what we wanted.

Since we have added two glass doors and those bookcase columns into the equation, our total price went up a few thousand dollars. Still within our budget but *GAG*, spending this much money just goes against every fiber of my being. But it’s like Kevin said,

“I’d rather spend it on something that we can use and reuse for years to come as opposed to blowing it on a vacation that only lasts one week. Besides, this is our kitchen. We’ll be using it every single day – it’s worth the investment.”

And I know he’s right but …. *GAG* I actually felt physically sick when it came time to pay for this thing. Which DID NOT help my raging headache so that by the time we got home? I popped an Aleve and pretty much collapsed into a pain-induced stupor.

So, the ball is rolling on this project. Here’s the time line on this: In about four weeks, the delivery guys will deliver our cabinets in about twenty boxes. Our cabinet guy will come over, inspect them, make sure they are the right color, everything is intact and in good shape and then he’ll start demolishing our kitchen, getting rid of our old cabinets to make room for our new cabinets. We expect to be majorly inconvenienced for about a week.

Once the new cabinets and appliances have been installed (and we still need to buy our appliances – ugh, this remodeling thing is NOT for the cheap skate, let me tell you), then the counter top guys will come out, measure the template and that is expected to arrive about two weeks later.

In the meantime, our cabinet guy is going to salvage the counter tops that we have now (Kevin built them so they should come out intact) so that we can use our kitchen while we’re waiting for our counter tops to arrive.

Did I mention that the counter top company threw in a complimentary sink? Well, they did. And it’s going to be NICE. It’ll be one of those under the counter type of sinks so we’ll be able to just wipe food and crumbs down into the sink as opposed to that stuff getting caught under the lip of the sink. Does that make sense?

Anyway, I’m pretty jazzed about that and the best part? We didn’t have to pay for it! WooHoo!

So … yeah. This stuff is probably pretty boring to you guys, but it’s all I can think about right now so … sorry about that. But it’s interesting to see how our simple little kitchen upgrade has morphed into a completely new and modern kitchen project.

I just pray it’s worth the money and turns out the way we want.