Matt and I have our new plans for our house (which you can see here) and since I shared those plans on the blog recently, I’ve gotten a few comments like, “Kristi, didn’t you just finish?” That room doesn’t do much?
I had to laugh because someone asked me that about our kitchen. “Didn’t you just finish that room not long ago?” Someone else said: “I remember how hard you worked on your kitchen and now you’re changing it?”
I guess time really flies when you’re having fun, because no, I don’t fair I finished my cooking not long ago. In fact, it’s been almost exactly a decade (WOW!!!) since I remodeled our kitchen and turned this…
…on this…
I finished that remodel on October 14, 2014. That was so long ago that the adjoining room (which is now the pantry and living room/breakfast room) hadn’t even been touched except for a bit of demolition. You can see it to the right of the kitchen in the photo above with very rough wooden walls, plywood ceiling and dust everywhere.
I repainted the kitchen in June 2017 when I realized the green was too difficult to decorate with. But even that was more than seven years ago.
When I did this kitchen remodel ten years ago, I desperately needed a usable kitchen. The original kitchen was one of the most inefficient I had ever seen. It had two walls of closets facing each other. There was a wall of cabinets with the sink…
And then on the opposite wall was this bank of cabinets with a countertop.
And then, on one of the side walls was the connection for a freestanding dishwasher and space for a refrigerator…
And in front was the connection for a gas stove with no cabinets or countertop.
So the design was something like this…
(Ha! That IKEA kitchen planner is a useful tool not only for planning, but also for illustrative purposes! )
Anyway, that kitchen was so inefficiently designed that I would get frustrated just trying to make a sandwich in there. Actually trying to cook was next level frustration. This just goes to show that just because you have a working triangle and the fact that that triangle has the right measurements doesn’t automatically mean that the kitchen will be easy to use. The work triangle is just the beginning.
All of that to say, there was no way I wanted to cook all of our meals in that kitchen, so if we wanted to eat at home, I needed a change, and I needed it to be quick (as quick as you could make it yourself). myself, tearing it down to the ground and rebuilding it) and as cheaply as possible. At the time we didn’t have any money saved to remodel the kitchen because we had just spent all of our money on the down payment on the house.
So I did the cheapest remodel possible. I used oak utilitarian cabinets from Home Depot and adorned them as much as I could with trim.
Solid surface countertops weren’t in the budget, so I worked with a concrete countertop company that provided all materials for free, and my brother and I poured the concrete countertops.
And although I bought new appliances in 2014, they were far from top of the line. Although they have served me very well over the years.
In total, I spent $10,000 on a kitchen remodel ten years ago. And I’ve definitely gotten my money’s worth out of that kitchen since then. Today, the countertops are stained, a stove burner won’t turn on by itself, the dishwasher no longer works, three wall tiles are cracked, a drawer handle came off and was lost, and the machine refrigerator ice maker leaks.
This kitchen has served me very well and worked hard for me for ten years. I have been so grateful to have such a small kitchen these past few years. But I don’t feel even a hint of sadness in letting him go. I’ll always have pictures to remember if I want to revisit the work I did when we first bought this house, but I’m ready to move on and can do so without a hint of sadness or guilt. I only feel excitement about that.
I still have a little more time before I have to say goodbye. I still have a bedroom and a closet/laundry room to finish before I start the kitchen. I won’t be bringing a mallet into my current kitchen today, or even next month. I’ll use it for a few more months.
But I met with a plumber last week to talk about the new kitchen because I wanted to be sure I could do what I wanted (i.e. move the kitchen to the only room in the house with a slab foundation) and get an estimate for how much will it cost to move the drain line, water to the faucet, water to the dishwasher, gas line to the stove and water to the refrigerator to the room with the slab base. Also, I want another water line for a small built-in nugget ice maker. All of that came out to $9000. I had to laugh. The new kitchen plumbing alone cost almost as much as my entire kitchen remodel ten years ago.
Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 upper that my husband Matt and I purchased in 2013. Matt has MS and can’t do physical labor, so I do most of the work in the house alone. You can learn more about me here.
