I have been talking and dreaming about having an updated kitchen since our first home back in 2011 and I pretty much told myself that will never happen (I might have spoken it out loud to my husband a few times). After the re-build of our second home/firehouse, I was most sad about selling it because the dreamy idea of living in a completely done house...but let’s be honest, no house is ever complete because there is always something we will want to add, change, or decide a year later that our style is completely different, am I right? The human heart is never satisfied.
I am terrified of making big purchases, and by big purchases, I mean anything over $100...I am aware that materials are always evolving and that is the part where I get stuck. Why spend money when I might possibly want something totally different in a year? That is where learning to be content and satisfied comes into play. It’s easy to get caught up in the things of this world, and when I do, I see myself become less satisfied with what I have.
Taking on the task of renovating our kitchen was no easy task, but after we priced out the cost back six months ago I protested and decided that a new kitchen was going to be something I would need to wait a couple years for. I placed it on the back burner and anytime Troy would ask about where I was at I would say I don’t know or some lazy response. Then one day he caught me on a good day and we talked out how we could make the kitchen happen, we had the money but my mind always goes to worse case scenario situations like what if we end up in the hospital with our big deductibles and we just spent money on our kitchen 😂 that’s basically how most of our conversations go when it comes to spending money. We decided after some back and forth and realizing our kitchen was in need of repairs that it was time. Plus, we are notorious for moving right after our houses are complete and we never get to enjoy the fruit of our labor.
We knew we couldn‘t do every project so we subbed out the rebuilding of our cabinet doors and drawers, replacing/adding some new cabinet bases as well as the countertop installation. My husband did everything else (I helped where I could). The demo, sanding, painting, electrical, window replacement, molding, and tile work.
We have a small galley kitchen with a peninsula. There is a wall that separates the living/dining area from the kitchen that I would love to take down but the cost would be too great. Plus it's the wall my fireplace sits on, and I really like my fireplace. Because we couldn't take out the wall we had to problem solve a solution to add more countertops space and make the kitchen overall more functional. We had an oven wall unit with a microwave and cabinet that we decided to remove to allow for more countertop space. We decided to go with a slide in range in the peninsula in place of our cooktop stove. On the opposite side we have our dishwasher, sink, and fridge. Our cabinet guy talked us into putting a cabinet around the fridge to make it look built in and create a larger cabinet above it. Even though we didn't change the layout much, the kitchen feels like I gained so much more space.
The tile work was the most tedious because I had a vision of the subway tile going all the way up around the window. We bought our tile saw off of a yard sale site for $15 a year back, it's not the best of quality but it gets the job done. We had to problem solve the end cap pieces which ended up costing us the same amount as the subway tile.
We decided to get rid of the garden window because it felt really outdated. I love the fact I can put all kinds of plants in it, but truth be told, the window wasn’t even facing the right direction for the the sun to actually work its magic. So out it went, and now that we have a regular sliding window, I love the simplicity and clean look it provides, the clutter is gone.
Countertops were also a hard decision, I’m pretty sure we went three different times to go figure out what I wanted. In our previous house, we put marble but I knew I didn’t want that because we need something that’s low maintenance and not a soft material. I considered concrete as well but the maintenance and possible cracking was not for me. Quartz is a very hard material with no maintenance which is the best fit for our lifestyle and I love it.
The project took about a month, every weekend and evening was spent working on the kitchen. There was only a day in that whole process that we didn’t have a fully functional kitchen. Eating out was not an option so we had to do it that way. My husband even bought a hot plate for the one day we didn’t have a working stove, and that worked great. The house would be in disarray during the evenings and weekends but we would clean it up and start over each day. We can only handle so much chaos, which is probably what drove us to complete the project in a month. Most projects we stop at 95% done and with the kitchen, we decided we need to give it the full 100% and I’m very thankful for that. Giving it our all was tiring (mostly for Troy) but seeing it complete has been very rewarding.
