The Remodel (da da daaaa)

     I had to go back into my pictures to see how long this kitchen remodel has been going on. We started March 6, 2015. I put in the year because it feels like it's been years, so I had to check. Two months. TWO MONTHS! I guess that's really not too shocking considering many remodels that are done by contractors often last 2 -3 months. This has been a DIY labor of love. Well, ok, not love...in fact, I'm beginning to move toward the other "strongly dislike" emotion. The only reason I can stomach another day working on the kitchen is that we've had an inordinate amount of rain recently and the beach hasn't been appealing.
      It began as a simple idea...our kitchen and living room space was divided by a solid wall that extended to the peak of our 11' ceiling. It gave the area a chopped feeling, blocked air flow from the trade winds that cool the house and isolated the person working in the kitchen (that would be me). The solution we came upon was to take the wall down 2/3 of the way so it would create an open concept living space (I've watched a lot of HGTV lately and it's infiltrated my vocabulary). One rainy day, Robert said, "let's cut down the wall today and see what it looks like." Oh boy....

This seemed like a good idea at the time.

Oh look...we're still smiling.
 

If only I'd known.

     Well, that's how it started. Now the next part is to rebuild a couple of cabinets. Just the ones that need it. Surprise! They ALL needed it. With every cabinet we removed, the next one would crumble away.

     So what do you do when you need new cabinets? If you're my husband, you build them, from scratch, out of hardwood plywood. One at a time. And if you're his wife, you decide that it will be a piece of cake to refinish the faces of the old ones to "keep the charm of the house". Charming.

Actually, I did think the old faces were charming - I just liked the light wood on the right, rather than the red stain. Came out pretty, didn't they?

   With each new corner came new cabinet to build, a decision to make. To say that we were making this up as we went would NOT be an exaggeration. As we tore apart and put together, we designed and redesigned. Many elements went into design. For instance, after some detective work, we located the original shop that made our cabinets 30 years ago. We needed 3 new doors to cover some of the newly made cabinets. When he came back with a bid of almost $1k, we made the decision to eliminate a cabinet, put the doors from that one on one of the new ones and fill the space with a dishwasher. Voila! (I hadn't had a dishwasher until now. Well, except for Bob who does all the dishes.) Thanks, buddy, for the pricey bid. You got me a dishwasher and saved me over $500 in the process!

    

        And then there came the countertop decision...

I'm probably the only person on the face of the planet who doesn't like granite or quartz. Why? I don't know..it's super hard, it's super cold and the swirly, sparkly stuff just isn't for me. Since laminate is trying to look like granite or quartz that was out. We opted for solid surface called Staron made by Samsung. It's like Corian. I'll let you know how I like it when it's in. But that brought us to another decision. Backsplash. Sigh....after lots of soul-searching, we decide on eliminating all the tile backsplash and putting up solid surface. Tile. As in, take out the tile. And the grout.  Ew.

Looks like we're going to need a little drywall here....

     In the meantime, we have these modular countertops made out of the old tile countertop that we move around the kitchen as needed.

Looks fun, huh?

 

This is what retirement looks like.

Please pass the salt. And the wood glue.

This is the madness.

This is my crazy life right now. The next blog entry will be how wonderful my new kitchen is and how it was all worth it. Yeah. Sure.