It's Time!

Ok, so this is slightly off the seasonal topic of Christmas and snow and such, but I am so excited to tell you that our kitchen is FINALLY DONE that I am going to blog about this today anyway! A "10 day" project that turned into a 9 month headache is finally finished, thanks to a lot of hard work and long hours from Philip. We hired a contractor to do most of the work, but ran into some quality problems with some of the materials and work. This first resulted in a 2 1/2 month delay in all of the cabinets being installed and then Philip wound up doing much of the finish work himself, which turned out to include remounting some of the cabinets and putting up all the molding. Needless to say, we learned a lot during this whole experience and if we ever have to do a kitchen remodel again, we'll do some things differently! :) Anyway, it's finally actually done and I am very glad! Below are some before, during and after pictures for your viewing pleasure.

Here's a review of what we did:
changed the floor
replaced all cabinets
replaced all appliances
replaced and relocated all lighting
removed the soffit to add 12" extra inches to the cabinets
replaced the countertops
removed the peninsula and made an island
repainted the walls...twice
repainted the ceiling...twice
added the tile backsplash
replaced the sink and faucet

Here is the kitchen when we bought the house in February.

Here we are having lunch in the gutted kitchen a couple days before we moved in in March. The only thing that hadn't been removed in this picture is the soffits and the old light fixtures. Don't you love our kitchen table? :)

This was the kitchen the day after we moved in. That's right, no countertops, no stove, no sink. Made food prep a little tough. I had never been so thankful for a kitchen sink and stove as I was the day those two finally went in! We were very thankful for Costco's frozen cooked chicken during those 10 or so days. Amazingly, we only ate out once!
Yeay for a sink and stove! Only 10 days after we moved in!

This is how the kitchen looked for several months while we waited for the replacement island and desk/pantry cabinets to arrive. We had quality problems with the originals and decided to order different ones from Kraftmaid...in another color, but similar style. In the meantime, we couldn't use this "placeholder island's" cabinet space and the desk area was just an empty hole. It made totally unpacking the kitchen a challenge. You can also see in this pic that the walls were primed, but not painted and the cabinets over the fridge and microwave were the wrong size and had to be replaced or remounted.

And finally, the kitchen yesterday. All the finish work done and fully functional! Interestingly, in the picture the off-white island looks kind of out of place, but in real life, most people don't even notice it's a different color.