under dover

Done.

2008-07-16T11:05:00.001-07:00

Well it's done but we're still slowly getting everything back into the kitchen. Once we do, I'll post a bunch of nice pics of it in its finished state.

floor.

2008-07-02T22:50:00.004-07:00

back splash.

2008-07-02T08:45:00.004-07:00

No grout yet. It's just the tile stuck up there. The grout will be a medium grey...so it'll actually look similar to this.

That stuff on the floor is floor leveler. I guess we had a pretty big low spot, so they dumped this on to level it out before putting the floor down.

Our nook.

Stairs are done.

Close up of the floor.

Close up of the tile and photo realistic rendering I did of how I wanted the tile laid out.

granite.

2008-06-30T19:52:00.014-07:00

The linoleum went in today too.

The edges will be finished off tomorrow.

The dudes got a surprise today. As you can see -- they were ready for it.

We had a drawer front that had a defect which we had replaced. Since they let us keep the old one, I thought it'd be cool to turn it into a nice doggie bowl holder. I bought the bowls and Bob built it for us for free. That was pretty cool of him! Even though it is completely unnecessary, it looks much neater than a bunch of bowls laying on the floor, and it actually matches the cabinets.

light rails, door & granite debacle.

2008-06-28T07:42:00.009-07:00

This and the next few photos show the light rails, a piece of trim that runs under the upper cabinets to hide the under cabinet lights. We really didn't want to put these rails on at all because we liked the cleaner look, but I suppose it finishes it off more. If I were to do it all over again, I'd look for a more low profile under cabinet light so we wouldn't have to put this trim on. Just another thing to check off as a learning experience.

On the left is a small cabinet Bob built after we realized we had a little more space here than expected. It gives us a broom closet and a place for the doggie treats.

Doors are way more expensive than we imagined, unless you buy one off the shelf at a Home Depot type store (like we did.) And if you want anything different than the typical door we bought you have to special order it, which is insanely pricey. We looked all over and online and we couldn't beat this fiberglass door for $225. The funny thing is, Home Depot and Lowes stock about a million "fancy leaded glass doors" but don't offer any options if you just want simple windows. I guess more people like "fancy leaded glass" out there than something plain and simple.

This is primed.

This is painted. The storm door will go on next week. We spent a little more for a nicer storm door that has hideaway screens because I hate changing screens out.

This is a chunk of the granite that's going in on Monday but it's not the stuff we originally ordered. (I'll try to make this very long story as short as possible.)

We ordered our granite from Home Depot because it was on sale and we got 20% off, which ended up being about $58 a square foot. How it works at Home Depot is, you pay for it and then when your cabinets are installed you call the granite installers. They set a date to come out and measure. Once they do that, they set a date to install the stone. In this case, it was exactly 2 weeks after the measuring. Our floor and tile backsplash are going to be installed by a guy Bob recommended, but we are waiting for the granite before doing either. (We don't want the granite guys dragging or dropping stuff on our new floor and can't do the tile until the counter is in anyway.)

We went on vacation, and the granite was supposed to go in the day after we got back. When we returned we got a call from "Innovative Stone" the supplier to "Stoneworks," the local installers Home Depot. We were told our granite is on backorder and they hope to have an ETA later in the week. I called our installer (since I'd never talked to Innovative Stone before) and they said I had to call the supplier myself (which was annoying.) When I called them, they told me I had to call the installer! Frustrated, I called Home Depot to try and get to the bottom of things. In the meantime I called the supplier back and tried to see if they had another stone in stock or if they would at least consider upgrading our stone. I got a big fat "no" but I was finally able to get a guess of 96 hours until delivery, which meant Friday. The problem with not knowing the delivery date is I can't schedule my very busy tile and floor guy until I know when the counter will be installed.

I called the installer back to try and set a tentative install date for Monday just in case it came in on Friday..and if it didn't we'd just keep sliding the date until it arrived. They refused and said they don't schedule installs unless the stone is in stock, which is BS because I actually had a set install date even though my stone was not in stock. Why this is a problem is it means I'd have to wait around for the granite to show up, once they received it THEN they'd schedule an install, which could be up to a week after it arrives. Since the installer and supplier could not give me an answer or one ounce of customer service, I called Home Depot again, asking for help. In the meantime, I got a recommendation for a granite guy my boss had used who was local. He said I could have the granite installed in a week after measuring.

I called Home Depot back and said I want to cancel my order (which you aren't supposed to do after they've measured because they don't stock the stone. It's made to order.) He said "Let me call you back and see what I can do." Then I got a call from the regional manager of Innovative Stone, the supplier...who suddenly cared about my situation, offered me a stone upgrade and asked "How can I keep you as a customer." I told him the whole story and said it was too little too late. I had to call all around to try and get any information whatsoever and I was expected to just sit and take this...and it's not until I'm ready to walk that they care.

So I cancelled, we got our refund and I ordered new stone from Quality Stone in Cleveland: http://www.countertops-cleveland.com/ This was on a Tuesday. They measured on Wednesday and are installing it on Monday. Pretty cool.

I will say that the Home Depot department has been great with this and a few of the other problems that have popped up. They gave me no hassle when I wanted to cancel and actually tried to get the stone companies to do something for us. Home Depot even let us borrow a template from a sink on the shelf because the previous installer took ours with them.

progress.

2008-06-25T15:48:00.007-07:00

We've been gone on vacation a week, so I've completely lost track of the number of days Bob's been working. Here's what we came home to. I've got more pics of things that've happened since these photos that I need to post. You can see the handles have been installed, wine rack hung and the dishwasher installed.

Here's the window all trimmed out now. We wanted to go with no trim on the windows at all, but because of the thickness of windows we bought, we unfortunately had to go with trim. They do match the other windows in the house though.

Nice little detail on the base molding which ends over the stairs.

More work on the stairs.

handles.

2008-06-24T16:02:00.006-07:00

One of the things I was most looking forward to in this kitchen were the long horizontal handles. The problem is that all our doors are different widths, and I wanted the same amount to the right and left of the handle regardless of how wide the doors are.

We liked this style of handle and bought a few of sizes Home Depot stocks just to play around with at home. Even though this style handle comes in a bunch of lengths (special order) there still are only so many sizes. I stood at Home Depot for an hour trying to do math in my head and figure out what size handle should be purchased for what size door. I gave up when I priced the handle I thought might go on our 18 inch doors (the most common size in our kitchen.) When I found out it was $23 for one, I died a little inside (since I'd have to buy 17 of just these alone), gave up and went home.

After searching for hours on the internet, I found the site knobs4less.com which sold the exact same handles for way, way cheaper. They also had a similar brand called "House of Knobs" that looked the same, but was cheaper still. I was a afraid to buy these though, thinking they'd be crap, but luckily the site has consumer reviews and everyone seemed to like them. Since I'm posting this after we've already received the handles I can safely say - they're completely the same weight, look and feel of the others. I'm so glad I bought these.

Price wasn't the only factor. It was also the sizes offered by each particular company. Some offered a 13.23 inch handle, where others offered a 12 inch handle. Doesn't seem like a lot, but if I put a 12 inch handle on all my 18 inch doors (3 inches from the edge on each side), if the smaller and larger sizes aren't scaled proportionately, then I'm screwed when I try to put a 7 inch handle on a 9 inch door (1 inch from the edge on each side.) I had to play with the lengths in order to figure out which company had the closest sizes to what I needed. And the site only had things it metrics, so I had to find a converter online in order to get the right size in inches.

If you ever do this on your own, wait until you actually have your physical cabinets to measure because an 18 inch door actually might be 17.75 inches wide.

Once I figured out the brand I was buying, I created "handles" out of painter's tape. This allowed me to stick these strips onto all the cabinets to make sure I liked each size on each door.

I started with the 18 door since that was the most common.

I know it seems like a psycho thing to do this, but how else can you see what they'll look like. Check out those drawers in the background. The top drawer has the size I went with (a little too big) because the one below it looked weird ( a little too small.)

I also used the handles I bought at Home Depot to figure out where each handle would stop on these two doors. No matter what, these doors are going to hit each other, but if I bought the wrong length, they'd hit too early and we wouldn't be able to get into the cabinets. It's stuff like this you never think of when designing something. I have no idea how I could have unless I knew CAD or something.

Then there's this thing. This is called an "easy reach." It's one of those cabinets that opens like this, and then the entire thing pulls to the left. Because of this, there's no way I can put a handle on both doors. I played around with it and there's just no way because they hit each other. We opted to put just one handle on the door to the right.

Once all the handles arrived, I grouped them all and labeled them with letters like A, B, etc. Then I put a piece of tape on each door so Bob would know what handle to put where.

Day twenty- nuke it

2008-06-11T18:55:00.005-07:00

(in Ryan's absence, his lovely and talented, not to mention bored, wife will update the blog)
I came home today to a wonderful surprise; the new microwave oven was installed. I think we got lucky that the stainless from GE matched the stainless from our other LG appliances. We heard the matching LG microwave was horrible, so we opted for the stainless GE oven hood/microwave. We got this puppy at sears on sale. They had some crazy microwaves that basically functioned like an Ipod, but Ryan quickly informed me that these were not in our budget. Oh, and it looks like Bob also installed all the shelves inside the cabinets

Behold the glory of my frozen meatloaf dinner!

day nineteen - it's a kitchen.

2008-06-07T02:24:00.006-07:00

Val called me when she got home, excited saying "It finally feels like a kitchen." She was right. It's such a nice feeling, especially after the past two weeks. Having all the cabinets in boxes in the porch, and then loose all over the house really invaded our space. It's also been hot and muggy causing us to need the air conditioning on, so not being able to open the windows up hasn't helped much either.

It feels bigger than we thought it would. I was convinced that we were so used to the empty room, that we'd feel cramped as soon as we started hanging cabinets. The complete opposite happened. I know they always say that on those design shows, than an empty room looks smaller than a room with furniture in it. It's completely true.

Last week I got really anxious once the cabinets started going in. You start seeing weird little problems you didn't expect and all these small things you realize you'll just have to "live with." This started to bum me out and I felt that I had built up an unrealistic expectation about how well things would turn out. Then as the week progressed, I began to accept this as a fact...and relax.

To my surprise, when I walked into the kitchen tonight, I felt like "Holy crap. This thing IS actually turning out the way I'd hoped. It DOES feel the way I wanted it to feel when I walk in from the back door." It's such a relief.

One thing we never planned on or thought we needed, were under cabinet lighting. Bob sold us on the idea. Well, he sold me on the idea. Val was never really convinced. It was "gratuitous" as she likes to put it. I half agreed with her after making the decision to go with the lights. Both of us changed our mind once we saw them installed. It will be really useful when working on the counters and makes the kitchen look and feel better overall.

day eighteen - the nook.

2008-06-07T01:58:00.005-07:00

This group of cabinets replaces the old eat-in area of the old kitchen that was pretty much wasted space. We were able to move the refrigerator and add enough cabinet space to more than make up for the cabinets we ripped out from the entry way.

We decided to splurge on the dual, slide-out garbage cans. At first it seemed like an unnecessary luxury, but the more we thought about it, it became a convenience important to us. We have dogs, so leaving any garbage can out in the open is not a good idea, plus we actually had the room to stick it in a cabinet. We separate recycling from our garbage but never really had an area to keep our recycling in the kitchen and this allows us to do that. Also, after 4 years of bending down to pull our mini-garbage can out from under the sink, we thought it'd be nice to finally have a taller can that is easier to access.

There's an 18 inch counter space between the pantry and fridge. One might think this is such a small counter, why bother? We wanted an area where we could set groceries or even to put a glass when getting a drink from the fridge. I bet we'll use this space quite a bit.

Notice how there are two small upper cabinets above this counter, rather than one big one? Had I realized this when ordering I definitely would have ordered one long cabinet. The reason this happened is, if you scroll down to the original design, you'll see that I intended for a small area 18 x 18 for open shelving. When ordering the cabinets at Home Depot they "build" your kitchen in the computer. When we got to this area, they didn't really offer any shelving that we were looking for. The simplest fix was "Ok. Stick an 18 x 18 cabinet in there instead." We were just caught in the moment and we weren't thinking clearly.

I think it'll be a happy accident though because another thing we didn't think about is that we can't do our horizontal pulls on these two cabinets because it would not allow the doors to open all the way. We'll have to mount them vertically. The good news is, that since these are two smaller doors, instead of one long one, we can buy bars that go completely up the side, allowing us to have longer pulls so that they look more proportioned to the pulls we'll have on the other doors. I guess it worked out after all.

We learned two lessons. 1) Try to think of everything. Make sure you plan everything out at home as carefully as possible before even attempting to order cabinets or gut the room. 2) Accept the fact that it's impossible to think of everything.

day seventeen - fridge cabinet.

2008-06-05T13:41:00.005-07:00

We pulled all the cabinets forward on this wall so the fridge doesn't stick out. That's what this extra 4 inch piece is for. We'll cover that spacer with the tile back splash. This also gives us an extra 4 inches on the small counter we'll have between our fridge and pantry.

day sixteen - base cabinet screw down.

2008-06-03T21:20:00.007-07:00

All the cabinets you see here are screwed in. They ain't goin nowhere.

The kitchen isn't as narrow as it seems in this pic. That pantry on the right is actually in the middle of the floor right now rather than pushed against the wall.

To the left of the sink, the bottom drawer has a mark across the wood grain. You can't see it in this picture, but it looks like something in the grain. Kraftmaid is sending us a new drawer front to replace it. If we get to keep this old drawer front, I might try to turn it into a base for the dog dishes so they match the cabinet. More on that later.

Here you can get a sneak peek of our sink and the glory of full extension drawers. To the right of the drawer you can see into the blind cabinet. It came with this giant shelf that we thought about removing completely because it'd be a big pain to try and use the space in the back corner under the shelf. We had Bob cut the shelf into an "L" shape so that we at least had something in there for organization, but wouldn't get in the way.

I made the quick sketches above to show Val different ways we could handle the shelf thing.

The new floor will overlap the dining room floor on the left a few inches in order to cover up where the existing floor is messed up under where the old wall used to be.

So, if you ever find yourself ordering Kraftmaid cabinets, don't order this wine rack. It's $245 and is laminate, not natural wood. It looks like a $30 CD rack you'd buy at Target. Another problem with this thing, is we intend to have it hang on the wall immediately to the right of the window over the sink. Check out the pic below.

See all those white dots? Those are actually staples, that go right through the exposed side of the shelf. If we tried to fill all these in they'd look like crap, because it's laminate...not wood. Home Depot is working with me though. They said that the book says these racks aren't intended to go on an exposed end (nice to find that out now.)

Our only option is to either make this work, or replace it with a "whatnot shelf" which are just 3 open shelves on the end. It won't really give it that clean, square look we're going for with the whatnots. I'm going to Home Depot tomorrow morning to look at a trim piece and veneer skin that would finish off the end nicer, and they'd order for me for free. Ultimately we'd like to make the wine rack work if we can. We think it's the most usable space, even if we never stick bottles of wine in there.

day fifteen - house o' cabinets.

2008-06-02T19:30:00.014-07:00

Today all the cabinets came out of the boxes and Bob started to line the base cabinets up.

Bob's radio will be replaced by our stove.

That fan is where our dishwasher will be.

The kitchen ain't the only place with cabinets right now.

They're here.

Here.

And here too. Our house feels really small these days. And a mess.

I picked up our flooring before going into work today. The linoleum for the back landing and basement stairs was on a 12 foot roll. I had to drive home with it sticking out like this and the hatch all the way up because these Elements have no way to tie the hatch down and leave it open. I guess they don't want you to do that.

Here's the laminate that will go in the kitchen.

Here are the paint colors we used in front of the walls they're actually painted on.

This is when they measure and install the granite. The floors won't be going in until after the granite's installed.

day fourteen - floor.

2008-06-02T12:53:00.006-07:00

The next step will be installing the base cabinets so this subfloor was installed to smooth everything out and in preparation for the flooring.

This heat vent, which was originally part of the wall, had to be converted to a floor vent. The opening had to be finagled to fit a standard 4x10 cover. We wanted simple, clean lines but all Home Depot had was an ugly plastic fake chrome one. Lowes' was made of brushed metal but it had these weird humps in the middle and wasn't flat.

We got the vent from Restoration Hardware for $34. It's not that bad of a price when you're only buying one. We opted for the oil rubbed bronze rather than something like the stainless in our appliances and hardware because we wanted it to blend in with our darker floors.

day thirteen - more paint.

2008-06-02T12:47:00.005-07:00

Everything is white in the new kitchen continuing to the back door except for both walls leading to the basement. Those are a light grey. It's really subtle. The walls end up looking like they're in shadow all the time. Another coat is going on the grey for better coverage.

All nice and green again. We actually want to change the color of the living room again, but not yet. The nice new walls of the kitchen make the rest of our house look terrible.

day twelve - paint.

2008-05-30T14:21:00.005-07:00

I'm sure in the picture the kitchen doesn't look much different than the primed version yesterday, but it's painted now. We went with white to keep it simple and clean. Once the cabinets are installed you won't see much of the wall color anyway.

Primer going down the stairs.

This ugly light switch is the last one that needs to go.

day eleven - cabinets arrive & primer.

2008-05-28T07:53:00.013-07:00

The cabinets came today!

They all barely fit on the porch. It's crazy to think they'll all fit in the kitchen.

Here's a sneak peek at what they look like. This is the pantry.

Weird to see my name on the label of a "kitchen." I guess I'm a grownup now?

day ten - more sanding.

2008-05-28T07:50:00.003-07:00

Bob's still sanding the drywall and getting it perfect. He also started smoothing out the mess that was underneath the wood panelling that leads down the basement steps.

day nine - more mud.

2008-05-26T10:20:00.009-07:00

Bob worked all day today mudding and taping the corners. We can start to see how it's going to look a little more clean and modern by all the straight edges in the entry. We wanted to have no trim on the windows, but I guess the style of windows we bought won't allow that, so we'll have to match the trim we have elsewhere in the house. It's a bummer because we wanted a clean look around the windows. Still, the money we saved buying these windows is worth living with trim.

Luckily we have this porch for Bob to work in. The garage is full and there's no way he could have worked in there. See that think that looks like a big vacuum on the right? Well, it is a big vacuum. And that thing on the end that looks like a metal detector is actually a sanding disc. I expected to have dust all over the house once Bob started sanding the drywall, but this thing just sucks it right up as he sands. We actually had more dust from the demolition of our old kitchen than from any of the sanding.

Today we finally decided on a faucet and ordered this by Delta. We wanted a couple things with our faucet -- single hole mount, single handle, pull down sprayer and stainless steel finish all under $300. Oh yeah and we didn't want it to look completely lame. We found a few simple, modern style models but once we added the stainless steel finish, they shoot up in price. Also a lot of those pull downs had a very small handle to pull down for the sprayer. This one had a bigger handle we hope is easier to grip, plus Deltas have really long spray hoses. This one extends 24 inches, which should be a lot easier to use. It was $265 total. So, not bad.

day eight - mud & floor samples.

2008-05-26T09:39:00.013-07:00

Bob started mudding the seams today and is working on a Saturday in order to stay on schedule for the arrival of the cabinets this Wednesday.

It was cool to see the widened entry way which leads into the dining room. There has always been a tarp there which hasn't allowed us to see the full effect.

The new light over our back door.

Here's a sample of the floor we're putting into the kitchen. Here you can see what it'll look like next too the white oak that's in the dining room. We've chosen a laminate made by Armstrong. The cool thing about this stuff is that they're all individual planks, like real boards. The other laminates like Pergo that we've seen all have wider planks that look like 3 boards stuck together. With those we could always tell where the real planks and fake planks begin and end. These also have beveled edges which creates a line between the boards much like real hardwood. Armstrong was the only company we found that has a high gloss finish on their laminates that again, make them look more like real wood rather than "plasticy." The reason we went with a laminate is because we wanted that dark shiny wood look which is normally expensive and doesn't fair well with dog nails scratching them. I scratched the hell out of this stuff with my keys and it didn't do anything. It doesn't dent either.

Because of the moisture tracked in with snow through our backdoor, as well as the "accidents" our dogs and cat sometimes have back here, we decided to go with a solid piece of linoleum back on the landing instead of continuing the laminate. We were worried about moisture seeping in between the cracks of the laminate and being trapped underneath. The laminate will continue down the first two steps, then we'll have linoleum from the landing all the way down the basement steps. This way it'll look nice and fresh as soon as you walk in the backdoor.

We found this new stuff by Armstrong called "Cushion Step" which has padding in it and is much softer to walk on than linoleum glued right to a wood subfloor. A larger sheet of this actually looks pretty nice and looks like real tile but in a subtle way. It doesn't have crazy fake drop shadows and highlights trying to make this look overly realistic. It just has a molded texture and really think fake grout lines that look halfway decent. I know it'll be a little weird seeing the metal edge molding nailed over it on the step edges, or seeing the tile "bend" on each stair, but that doesn't really matter to us. The main thing is for it to look good on the landing. The basement is the basement as far as we're concerned.

day seven - window, vent & drywall begins.

2008-05-26T09:28:00.006-07:00

The new window over the sink was added today. It's 12 inches taller than the old window. The sill is still at the same height, so all those extra inches go up. We can actually see the tops of the trees in the backyard now.

The new vent for our range, moved to the right about a foot. The old one vented directly into our screened-in porch. Pure genius.

day six - insulation.

2008-05-26T09:10:00.006-07:00

day five - new window & stairs.

2008-05-26T09:00:00.008-07:00

Today our new window was installed. It's crazy how much more light it lets into the kitchen.

Here it is from the outside. If you look closely you can see Kenobi peeking out from the door.

And here are the new stairs. Big difference from the old ones. Wider and much more sturdy.

Bob ripped off the wood panelling that leads downstairs. Lots of glue to scrape and level out.

day four - lights.

2008-05-26T08:54:00.007-07:00

I fell behind last week in my updates, but I did take pictures every day. I'll still post with what was done each day so anyone viewing this can see the progression the same way we did.

Above you can see all the recessed lights were installed and wired.

Everything was ripped out around our old steps. We're taking these out completely and rebuilding them to be 4 feet wide so that it's more open and easier to enter from the backdoor.

This is the old light above the backdoor that we're replacing with a small recessed light.

day three.

2008-05-18T06:33:00.005-07:00

All this work was done on Friday. This is where Bob framed in the new window we're adding.

New header over our entry from the back door.

Here's the new header and entry way from the kitchen to the dining room. Also a couple pics of the recessed lights going in.

This Saturday we picked out our flooring. We're pretty sure we're going with an Armstrong laminate. It's a dark reddish brown and is shiny, which makes it look like real hardwood. We also shopped for tile for our backsplash. We wanted to go with long, narrow subway tiles, like 2X8 but those things are like $11 a square foot! We think we're going to go with a 3X6 white subway tile from Home Depot, which costs 19 cents each, or $1.60 a square foot.

Still trying to pick out a faucet and sink...

day two.

2008-05-16T10:52:00.007-07:00

That blue square is where Val and I would like to put the new window. We used the screen and held it up where we wanted it. That blue vertical line down below is where the cabinets will end. As you can see there is not a lot of room between here and the header of the entry way. Bob said he can make it work though.

We want to remove this little box to the right of the stairs. It's what the old broom closet used to sit on, but in order to do that Bob will have to rip out the stairs completely and rebuild. So far that's the first surprise we've run into.

begin demo.

2008-05-16T10:05:00.003-07:00

This is what Bob got done on the first day. Our previous owners had Scotch-taped tinfoil to the ceiling and wired about a million florescent lights up. It was a mess.

the planning.

2008-05-16T09:13:00.013-07:00

This is pretty much what we want our new kitchen to look like. This is my photoshop composite of all the colors, materials and layouts for what we're building. Might look great now, but we really had no idea to start and it took a lot of trial and error to arrive at this.

First of all, we had no idea what any of this stuff would cost for labor, for the cabinets, or anything actually. The one thing we knew is that we wanted a simple, modern style but not something so crazy and personal that we'd have trouble selling the house down the road. Other than that it was wide open.

We went to Home Depot and Lowes and looked at door styles. We realized we only liked two. Either a "shaker style" door with a simple wood trim around cabinets or "full slab" what was just a flat piece of wood. We bought all kinds of kitchen books and magazines and looked through catalogs. We ripped out tons of things we liked, but still...there were so many choices, it was pretty difficult to narrow things down.

Then we found this picture online. I don't remember what I Googled. Maybe "modern kitchen?" Whatever it was, we liked it. (So thanks to whoever posted this picture.) We felt we could use this as a guide and get something that felt similar in our kitchen.

The next problem was how to start laying it out. I measured out our kitchen but had no idea what standard cabinet sizes were or any of that stuff, so it was frustrating at first. All I knew is that I did not want to go into one of these stores and sit down with a "kitchen designer" without knowing exactly what we wanted. So I wasted a weekend and another...and another downloading different "kitchen design" programs. I first tried Ikea's free program but it sucked and we didn't want Ikea cabinets. I downloaded a couple others and they sucked too. Then I bought a program off Home Depot's site called "Big Hammer 3D Kitchen Designer." It was really clunky but I'd finally found a program I liked.

Still, I didn't really know where to begin so we made the above wish list. There were things we hated, things we kinda hated and things we thought would just be nice. Again, not knowing cost we didn't know what things over-extended our pocket book. We decided to make our priority list and design the kitchen mainly using the "must haves."

After doing a little research (and just needing to narrow our options) we decided to start with Kraftmaid Cabinets (and that is what we bought.) They use solid wood and seemed to be the best for the budget. I was able to get a book from Home Depot that had all the combinations of units you could purchase, as well as the different sizes available. So we spent an afternoon planning out our kitchen and making some assumptions on what we could afford. I took a chance that we could move the stove over a bit (it was against the wall which didn't allow for any pan handles to stick out on the entire left side) and add a second, larger window which overlooks the driveway.

I roughed things out in the computer and got a real rough layout, then we called our contractor, Bob. He was recommended to us by our friends and neighbors, who'd had their kitchen done a few years ago. They said he was very detailed oriented, plus their kitchen looked great. He came to our house, looked at my plans, looked at the Kraftmaid book and helped us out with our options. Some things we thought we could do, we couldn't, but he also showed us things we could do that we'd never considered. Bob was able to give us more concrete measurements -- "Make sure all your cabinets on this wall add up to 78 inches," etc. So I went back to the drawing board and moved things around.

This is what images look like straight from that 3D program. Pretty lame, like something out of that Dire Straits "Money for Nothing" video.

The good thing about this program was that it allowed me to build everything to the exact dimensions, so wherever I put the camera, I was able to see exactly how big things were compared to each other. There's even a "tape measure" in the program where I can measure things within. I used this when figuring out how many cabinets I could fit by the back door before the opening got cramped.

Once I had this laid out, I wanted to see what the real materials and colors would look like, so I saved out the JPGs you see above and brought them into Photoshop. I did all ortho views so that there would be no perspective to deal with in the images.

Note: I mixed up the "south" and "west" labels in the above images. Also, we're still picking out the flooring and haven't decided on tile or laminate. We're leaning towards laminate because it's way cheaper. We're looking at a Pergo type floor that is all individual planks and looks a lot like real wood.

Once I got all the above images together, we went to Home Depot and Lowes and priced out both Kitchens. We found Home Depot was a little cheaper and we already had a Home Depot Credit card that had 12 months same as cash. We thought it best to go with them. All our cabinets cost $7500 after taxes and 10% off.

We didn't order counters at that time because we wanted to hunt around for other options. Even though we ended up ordering the counters from Home Depot anyway, it was good we waited because we were able to get 20% off. This allowed us to upgrade to Granite (and actually the "B" grade) which is $72 per square foot before the discount.

Our cabinets are supposed to arrive on May 28th. Once Bob has them installed, the counter guys will come out and officially measure for the granite. After that it takes 2 - 3 weeks for the granite to come in.

kitchen remodel starts.

2008-05-16T08:24:00.008-07:00

Drop ceiling, brick, linoleum, wood spindles and cabinets last updated in 1973. Despite all the things to love about our kitchen, we've decided to remodel.

These first two pictures is exactly how it looked the day we bought the house. Last year, we tried to sell our house and "freshened it up" by painting the hideous brick and wasting $80 on new panels for our yellowed, cracked drop ceiling. When we decided to pull our house off the market, we spent the winter thinking up what to do with the mess that is our kitchen.

The first thing we did was keep an eye out for good appliance deals. We found a great deal at Home Depot for LG stainless steel appliances. 10% off, as well as some other ones. We bought these first because I didn't want to get caught up in the whole "kitchen redo" and toss expensive appliances onto the entire kitchen budget. I thought if we focused on these first it'd allow us to piece-meal things a bit and hunt for the best deal possible. We did not buy our over-the-range microwave at this time though because those things are way overpriced and the LG ones got a really bad review. Even though we've had these appliances for a few months now, we just found a microwave last week. Sears was having a crazy sale and we got a nice, well rated GE model for a good price.

Click on the images to see them larger. These next few photos are what the kitchen looked like the day before demo began (Wednesday this week.) We're ripping out those lame, half-walls that you see above and widening the opening.

The left image shows where the fridge used to be. We put the new dishwasher there because it couldn't be hooked up to the old location. You can also see the lovely drop ceiling as well as the new location for our fridge.

Here you can see Bruce and Kenobi hate the kitchen as well. Yes, I know they hate having their pics taken by photogs too, but what you see here is all about the kitchen. Look closely at that middle picture. Look at all that crap we have to walk around just to get in the back door. It's a pain in general and even worse if you're carrying a suitcase or groceries. It's all coming out and we're going to have a nice wide entrance.

My next post will talk about how we planned the kitchen before we began.