The one home improvement that Christy has really wanted since we moved into our home was a new kitchen. That was 15 years ago and we are on the verge of that happening, just not the way we had planned.
As we’ve mentioned many, many times (can you tell I’m bitter yet), I had an unexpected, unannounced change in my compensation at the end of last year. Right before that change, Christy and I got a few bids to redo our kitchen.
We were on track to do that this April, but after the change, it would have added a year onto our timeline to get the money we needed. Christy decided she was willing to make sacrifices to at least give our kitchen a face lift because anything is was better than the current situation.
Cabinets
That was the first and the biggest sacrifice. Our cabinets are sturdy, but they are definitely not modern looking. The hardware is a big part of it, but what she really wanted was shaker style.
She looked up a way we could achieve that by nailing boards to the face, but I had a fear that the changes in temperature due to cooking would dry out the wood filler over time on the cabinets closest to the stove and cause us to be fixing them every few years.
Dishwasher
One of the big disappointments in our home was the lack of a dishwasher. During our trip to California last year, the house we stayed in had a dishwasher and we were both unimpressed. It took forever and the dishes still weren’t completely clean when it was done.
While we didn’t think we’d use it much, Christy still wanted one to make the kitchen more modern, but without replacing the cabinets, that dream was dead as well.
Luckily for us, we already have 2 dishwashers – our 12 and 14 year olds.
Walls, ceiling, and soffit
For some reason, someone put white fake wood paneling over the drywall in our kitchen. We lived with it for years until one year we painted it. It doesn’t look horrible anymore, but with our modern kitchen, we wanted to go to just drywall.
Our ceiling are those ugly 12″ x 12″ textured ceiling tiles. It’s not as bad, but that kind of tile reminds me of popcorn ceilings which may be the worst design decision anyone has made in history. We were hoping to have a new, flat drywall ceiling, but if we already aren’t getting the kitchen we wanted, why spend the money. As Christy says, we’re makin’ due.
Christy really wanted to rip out the soffit (that is also fake wood paneling), and have cabinets that went to the ceiling, but if we aren’t replacing the cabinets or the ceiling, that idea met an early demise as well.
Flooring
I wanted to rip up the plywood and asbestos floor to get back to the original sub-floor and get real tile. This wasn’t really part of our initial budget because the asbestos removal would have been cost prohibitive, but a boy can dream, can’t he?
We decided to rip up the current vinyl and go with groutable vinyl to at least give it the look we were going for.
Refrigerator
We didn’t really have a set idea for a refrigerator. It just needed to be black stainless steel and have water in the door so we could get rid of the 2 gallon glass jug we fill up with filtered water every day.
The issue with the refrigerator is, since we aren’t getting rid of the cabinets, we have a height restriction with the one that is above it. We can’t take it out because then we run into the soffit / ceiling issue.
That leaves us with only one option of refrigerator. You would think there would be more out there, but Christy could only find one that was short enough that still had a water dispenser.
What we are getting
On the bright side, we are getting some of the things she wanted with this home improvement.
I’m building a pantry that will span the 90″ wall on one side of the room. That is going to give us a ton of functional storage space that we’ve desperately needed since we moved in.
Another thing she misses from our old house is the garbage disposal. That is one thing that we are able to make happen.
We are also building a 3 cabinet peninsula with an overhang for 3 bar stools. That will add a ton more storage and much needed counter top space.
The issue we are currently facing is the cabinets for the peninsula. I bought cheap unfinished cabinets from Lowe’s, but we both have concerns about their durability. We are now wrestling with whether we should run with them or take them back and get something more expensive. We don’t want this to stretch out forever, so we are going to make the decision by this weekend.
We started working on a solid, detailed budget for our home improvement last night so things don’t spiral out of control and to also see where we can upgrade. I’ll share that once it is finalized, but we are trying to keep it under $10,000, excluding appliances.