Soon my kitchen renovation will be done and you won't have to hear about it anymore, I promise. Until then, please forgive my one track mind. This kitchen is the first major renovation we've done in the house. We've done a lot of small things, but nothing that completely displaced an entire room, and let me tell you- I was woefully unprepared. I thought "I got this- I renovated an entire house, our kitchen will be no problem!" Except when I was renovating Clark the flip house, I wasn't living there, AND I had direct access to a garage and walk-out basement to use as a staging area. Our house is small- 1100sf- with no garage and no walk-out basement. That's not meant to be a complaint whatsoever- I love our house and usually it's the absolutely perfect size for 2 adults and 2 cats. Usually.
I'm sucking up a bit of my pride right now to show you the mess that is our house currently, to hopefully help you prepare if you are planning an upcoming reno. You're routine will be totally turned on it's head, but knowing that it's temporary and that the end result is an amazing new kitchen is definitely what's propelling us through.
Here goes nothing:
When the cabinets got delivered, we had no choice but to have them brought right into the house. Like I said, no garage or other staging space available. I expected the cabinets to take up the entire dining room. I didn't expect them to take up the entire dining room and the entire kitchen.
Immediately after the cabinet delivery, I called my sister who is going through her own kitchen reno in just over a month. My advice to her? Clean your garage first! Trust me. I WISH I had a garage right now. The way Home Depot (and IKEA) work for installation is once everything's delivered, only then will they try and get you on the schedule. Hopefully it'll only be about a week, but it all depends on how busy they are- so until their schedule opens up (and I don't like not having control here), we get to live in a fort of cabinet boxes.
This is our only path from the living room to the kitchen and basement.
The kitchen wouldn't be so difficult to deal with if I wasn't still trying to prep the walls, paint the ceiling, trim, and walls, AND patch the floor where the old cabinets were removed.
Unfortunately, I had to wait until the old cabinets were gone to do all this prep and we were trying to keep kitchen down-time to a min by removing them as late as possible, so now it's an obstacle course.
The huge box in the center will be our amazing pantry cabinet next to the fridge, but it's so large it couldn't fit into the dining room. The corner base cabinet had to be unboxed to even fit through the door of the house. I will say, though- I'm so pleased with these cabinets already! The colors are perfect and boy are they made well, especially in comparison to the cabinets I took out. Hubby took a sledge hammer to the old base cabinets (my original plan was to donate, but they were well beyond their usable life) and with literally one swing, each cabinet fell apart. That's quality construction right there, I tell you.
But I've got my eye on the prize-
a completed, functional, stylish(!) kitchen- and its only a few weeks away!!
Are you planning to take on any renos in the near future?
kitchen image via Design Manifest