Our kitchen is complete and it is beautiful. 15 boxes of kitchen items have been unpacked (2 to go) and there is still plenty of room in cupboards and drawers. I have baked cookies, cooked breakfast and prepared dinners. It is a treat to work in such a functional kitchen. Everyone asks me what my favorite thing about the kitchen is. It is a hard question to answer because there are so many! The dishwasher drawers...the appliance garage....the lazy susan's in the corners....the extra counter space..the ability to have more than one person working in the kitchen...the drawers for pots and pans (instead of cupboards)....the granite counter top....the gas stove top, the lighting and electrical outlets. And the list goes on. As you can tell, I love it all! Some days I still can't believe it is my kitchen!
We added a few extras during the process as well as upgraded a few items. Instead of just new tile flooring in the kitchen, we elected to tile the entry hall and family room as well. It was a good decision because now the living area flows and appears much larger.
My sister, Barbara, told me along the way that living through a kitchen remodel could be likened to giving birth. As soon as the baby arrives, the pain will be forgotten! How true! Now that we have a functioning kitchen, the pain and inconvenience of living without a kitchen sink, stove, and oven is forgotten. It was quite an experience for the four of us. During the construction period, our microwave received plenty of use, the frozen food section of the grocery store became my favorite aisle and we have tried most of the local restaurants. The days of our kitchen table at the foot of our bed and Joe reading at night in his chair in the garage are quickly fading. My advice for anyone contemplating living through a remodel is as follows:
1. Hire a designer. Lindsay knew what we wanted before we did. Her choices were right for us and she took care so many details that would have overwhelmed us.
2. Fine tune your sense of humor. Laughter is the best medicine and helps to keep things in perspective.
3. Understand ahead of time there will be delays. Our kitchen was delayed because we elected to add tile flooring to our entry hall and family room. This added almost 2 weeks and delayed everything else as it had to be rescheduled. But it was the right decision for us so the delay was well worth it.
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| Appliance garage closed |
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| Appliance garage opened |
We would like to thank all of the sponsors who made our dream kitchen possible. There are over 30 sponsors for our kitchen and numerous workers involved in the construction. Thanks to everyone but especially Lindsay Hester, Chris and George from Wardell Builders, and Liliane Choney of ReVisions Resources as well as everyone involved in the process.