Pam and I knew it was time to fix our kitchen. While we are never exactly on trend, we knew our kitchen was dated. I mean, it has wood cabinets and green granite. I think it is damn near perfect the way it is, but even I knew it needed updating for functional and cosmetic reasons. Pam just wanted it clean and new and white. So, we decided it was time to deal with it. That was over three years ago.
It started as a simple refresh, repainting our existing cabinets and keeping our flooring and most of our appliances. We got quotes and bought some new cabinet hardware at the end of February 2020, right before COVID. That put a hard stop on our plans. We thought about restarting it about 18 months ago. We put a stop to that restart once we realized the supply chain issues were still too severe. We waited until early this year to really get going. We got a new contractor. We got new quotes. Along the way, we got the might as wells and dropped the refresh and turned it into a full-blown redo. Of course, the budget when up exponentially. So here we are on the eve of destruction. Literally.
We have spent the past couple of days purging our kitchen, dumping old stuff and moving all the remaining stuff into other rooms and the garage as we prepare for our remodel, which begins tomorrow.
It was sort of shocking when we started opening up kitchen drawers and cabinets. We found items that expired in the early 2000s. We had to clean the pantry, which still had some of our un- or partially-consumed food items we bought, but did not really want or need, during the height of the hoarding days of COVID. We laughed at the pots, pans and utensils that we found that have not been used in decades but were lurking deep in drawers. It was like a reverse treasure hunt. Every unused item just added to the time it took us to purge the kitchen.
In theory, our remodel should be simple. In theory, it should not take more than six weeks or so. In theory, we should not drastically exceed our most recently increased exponential budget. In theory, we know what to expect, as we did a much more complicated version of this over two decades ago, at a time when we had kids living in the house. I hope the theory is right.
I mean, we are not moving or altering any walls. We will be replacing our current cabinets, counter tops, backsplashes and flooring. Due to code changes, we will be ripping out our drywall in order to redo the kitchen wiring. We are adding some HVAC ducts in the kitchen walls. We are moving some plumbing and changing our overhead lighting. We are putting in new appliances, including the built in griddle on our range top that Pam thinks is my ultimate boondoggle. Simple stuff. We will have at least one inspection. We have spent an eon deciding on our counter tops, backsplashes and floors. We have selected and bought our new appliances. Everything else has been ordered and is either in stock or arriving soon, except for the backsplash tile which is on backorder for at least a month. We are good to go. Simple. Right?
We think we have come to grips with life without a kitchen. In theory, we have it all figured out. Our kitchen table is in our den, along with our microwave, coffee maker and coffee bean burr grinder. A spare bathroom has our slow cooker and toaster oven. The contractor says our refrigerator and washer and dryer will be usable. All we are missing is our cooktop, ovens, dishwasher and insinkerator, which we use a lot less often than we used to use now that we are trying to do more composting per city decree. We got this covered. Really.
Tomorrow, they start demolishing the kitchen. By tomorrow night, we will testing our planning and preparation, not to mention our patience.