i solemnly swear this is the last post i will write about our DIY kitchen renovation

Well, the kitchen is finished.

After 8 months.

35 weekends.

Hundreds of trips to Lowe's.

1 trip to Urgent Care for a tetanus shot.

4 weeks of meals made using only the toaster oven and an old microwave in our upstairs storage room.

Hundreds (thousands?) of hours.

2 rounds of painting.

Lots of This Old House videos on Youtube.

4 times when I said we should just put the house up for sale "as is" and abandon ship.

And literal blood, sweat, and tears.

Let's take a look down memory lane.  Here's the original kitchen:

We started ripping it out in September.  At the time, I was HORRIFIED by this "mess."  Oh, sweet, naive September Laura.  It was going to get so much worse and I had no idea.  Which was probably good.  Because had I known what was to come, I may have changed my mind!

And then came the wallpaper removal.  Which was so impossible that we just ripped all of the drywall down and put new stuff up.  I had NO IDEA how much dust drywall work created.  But I learned.  Quickly.  We also found the old OLD wallpaper.

There was so much coffee.

SO, MUCH. COFFEE.  No matter what the state of the kitchen was on any given day, the coffee maker was the one thing that we made sure ALWAYS worked.

There was the day that Matt and his dad and brother replaced the wall air conditioner.  And there was a hole in our house.  And my father-in-law kept saying, "Don't worry! If we can't get the new unit in, we will just turn this hole into a window!"

I spent the day ignoring my nervousness about the whole thing by singing Adele's "Hello From the Other Side" to Matt, who was outside, over and over.

Even during the worst of the construction we ate dinner together in the dining room every night.  Sometimes our plates were surrounded by tool cases and packs of shims and boxes of nails, and, in Matt's case, a can of Raid.

And then, there was the day that the truck came and delivered boxes upon boxes upon boxes of cabinets.

We moved the dining room table against the wall and were so confident that surely all of the boxes would fit in there.  Oh, how wrong we were.  They filled the entire dining room, family room, and much of the living room.  

The pantry was too tall to fit in any other room but the kitchen.

To me, this was the worst part.  I knew the kitchen would be messy.  But having the entire rest of the living area crowded and cluttered too was not my favorite.  However, nothing would stop me from having a Christmas tree!

We spent a whole weekend sanding the ceiling, and then decided to call in the professionals.  It was so dusty.  We had an exhaust fan in the window, and after day 1, this was the state of the window screen.  It simultaneously made me laugh, and want to cry.

The demolition took a long time, and there was a LOT of behind the scenes work before we could get to the fun stuff.

We laid the new floor.

And then finally, it was time for cabinets!  Matt took vacation time the first week of November and he put up these cabinets.  Among many other things.  He would wake up at 6:30 every morning and start working, and work until 10 at night.  By the end of the week I was becoming genuinely concerned for him! He is always a hard worker but I'd never seen him so exhausted.

My father-in-law helped Matt with the gas line.  I always get a little nervous when I hear him say, "You guys have good homeowner's insurance, right?"

Then it was onto the island, which included some complicated plumbing work and lots of measuring to make sure it was straight, and level.

After a few weeks of plywood counters, the counter tops for the cooking side and the island were installed!

We ripped out the cabinets on the other side, and then we had to expand the doorway into the kitchen because the corner cabinet was too big to fit through the door.  So, that was fun.  But eventually, success!

We forged ahead.

Sink time!

We finally finished up the last of the drywall on this wall.

And then it was time to pick paint colors.  I spent about 48 hours set on painting the whole kitchen navy.

And then decided to go with a lighter blue.  I don't know what happened when I picked up the paint, but it was the wrong color and our kitchen was smurf blue.  I may have cried.  I totally cried.

I went back and got a lighter shade, took a vacation day, and repainted it the whole thing.

 

We put up the back splash, got the table delivered, and now here we are.

The delivery company only brought 3 chairs (we ordered 4), and we still need decorations and curtains and a light over the table, but we are basically done.

And I am so happy.

I may never leave that room.

Matt gets TONS of credit.  He worked so hard and did an excellent job.  So much research and attention to detail and precision and hard work went into every bit of it.  We hired someone to repair the ceiling, and obviously the counter tops were delivered, but other than that he did everything himself.

There's not one single thing I would change and I am not exaggerating when I say that I smile every time I walk into the room.  I look forward to so many more years and meals and laughs and memories in that kitchen.