If you want to know all of the details keep looking (and looking, and looking).
When we bought the house I actually wanted a house that had a kitchen that needed remodeling. I didn't really want to remodel anything else, but I have always wanted to do a kitchen remodel. Call me crazy (Jeff does!). That was the plan from day one... it just took us 5 years and lots and lots of different plan versions to get there.
Once we hit go, the first step was to remove the brick walls and fireplace.
This next one is the chimney in the master bath.
We got some much needed closet space out of this change!
There was So. Much. Brick. There was masonry all the way to the flue and and we had 11 tons hauled off. But, wow! That really brightened up the rooms already. Now we had an issue with the plumbing that was in the wall (far left). Hmm. We didn't think about that. We had to scoot it over a bit to fit it back into the back wall of the house.
Ordering and having an IKEA kitchen delivered could be a post in itself. Jeff and I had made a trip down to have them look over the file and make sure everything was ready to go. We were just waiting for their kitchen sale to begin. Once it did I was anxious to get things ordered and it turned out that Jeff's brother Joe was going to be in Dallas that week. He graciously offered to put the order in for me, even with my caution that it might take a few hours to get done. Little did we know that it would take DAYS to even PLACE the order! He became good friends with Esther, the IKEA kitchen lady and they worked and worked at putting the order into the new computer system. Here is most of our order that came in several different shipments. The first shipment was VERY disappointing. We were so excited and then it turned out to be a few shelves and the cabinet feet.
Inside, our contractors were working on drywall, electrical, leveling out the flooring, etc.
One of our two biggest decisions was flooring. We looked and looked and finally decided on CoreTec's Hickory Maple luxury vinyl flooring. It looks and feels like wood, but it is waterproof and very sturdy. We love it so far.
The flooring was a big to do. We had two different types of brick flooring to replace/cover, so it wasn't a simple task. Some people told us that we could put the flooring right over the brick and others said that we needed to level the floor first. We tried floating it, but it definitely needed leveling, so we had to pull up a lot of what was done the first time and try again.
They told us they were using a quick set leveler and that it would take about 3 hours. We opted to stay upstairs instead of leaving the house for those hours. It turned out that it took over 24 hours to dry! When Jeff came home from work he couldn't get to the stairs, so he set up a ladder and came in the balcony. They ended up needing to pour more of it after that set and we had to use the ladder for the weekend to get in and out of the house. It was a bit crazy, especially because it was super windy that day. They poured it on Saturday and on Sunday we were still using the ladder to get down, even in our church clothes. Funny memories!
Our next big decision was countertops. I could definitely do a whole post about that, but I will spare you. I will just mention that I got a little out there crazy for a while and really wanted some beautiful (to me) expensive stuff, not realizing just HOW expensive it was. We still ended up spending extra to get what I wanted, but not nearly as much as it could have been... ha ha!
These are some of the ones I LOVED, but Jeff was not a fan. "That one is brown... brown is not a color, it's a shade of dirt." My palomino countertops would have been AMAZING. ha ha.
We went with white.
Building the cabinets was my favorite part. The contractors hated the IKEA stuff because there were so many pieces and parts, but I was having a great time. I helped quite a bit putting things together and giving guidance about what I wanted. They were all really nice and I'm actually going to miss having them around.
I enjoyed every step of the process, but it did get very tiresome not having access to our normal kitchen and living areas. The kids had really good attitudes about it for the first month and a half, but we were definitely ready to move back in when the time came!
Here is Jeff cooking in our laundry room. He even brought me breakfast one day by crossing the roof instead of going down the stairs, across the first floor and back up the other stairs to my office.
...and now it's done and beautiful. I love it!!
Drawer within a drawer - one of my favorite features!
And integrated dishwasher... we've known what we wanted and have had the dishwasher for several years before it actually fit in with our cabinets. Now it finally blends in!
This one is dark, but shows the backsplash a little bit.
It feels like a new house!
