What I am referring to is...THE KITCHEN!!! Just in time to sell...wait, what? Yep, you read correctly. We finished up our kitchen just in time to sell the house. Before you ask if we are crazy, let me explain. We changed churches about this time last year. We enrolled our kids in school about this time last year, too. Our homeschooling wasn't working well given the season of our family and having two small babies. So after much thought, we enrolled our kids into a private catholic school as that is where we found space for them mid-year. We knew we wanted to find a non-Catholic school for the next school year. We began attending a new church which had a school. So in August 2013 the kids began their first year at their new school; our church school. They have done so well there. We love the staff and the fact that everything is taught in the classical style. THe teachers have been such a blessing to us and our children. They love what they do and is shows in their work.
Now that I have given a bit of back story, let me get back to the topic. We made the difficult decision to sell our house and relocate closer to the church/school. While I am used to having an hour to an hour and a half commute a day, Lauren was not. The school was about half way between our home and my work. However, the traffic made Lauren's commute as long or longer than mine. We added up all the time she was either in the car, or sitting at the school waiting. It came to about 5 hours a day. That's right, I said 5 hours a day. So even more insane than us selling our house was the thought of staying there and living with that reality. The babies were suffering from Car Seat rump...kind of like tennis elbow. They were either in the car or in their crib. Obviously that is not ideal!! It was a no brainer to make that decision. We contacted a realtor from our church and began the process of finishing up all the projects around the house that had been started but not completed. (Note to self...do ONE project at a time, next time). By God's grace, we never actually made it to the listing phase. About a week before we were going to list the house, we got a contract from a friend of ours who found out we were selling our house. So...for those who know real estate jargon...Days on the Market - 0. Needless to say it was a mad dash to the finish line to get everything done and moved out prior to closing. We had 6 weeks or so but that time went fast. We temporarily moved in with my mother-in-law mainly to keep the kids out of the way while we busted our hump to accomplish the difficult task of moving. On December 5th, 2013, we signed away the home we had put so much blood, sweat and tears into. The one consolation was that it went to a wonderful family.
So back to the kitchen...the project was begun back in July 2012. It was supposed to be a 60-90 day facelift. Well, if you give a mouse a cookie... I will try to keep it brief as I have a ton of pictures to share.
So the kitchen already had Quartz counter tops and a tumbled marble backsplash which we wanted to keep. So that nixed any plan to rearrange the kitchen's footprint with the lower cabinets. Our initial desire was to turn our 5 ft tall, by 3 ft wide, by 1 ft deep pantry into a real built out pantry with real doors. So that was task number one...in doing that we had to remove the drop-down ceiling that the upper cabinets were attached to. The trouble with that is the cabinets were a house of cards. Once you start removing it, you had to remove all of them as they were all connected and all attached to the drop down ceiling. THey were not true boxes. The were shelving with three sides, the wall served as the back. Since all of our upper cabinets were attached to this drop down ceiling, they all had to go. We raised the area that was the drop down ceiling up to match the rest of the ceiling. It was amazing how much that really opened things up. Next, we pulled out the lighting and put in canned/recessed lighting. We also relocated the refrigerator which meant we had to move a water line for the water and ice maker in the fridge. In tearing things out we realized where the oven used to be had a gas line that needed to be dealt with. So we capped it. We also capped the original line where the fridge was. That was all in the first weekend. I made 42 inch upper cabinets and custom made a cabinet to enclose the fridge and utilize the space above it and around it. Oh, and we framed out and partially sheet rocked a 8ft x 5ft x 2ft (HxWxD) pantry. Great improvement at this point. Now fast forward to the finished product. When all was said and done, in addition to what is mentioned above we did the following:
- Replaced the tile flooring
- Replaced the bottom cabinet facings (boy was that a story...short version, the wood no longer supported the counters so we had to do something as it was rotting. Thank God for a Hydraulic Jack!!)
- Replaced all cabinet doors and hardware
- Installed wainscot in the breakfast area
- Trimmed out all the windows
- Replaced kitchen sink and fixture
- Replaced backsplash. As we decided on a color scheme (White, blue and grey), the cream colored marble backsplash really didn't go nor did the sink, so we replaced both).
- Unexpected items that we threw in there...2 toilets and redoing all of the plumbing/piping in the house. Curse Galvanized Steel plumbing!!!!
You can see some of our previous posts for additional pictures. Due to space, I am going to jump forward to the finished product (Before and After shots). But before I do that, I must tell a funny story. Well, it is funny now, but wasn't at the time. We had a sheet rock guy come in to do some of the finishing touches as the project was dragging and we just needed to get it done. So we hired him to float the ceiling, finish floating the walls, and paint everything. He came in and finished the ceiling. About that time we had a mishap with the upstairs toilet. It flooded down into the master bedroom. Well, we got that taken care of which was promptly followed by to additional pinhole leaks in our water lines indicating future problems with the plumbing. So after we paid to have the ceiling done, we had to tear it up throughout the bottom floor to have all of the piping replaced. A tidbit of knowledge about that; Plumbers DON'T fix what they tear up. It isn't included in the quote, so after you pay to have the repairs done, then you have to pay a sheet rock guy to come and fix the damage. Don't get me started on that...So we paid to have our ceiling done twice. Fun, huh?!? I will say, though that the 2nd guy was far better than the first.
Back to pictures. I tried to take pictures with all our appliances in there but the kitchen wasn't clean enough until we moved everything out and cleaned the house prior to selling. ha ha. But here are some before and after pics of the finished product sans the fridge and all of our dishes, food and table.
1) Before
After
2) Before
After
3) The breakfast area - Before
After
4) The Pantry - Before (closest to camera on wall next to fridge)
After
Corner for the fridge.
So while it was a long, long, LONG project (16 months), it was a lot of fun and I don't regret taking it on at all. We look forward to moving into our new home (in two weeks) that is MOVE IN READY!!! We don't have to do anything to it right away. Although, knowing us, we will add some personal touches here and there. And eventually it will need some updating...in the kitchen...LOL.
We will post pics of the new place once we have moved in. Really excited to move on to the next chapter...
