All by ourselves!!! ok... not quite...

We had a ton of help with our kitchen. It was fantastic. It kind of reminds me of that story "stone soup" that my mom read me when I was little. You know... the one where all the town needed to make soup was a stone, and then someone gave tomatoes, and someone gave potatoes, another gave a ham bone, and another some peppers. At the end they were so excited that they had just make soup from a single stone.
Yeah, our kitchen was kind of like that. We did it all ourselves, with some help from Dave, who made it possible to removed the entire old kitchen on night number one,

 and my parents, who somehow made me think they were behind us, even though they probably thought we were crazy, and my in laws, who have done this kind of thing before and were working even when we were on vacation (eep, still feel bad about that),

 and Nate, who knew how to put the tile down and gave up a Saturday to help us (and has super strength and let's face it, super powers are always helpful),

 and Colin, who knew how to hang cabinets (and had super tools and let us use his truck and pick his brain because he pretty much knows everything),

and uncle Mike, who... ok, you get the point; and I am sure I missed someone anyway, but we appreciated every single second of it! And I would say everyone make a pretty fabulous soup!! :-D

Oh Cabinets

The first weekend at our new house was full of... mess. Before our actual closing our wonderful realtor let us in the house to measure the kitchen so that we could order cabinets and get the ball rolling on our renovation.
Cabinets seem so easy. I imagined we would pick a color and a style, decide where we wanted the appliances (including dishwasher) and the rest would fall into place. It wasn't quite so easy. I pouted. At least once. Probably more when I realized that we don't just want cabinets, we want the right cabinets. We HAVE to have a place for silverware and I MUST have a large enough cabinet to fit large pots and what do you mean we can't put the sink under the window and still have a dishwasher!!!
Its not an amazing view or anything, but what is a kitchen sink without a window above it? (I'm sure there are many nice windowless sinks out there that work quite well, for some reason thought, I didn't want mine in that category).
We had to face all the details. A smaller kitchen company was recommended to us by our mortgage broker (random, I know), I was fond of Ikea cabinets and the storage component options that went with them, and, of course, we wanted to talk to Home Depot and Lowes.
The first design from the local company was weird. A little too much design for our small space that needed an overhaul for functionality. We headed to home depot and Lowes during lunch breaks and after work and got some good ideas, but nothing stuck. I also realized that it is really difficult to get a "standard" price of a cabinet to try to compare apples to apples. These things really frustrated me. Finally, I love Ikea, but here... I think it made me cry. I don't quite remember, but I'm 99% sure. I tend to get really emotional when faced with big decisions, significant costs, deadlines, and conflicting opinions :-).
It was an awful experience. The "kitchen designer" (the employee in the kitchen section of Ikea) sent myself and the hubs to the computers where we struggled with the software, finally got the computer to give us a quote, which was a little over a million dollars!! No joke. It was a glitch in the software that added an extra million dollars on our quote, but I don't think that was the only glitch in the software. I left with a very bad taste in my mouth... and those were the cabinets I thought I wanted...
To make a long story short, the lady at the local store was super helpful talking us through the process and gave us several iterations of our kitchen design, one of which turned out to be "the one." She made sure we had the dishwasher by the sink, which remained under the window, and big cabinet for pots... everything we needed to think about but didn't know, she thought of for us. The company was also extremely willing to work within our budget, which made everything super easy. If anyone needs the name of a place to buy kitchen cabinets, just let me know ;-).

Starting in the Kitchen

Well, close to the beginning... The first thing we tackled with our new house is the kitchen. Talk about diving into DIY.
It is closed off from the rest of the house and very inefficiently laid out. I was a tiny little room and a corner had been left open for an eat in table. Maybe you had to be there, but that boggled my mind. The dining room was two steps away. Maybe just a half step, depending on where you were standing. I'm not sure what value was added by eating right in the kitchen... maybe it would be helpful when you are sooooo tired that can't imagine both cooking dinner and carrying it to the dining room! Maybe I'll regret not keeping that space when the day comes, but I doubt it. Also, there was no dishwasher. Bummer.
 At the inspection, the kitchen looked like this. (the computer is the property of the home inspector and it didn't come with the house... shucks).

 Thank you to my father who modeled the room's functionality (or lack thereof). I guess the coat must be the inspector's as well. Our refridgerator/coat rack. :-)

That fridge was pretty icky. Thanks to those who cleaned it out, move it out, borrow it out, and sent it to its death in return for an energy efficient rebate. :-)
The door behind my father leads to a set of stairs to the basement (remember, its a ranch ;-)) and a door to the side yard. Note the beautiful bathroom tile that came halfway up the wall all the way around the room. yuck.
Finally, the wall that was destined to be removed, which would open the kitchen up to the dining room and make for the much more open floor plan that we craved!

 I could show you more, but those are the best of the kitchen "befores". By the way, check out that gorgeous wall paper! Mmmm! One piece had started to peel and I starting pulling on it even before we closed (which earned me a prompt slap on the wrist from my loving husband), but believe me, it was the first thing I pulled down when we walked in officially with the keys!