I’ve been stressing out lately–all broken out in hives just thinking about the massive remodel that we are planning for late spring. We will be rearranging all the plumbing in our master bathroom; replacing the fixtures; tiling the floor; removing 3 walls in the kitchen; dining; and family room areas; moving a 4th wall over 2 feet and moving the doorway; switching the kitchen with the dining area; gutting the space to the studs and starting over! I’ll be without a kitchen and main floor bathrooms for quite awhile.
Kitchen Before (Current) The little wall with the 2 windows is leaving. It’s only job was to hide the sink (now in the island) from the living room. This space will be the new dining room.
Current view from the living room. Old kitchen; new dining room.
We will remove the island, the cabinets and walls between the dining room and the kitchen making this one huge space. The wooden door you see here leads to a walk in pantry. This is all leaving too.
View from the doorway beside the current refrigerator. Old dining room, will be the new kitchen.
The plan–After removing the center wall separating the kitchen from the dining room and making it all one big room. For reference the new refrigerator will sit approximately the same place the old freezer is (the one right next to the doorway.
We actually have a budget this time from the sale of our other house, but it is about 1/3 of what a normal person would plan to spend on such a project. That means we will have to do a lot of it ourselves; shop used; and decide which parts we can cut back on.
http://camilleroskelley.typepad.com/simplify/2012/04/the-house-house.html
Wood-look porcelain tile–trying to make this fit into our budget to floor the whole space
We started by having Lowe’s bid the kitchen with their lowest cost cabinets. They were still plenty nice and the bid came back $29,000 including their discounts and uninstalled!!!! Um, that’s almost our ENTIRE budget for the bathroom and kitchen. Not going to work. Next week went to Cabinet Giant and had them build in their TOP QUALITY cabinets. That bid came out $12,000 with their discounts. Still a little high, but much better. By switching the dark wood to a slightly lower grade cabinets, we were able to lower the bid to $7100, that’s more like it!
Our upper cabinets
Our lower cabinets
It turns out the color is even better for what we had in mind. We are planning a two toned kitchen with light upper cabinets (to keep the kitchen bright) with dark lower cabinets (for sturdiness and to add richness to the space. We used these pins for our inspiration:
from: http://theenchantedhome.blogspot.com/2011/05/ultimate-kitchens-round-ii-and-better.html
Two-toned kitchen inspiration from Pinterest
Another two toned kitchen found on pinterest
I’ve lived without a kitchen during our remodel at our previous home for about 6 months. I washed dishes in the bathtub, cooked in the living room on a folding table with an electric griddle; microwave; and crock pot. And blew a fuse (in the house, lol) almost every day. Our current eating out budget is $35 a month, which doesn’t go far for the 8 of us. I’ll have to figure out how to continue to make all our meals at home. I did it before and was pregnant for part of that time. I know it’s possible, but it was horrible. Just the memory is enough to give me hives, lol. I would have made a terrible pioneer.
Here’s a current view of our dining room window wall. (The only part of this remodel that makes me sad is I just painted this room and added molding. This was before we knew that tearing down walls was possible. The white balance is all off in this picture–the upper is light turquoise and the bottom is gray.
Here’s a drawing of what it will look like after the remodel.
Dining wall before
Dining Wall After
We are moving this wall forward 2 feet from where it stands now. My laundry room is behind this wall and is 17 feet long but only 6 feet wide. (Another post on what it looks like will come later.) By moving forward the wall, I can divide the room into a laundry room and pantry. The new door will be across from my washing machine and will leave the pantry side completely available for shelving. I’d love the move the wall even more, but the dining room window is in the way. I’m hoping to make the doorway arched like this:
Arched Doorway (almost the same floor plan as ours, but a different style–and our ceilings are only 8 foot.)
Picture from Southern Living
This one has the doorway on the opposite side, but the colors and style are more like what I’m hoping for our space.
From Traditional Home: http://www.traditionalhome.com/design_decorating/kitchens/kitchen-update-pay-back_ss16.html
Garage Side Wall Current
Garage Wall After
Since I will have a huge pantry on the other side of the wall, the cabinet pantry will become my new command center. People like me should not have a desk in the kitchen–it will always be covered with an unsightly pile. I’m imagining cork boards and chalkboards on the back of the cabinet doors, with mail sorters, pencil cups; and file boxes inside. I’ll keep track of our schedules, important papers; appliance instruction books; and items to return to others in there.
Chalkboards inside cabinets from 11magnolialane.com
Cork Boards Inside Cabinets From Younghouselove.com
There’s more to tell, but I’ll save it for another post :).
Stock up on freezer meals. Put them in your crock pot to cook or you can use your outdoor grill as an oven to cook as well. We are also going to be remodeling our kitchen this summer and I am not looking forward to it. The one bonus I have is I have a camper with a stove and convection oven so I can see myself doing a lot of cooking and dish washing out there. I wish I had the space to work with that you do. Goodluck with your remodel can’t wait to see the after pictures.
Can’t wait to see the finished product. I only hope to be as strong willed & determined to make a plan & stick to it as you are. My goal this year is to start saving so we can one day move into a house
I don’t envy you, but if anyone can pull it off, you can. A small toaster oven would help a lot. My oven has been “out” for a long time; I would be in big trouble if I didn’t have my toaster oven.
WOW. What a huge project. It looks like it will be so pretty and functional when it’s done. I like the different color upper and lower cabinets. Your current dining room is so pretty, I would be sad to demo it too. I look forward to seeing your progress!
It will be amazing when you get finished. I have never done major remodeling so I can’t share any advice on that but “best wishes!” I hope it comes together well for you.
Built a house from trees we made lumber from…. lived in a 12 x 47 trailer with 4 then 5 of us for 9 years while we did this…. my biggest joy was not having to make out our sofa bed any more!!! We have great memories! And the kids all took a turn trailer houses or small apartments until they got there BIG houses! Learned soooo much!
Enjoy it girl! We remained debt free….
Built house from lumber from trees. Lived in a 12 x 47 trailer with 4 then 5 of us for 9 years. Biggest joy- not having to make out sofa bed! Remained debt free. Kids started small have big houses. Learned much!
Victoria, This is an amazing story! We certainly do learn to appreciate what we have when we sacrifice long to get it :).
Angela, what an ambitious project! The plans look great, and I too am sure you can do this. One thought is that I hope you don’t have to wash all the dishes yourself. Surely your kids can do a lot of that? Freezer meals made ahead are a great idea. And I have seen many recipes for “main-dish salads,” which would seem to work well for summer time, along with other simple meals, of which I’m sure you have many. Best of luck. It will be so worth it once it’s done.
Josie, Brandon (5 yo) is my best dish washer. He still looks at it as a privilege and is still home during the day so it my right hand helper. The older kids are rarely around any more, but hopefully that will change when summer comes. Everyone should learn to do chores, even boys. Their wives will be grateful for it.
The way to get through thekitchen renovations without going crazy is Thermomix.
This appliance, cooks, blends, weighs, steams, sauté s, mills grains, stirs, and more.
I have no idea why it’s not available in the US. It’s huge in Europe and Australia. I would recommend buying one off shore and using an international plug.
Hey, why not become the first US consultant you’d be a natural, you have a lovely personalaity.
By the way I don’t sell them, I just own one.
http://www.thermomix.com.au/join-contact-us/about-us.aspx
There is a USA thermomix recipe community, they must have smuggled some in lol
http://www.recipecommunity.com.au/regional/american/usa
Here is a lovely cream of chicken soup recipe. Super healthy, easy and economical and the creamyness comes from brown rice. I think it’s a good recipe to show what the thermomix does.
http://quirkycooking.blogspot.com.au/2010/07/creamy-chicken-brown-rice-soup.html
The quirky cooking lady is a bit like you. A super busy mum on a budget.