YOU GUYSSSS the day is finally here! THE BLOG IS BACK. It’s pretty impossible to post amazing recipes without a kitchen…and let me tell you it was just as miserable for me 😂. This has literally been the longest two months, and I can’t believe it’s March because these past two months have been such a blur. Our house has been a disaster since December 26th and FINALLY some normality to our lives. I am so excited to finally start the new year up with some new posts and recipes IN MY NEW KITCHEN! I know so many of you have asked for pictures so, what better way to show you what we did? I hope you find some humor throughout this story… looking back on it I can, but there were definitely some tears of frustration along the way!
Let’s rewind to three years ago when this young, naive couple bought their first home!!! We couldn’t have been more excited. We walked through the house and had TONS of plans for renovations in mind to make it our own… totally unaware of what life would actually hit us with 😂 We had plans for the kitchen, the floors, the railing, the stairs, the carpet, the master bathroom…the list goes on. The kitchen was at the top of our list…cause well just look at it! Such an eye-sore and so inefficient. It was number one on our list, but LIFE happened. We had to get some work done on our back deck, then our fence blew out, then our sprinklers were broken, then we had a baby….LIFE happened.
We had cut back to one income, so we were incredibly blessed to be able to finally afford this project with the help of my new side job from my phone! Our plan for the kitchen was to replace the cabinets and countertops, fix our bay window, paint the trim, instal a new light fixture over the counter, and to make up for lost space from the overhead cabinets we wanted to install a bench in our nook area (where the Christmas tree is) with some extra space. We were told about ONE WEEK of work,,,
So began the most ridiculous home renovation of all time.
December 27th we packed up our entire kitchen and stored everything in our front entry way. YES MY HOUSE LOOKED LIKE THIS FOR TWO MONTHS.
Now let me just lay out the timeline for you of what was “supposed” to happen:
- Friday, December 28th- Demo of cabinets and removal of soffits (These are the big beams holding up the cabinets, we were supposed to remove all three so we could have bigger cabinets installed)
- Saturday, December 29th- Soffit replacement and two coats of drywall
- Monday, December 31st- Relocations of electrical circuits and texture and paint touch ups
- Tuesday, January 1st- Set cabinets and template for counter tops and bench seat
- Friday, January 4th- install of countertops, bench seat, electrical trim and backsplash.
Then began problem #1- Our contractor discovered some electrical wiring in one of the 3 soffits, and it would have cost a lot to move. He wanted to scope it out the next day while we were home so we could talk it over….
So fast forward to the next day. We get a phone call about 9 AM from our contractor- car broke down. Great! Ok so we figured it would push everything back a day or so…Not quite. Monday when they finally could do the soffit removal, we discovered one beam was for support and one had way too much electrical wiring, thankfully we could remove the big one going into the living room! BUT this caused problem #2… Now we had to RE-ORDER the cabinets in a smaller size. Next problem? It’s New Years Eve, nothing’s open until Wednesday. I was upset, we weren’t planning on another week!
So as we waited around for the cabinets, some other work was getting done like paint and the bay window. Our bay window was disgusting before hand 😂, The picture you see is exactly what the wood looked like (minus the white paint) and the windows had this terrible, old burnt stained glass sticker! So awful. And of course when they started the window…they used the wrong tile…and had to be redone 🤦🏼♀️. Unfortunately not much else could be done with out the cabinets.
Fast forward a full week-Monday, January 7th… the cabinets came!!! IN A WRONG COLOR. This is a joke right… It takes a full week for these to come! Again…more stress and frustration, more freezer and fast food. I’ve never craved a salad so bad in my life 😂
So finally on January 16th… 16 full days after the original plan… our cabinets started to get installed. Our granite template was drawn out Thursday the 17th.. THINGS ARE LOOKING UP! We were hopeful that this is getting done and that we aren’t stuck ins some ridiculous nightmare of fast food and clutter for another month…
Well, think again!🤦🏼♀️Friday morning our contractor was supposed to basically finish everything other than the granite. We never heard from him until Monday and received a text telling us that his brother was found in an ally near a job site Friday morning, he had been beaten almost to death Thursday night and found Friday morning. (Guys I can’t make this stuff up-this was the most insane project in the world.) Oh and his brother is also the electrician of the company, supposed to install our light and do all the electrical work…
At this point I was like “ok i quit…done stressing… this will get done when it’s time to get done.” I gave up trying to control the situation and accepted our ridiculous new life of clutter, dishes in the bath tub, eating out several times a week. Oh and did I mention the mice that invaded throughout all this? 😂 Seriously, mouse poop on my bed. Whole other story…but definitely attracted to the clutter.
Anyways back to the kitchen. Granite was finally installed Tuesday, January 29th, and I CAN”T TELL YOU HOW RELIEVED I FELT! I could finally see the light, and I could finally cook something and not have to do dishes in the tub. We actually started a diet because of how terrible we felt from all the crap we had been eating.😂Once the granite was installed everything still seemed to take an eternity with this company. Backsplash was slowly completed and then FINALLY our nook bench! I’t has some cabinet storage to make up for what we lost from the hanging cabinets. Now all that’s left to do is find a new table to fill that space!!
Jordan and I are very blessed to finally have the opportunity to do such a big project in our house. I am SO IN LOVE with every piece of this new kitchen and am so excited to start cooking and sharing some fun recipes with you all again! Huge fan of the view from my side of the counter too 🙂 No more cabinets in my face!! Enjoy the photos!!
Here’s a side by side before & after 😍
& a little slideshow 😍 Bonus points for finding Hutch… 😂
Stay tuned!! More recipes coming soon…