Our Little Place -- The Kitchen Remodel

What I'm Listening To: Overkill by Men at Work

For those of you following along at home, Jim and I recently renovated our severely outdated kitchen. How about a little background, first, huh?

So, the gay guy who lived in our house before us (yes, the "Shirtless Men Cruise Line" brochures and gay porn catalogs that continued to be delivered to our mailbox long after he left confirmed our suspicions on our previous homeowners sexual leanings) was a great woodworker and handyman (he even wired the whole house in Cat 5e data cabling and installed a sound system in the living room walls - super cool!) but he had some horrible tastes in colors. So we had red cabinets on one side of the kitchen, the white ORIGINAL cabinets from when the house was built in the 1940s on the other side, and the aforementioned green counters. Teensy pantry that stored nothing. Then he painted the kitchen in a light yellowish green, with PEACH trim. UGH! The only redeeming factor about the whole room were the nice hardwood floors.

For FOUR YEARS we lived with that kitchen. I mean, we had a lot of other stuff to do on the house that took priority, and money, of course. Replace the cement front steps (we called our place "Crumbleporch Manor" for a while, there), replace the roof (ask me what a pain it was to actually find roofing contractors who return phone calls), and then replace the severely rotted wooden fencing and install a retaining wall and new 6' high fencing in the backyard (best money we ever spent, no kidding! I couldn't look at our neighbors one more second!!). I love crossing things off our homeowner "to do" list!

I have to say, waiting so long for a new kitchen wasn't that bad -- it just made us appreciate the new kitchen even more when it was done. The old kitchen was functional, but it just was ugly. We had a really old dishwasher which we never used because it's just me and Jim, and we use paper plates. because we hate washing dishes. Uh, while it may not be really environmentally friendly, it's super logical for us. Oh, that, and I don't think I could eat my nightly snacks out of anything but a Dora the Explorer paper bowl. Shut up, if you saw them you'd understand that no one, and I mean no one, says no to the Dora bowl's plaintive printed requests of "Count all the red stars you see!" And the old sink had a soap dispenser -- that was pretty cool, I must say. And a water filter built in, with its own faucet. Whooohoo! So we were living okay.

This year we finally saved enough money to get our new kitchen. We were psyched. We decided to go to the NARI show at the State Fair grounds to find us a kitchen contractor. Yeah, that was fun. Everyone we went to looked at us like we were insane for thinking that we could remodel our kitchen for less than $30,000. I don't know about you, but I am not going into hock for more money than our car is worth for a room that we barely use because we are the laziest cooks ever. And then, every time we mentioned that we lived in Stallis, the eyebrows went up even further. We heard "Oh, we don't work in West Allis because the city inspectors are super strict!" over and over from about 4 different contractors. It was a nightmare.

Finally, we made some appointments with some maverick contractors (ha!), had our meetings, picked our dude, scheduled a date, and next thing you knew, we had a new kitchen and it was within our original budget. YAY!!! Our contractor -- Creative Cabinets, btw -- was great. He showed up when he said he would, installed it the way we asked, helped us find other subcontractors to do the stuff he didn't do, finished the job in the timeframe agreed upon, and charged us the price he originally quoted at the start of the job. It was a very pleasurable experience, and we got the kitchen we wanted.

We got new cabinets in a light oak mission style -- one of the cabinets has glass doors, too -- with brushed copper fixtures and pulls which just look so perfect, it's not even funny. The counters are light silestone, and the sink has a nozzle which detaches to use as a sprayer. He replaced our tiny pantry with a lovely cupboard with rolling shelves. We painted the walls light blue and the windows and doors trim white. Gorgeous!!!! It is our dream kitchen.

Okay, we didn't get a new dishwasher installed because as I mentioned before, we hate washing dishes. I cannot tell you how many people said to me "You didn't get a dishwasher? You're gonna have a hard time when you try to sell your house." Jesus, people, like you never washed a dish in your lives? Toughen up, bitches!! And the new sink is a little smaller than I thought it was going to be, and I miss using our crappy dishwasher as a drying rack (because running that dinosaur wasted more water than the Hoover Dam, and it took 2 hours to do a load, no lie!), but we did get a new stove (which we used twice since we bought it in September, no kidding) and the paint colors we used look fabulous against the silestone countertops! All in all, we're very happy.

So if you're lucky enough to get invited to our house, please make a lot of happy noises about our kitchen, because we are very very proud parents. Next up, the bathroom. Don't get me started on the ugly tiling colors and the leaky showerhead...arrrgggh! :) And then I get new bath towels! Yay!