For those of you who don't know, or had forgotten despite my constant bemoaning, we have one of the worst kitchen layouts known to man. I'm spoiled, because my parents' house has a great layout and every apartment I've lived in was chosen by me. Rich bought this house before I met him. Being a boy, it did not occur to him that this was a poorly designed house plan. Being a wonderful guy, he's letting me take the lead on changing what we can.
We had a leak under our kitchen sink that destroyed the bottom of that cabinet. Turns out, these cabinets are no longer made. Although we could take out the existing cabinet and replace the bottom, we'd have to take out the sink, take up the counter and then put it all back. If we're going to do all that work, why not just put in new cabinets? I've been collecting IKEA cabinets from the as-is department (overstock, NIB) for a couple years now, so we're pretty much ready to do it right now.
Over the Christmas Break in Dallas, my mom and brother helped me virtually arrange and rearrange the new kitchen layout using the IKEA Kitchen Planner. I had a dilemma about where to put the fridge, but after much thinking, inside and outside of the box, we found a layout that I'm actually excited about having. That was the first one in months of fiddling. I'm putting up this screen shot but keep in mind that the appliances will all be black, the floor is only an approximation for color, and I couldn't get the backsplash in there.
Oh, and those are not the correct chairs. How is it that IKEA didn't have one of their most popular chairs in the available list? But, you get the general idea. All of the base cabinets are already in our possession, although some will be repurposed from the old studio. We have half of the upper cabinets, the faucet and the chairs, but will need to buy the table, a new sink, and the counters. The appliances are coming from Whirlpool/Maytag/Kitchenaid directly, thanks to my aunt and late uncle, who was a Whirlpool retiree. We are so excited about getting those appliances! The range is my Valentine's present from 2011 and the fridge is my 4th anniversary present. Did you know that the 4th anniversary is appliances? I didn't, but it worked out well.
The existing kitchen has a bar/peninsula with electrical outlets run into it. (I've tried looking for existing pictures, but I'm coming up short.) I'm going to have to get the electrician out here to tell me how much it's going to cost to tie one of those off and move the other one to the wall next to the range. Thankfully, and hopefully, that will be the extent of sub-contractor work that needs to be done on this job. We're leaving the soffets in place because there's ductwork in the one over the fridge and we rely upon that duct to bring air to the kitchen and garage. The sink and d/w are stay in roughly the same place (+/- 10%) and the house was designed for a side-by-side fridge so it has a water line already in the wall. We thought about removing the pantry, but with the gas line running in the wall behind it, it's just not worth the trouble and cost. We could really do some damage if we're not careful. I think we have enough on our hands with removing that bar.
The floor is going to be interesting. I'll talk more about what we're putting down later, but we have to remove the existing laminate wood in the dining room. We would love to extend what's there into the kitchen when it's opened up, but the manufacturer (Witex) no longer makes that color in that product. So, we're going to pull up the dining area and reuse those pieces in the powder room under the stairs. That should leave us with a little for later repairs. Rich says there are only a handful of planks left from the original install. This will make me a breathe a little easier for the future.
I know I'll still have to make a bunch more decisions, like backsplash tiles, wall color, and lighting (overhead and under-counter). Not to mention the actual work of the remodel. But I'm so ready to get started. Once we place the order for the appliances, we don't have much time to get the existing cabs out of there, demo the bar, get the new floor down and get some of the cabinets up so the appliances can be installed when they arrive. I shudder to think what it would be like to try and put the new floor down with the appliances in place.
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