A New Kitchen, A New Start

Yes, it has been almost two years since I last posted anything to this blog. That last move from Princeton back to North Carolina, encompassing, as it did, a bout of homelessness (yay to the friends who let us live with them briefly) evicting tenants for non payment of rent, retaking a really worse for wear home, followed by difficult school years for everyone, epipen use with attendant ER visits, thyroid malfunctions with accompanying 25 lb (in 3 months!!) weight gain, all conspired to do me in.

To paraphrase Thumper, why say anything when there is nothing good to say?

Thankfully I believe that phase of our lives is finally passing. I think we have started to move into a more normal level of downs and ups, lice not withstanding, and now we are about to embark or our biggest home improvement project so far, installing a new kitchen. So it is seems like a good time to restart this project and let people know that it isn't always bad stuff that happens to us.

A Little History:

My current kitchen is beautiful. It has custom built gorgeous cabinets, a white ceramic tile floor and a granite effect Corian countertop and sink. People often comment on how nice it looks and it truly does. Sadly whoever designed it and had it so handsomely constructed did not cook, was not interested in cooking and clearly never intended for the kitchen to be anything other than a gorgeous accoutrement for the house. It is the epitome of form over function. I cannot express how deeply I detest my beautiful kitchen.

I have fantasized about redoing it for years, since we bought the house and I first tried to put my stuff away and realized that I had had more storage capacity in my tiny townhouse kitchen. I dreamed about how I would redesign it while we were living in another country and it was unclear that I would ever actually return. Then about 3 weeks ago we were buying cabinets at Ikea for the newly retiled kids' bathroom when I noticed the kitchen sale going on until May 2. 20% off your entire purchase if you buy three appliances from Ikea. 20% off! We might be able to do it!

You see, one of the problems with doing the kitchen is that we can't just change the cabinets. The current tile (yes the one with deep dirt and scum collecting grout lines) is only tiled up to the cabinets so any change in them requires redoing the floor as well. That has stymied us in the past, but with such a deep discount maybe we could afford the floor as well! But we only had a month to plan. A month!

So off I went into deep obsession. Jon (barely) managed to put up with me and now, a mere three weeks later, and after discovering another discount (the 15% energy star rebate from NC for the new fridge and dishwasher), we have most of a new kitchen sitting in boxes in the garage. A new fridge has been purchased and will be delivered in late May. I am ordering a new (induction!) cooktop next week and sometime after Willa's birthday in May demolition will begin.

We are paying someone else to do that and to get the room back to a smooth shell. Then we will lay the new Marmoleum Click checkboard floor and do the rest ourselves. I will post some before pictures in the next few weeks in between getting ready for the big birthday (one decade!) and will try to keep everyone posted on our kitchen goings on.

Welcome back everyone!