The great kitchen reveal: the design

I wish I could say that we planned everything out for this renovation ahead of time. That we'd saved up all the money we'd need and that everything went really smoothly.

But I'd be lying.

We started swinging sledge hammers before we had anything in mind. For future reference this is a BAD idea. So, I'm presenting this reveal in the order that we should have done it. That way I can hopefully do it better next time and help anyone who thinks that destruction should come before design.

After spending hours playing with the layout and trying to achieve the mystic "work triangle" we decided not to move any of the major appliances too much. We only shifted the stove to the middle of the interior wall and left everything else in place. No other configuration provided enough counter space for the ear doctor and I both to work on. Plus that way we wouldn't have to hire a plumber to come move our pipes around.

I have to be honest, the ear doctor and I struggled a bit when it came to design. My vision for the space was really light and almost entirely white in color. I had visions of marble coutner tops and gauzy curtains lilting on the breeze.

My man? He loves color.

What were we going to do? This is where we both learn to compromise.

At least we both knew we wanted rad new stainless LG appliances. Luckily we were just in time to get a great rebate from the company saving us $500. Also, we opened up a Home Depot credit card and save another $200.

Here is the initial concept I came up with and we brought with use to Home depot:

Guess what is confusing, expensive and really annoying? Ordering kitchen cabinets. We ended up working with the in-house kitchen designer and it was about and 80% satisfying experience. Only one cabinet was delivered the wrong size 2 months after we'd ordered it.

Changes the to the design throughout the process were inevitable and here is a short list of what we went through:

1. We bought the cheapest cabinets we possibly could. I know a lot of blogs say that cabinets are the place to really buy the best you can possibly get, but we just couldn't spend that much for our little kitchen in our little starter home. This is probably be biggest concession we made to keeping our costs down. And I would totally do it again if I was given the choice.
2. While I wanted marble or some other light colored material for the counter tops, we really couldn't justify the investment right now so we turned to a laminate. The ear doctor picked the counter top in a 5 second gut reaction and while it's probably something I never would have gone for I think it looks amazing, especially for the price we paid.
3. We couldn't find subway tiles in the color green I was envisioning without ordering them from Italy and waiting 6 weeks. That wasn't in the cards for us. As a result we changed to cheap, classic white subway tiles and decided to paint the walls instead.
4. Flooring. Ugh! This was the hardest choice we had to make. I wasn't loving the idea of cold hard tile, even with radiant heaters underneath. I'm just too clumsy and drop stuff all the time and anyone who has canned anything knows the importance of a soft surface underfoot. We decided to look into cork. I love how green the material is and we found some dark dark dark stuff that was on clearance so we went ahead and got it.