Our Kitchen Remodel

When asked to describe some of life’s most disruptive activities, many humans who are married with children would start with “marriage” and “children”. And some, without much hesitation, might add “kitchen remodel”. Home ownership, the supposed pinnacle of the American Dream, comes with many costs my parents never mentioned, and for some of us includes ripping the bejesus out of a fully functioning kitchen. My wife and I had been in the home ownership game for about 15 years when we decided we were ready to completely disorder our daily lives with a gut rehab of the most popular room in our house.

The journey began in 2015, the year the charm left our country kitchen. The previous owners of our house had spent a small fortune adding a large addition to a little old farmhouse, but apparently they drew a financial line on kitchen upgrades. This room remained in its original 1900s location, which was now sandwiched between a 2004 addition and the late-1800s part of the house. The tongue-in-groove cabinetry had been built directly onto the walls, with doors warped so badly that some would randomly spring open without warning. The eating area was cramped, the little island couldn't seat all of us, and those winters...the base cabinets could have doubled as mini-refrigerators.

So we started with what you see below, which is a floor plan for what I'll call the "old" part of the house. This includes the original 1899 section ("Living Room and "Music"), the first early 1900s addition ("Dining Room") and the second early 1900s addition ("Kitchen/Laundry/Breakfast"). The outline of the 2004 addition can be seen at the bottom - the doorway near the stove leads to the "new" part of the house. The red rectangle is what changed the kitchen the most. We'll cover that later, but going into the project, this is what we had to work with.

By the fall of 2015, we were entering our third winter in the house and decided to get serious about gutting the kitchen. We would knock out the wall between the eating area and the outside entryway, put in a larger island, better insulate the exterior walls, and redo our tiny little laundry room while we were at it. Our wish list started large and continued to grow as we searched for a professional to design our dreams.

Our first visit with a local design/build company was arranged in January 2016. A pair of remodeling experts arrived at our house in a matter of days, and we showed off our wish list with the gleeful naivety of a millennial embracing socialism. Six weeks passed and we had…nothing. A few calls and emails later, a basic floorplan showed up, lacking some important elements. We decided to explore our options.

Our next stop was a locally owned home improvement store in Rockford, Illinois. A designer quickly drew up floorplans with 3D illustrations, and we were in business. Then the designer began asking questions. Lots of questions about things like flooring materials, countertop styles, cabinet types, appliance dimensions, paint colors, door hardware, lighting, trim…the list seemed never to end. And we had no answers. Thus began a long series of visits to websites and showrooms, trying to map out every last detail.

We weren't deterred by our lack of decision making. We called five contractors, interviewed four, and received bids from three. The sticker shock was intense, and the bids were difficult to compare. Each contractor had their own ideas about what needed to be done, and how. The summer of 2016 had arrived, and we were totally overwhelmed. We put the project on hold and spent the rest of the year waiting for bargains on kitchen appliances.

By the spring of 2017, our enthusiasm restored, we reconnected with our preferred contractor and formally began what I will call “the process”. It starts with signing a document which says something to the effect of:

“We will complete your project at some point in the future for a cost listed below which may or may not be the actual cost because we don’t know what the inside of your house will look like after we rip the bejesus out of your kitchen. We have no idea how long this will take, but will wildly guess and then divide that timeframe by 3. This will excite you. We will do a few things in certain ways you will like, and other things you will not like. Either way, you will take it and you will give us your entire life savings. If you expire your savings, then you will borrow money. If your borrowing sources run dry, we will leave your property in its unfinished state and you will deal with it. Some of your work will be completed by subcontractors. They will show up without warning. Or not show up at all. Whichever. If you grow impatient, you may call us at any time. We will apologize profusely and explain that the subcontractor is late because of a more important job than yours. We appreciate your business and look forward to providing the same level of service you will come to expect from every contractor on the planet.”

The process then moved into its next phase: Waiting for someone to show up and work. In our case, we had a 6-week gap between the contract date and the start of demo work. We were mostly fine with the delay, as it is no small task to relocate the kitchen to a part of the house which wasn't designed for cooking. We decided our two-car garage would serve as a temporary kitchen. The garage was climate controlled, our old “beverage” refrigerator was already there, and it had a concrete floor plumbed with water drains (more on that later). While we waited for the demo crew to arrive, I took all the “man” out of the garage, starting with anything which could be described as a tool or a purveyor of death and destruction. Also departing were the dirt bike racing trophies, trash cans, and kid’s toys. I then scrubbed every square inch of the floor and vacuumed every spider web. The garage had not been as clean since the day it was built.

We also needed a plan for washing clothes. We’d already come to the conclusion that the gas dryer was a lost cause. I could have rigged a propane line from the furnace room (conveniently located inside the garage), but we decided an old fashioned clothesline would work just fine. Washing was a little more complicated. Where we live, the nearest laundromat isn't exactly a short drive down the street, and we weren't planning to beat our clothes against a rock in the creek. One day I found myself staring at a floor drain in the garage and thought how nice the washer would look next to it. Before I could stop myself, I was grabbing PVC pipes and connectors and piecing together an outlet for waste water. All I needed was a garden hose to supply fresh water. We wouldn't be doing any hot loads, but it was good enough.

When the contractor finally committed to a start date, we had a weekend to prepare. Now came the really important decisions: What parts of the kitchen were necessities, and which could we live without for a couple of months? In theory, the garage was large enough to fit just about everything from the kitchen, but we didn't want to move any more stuff than we had to. The nonessentials went to the living room in the old part of the house, which was open to the front room where the contractor crew would be spreading their mess from the kitchen. As we would soon discover, this was not ideal. You’ll never know what is truly nonessential until you try to live without it. We crammed boxes and bags full of things we didn't think we’d need, sealed them behind a dust barrier, and then spent a fair amount of time going in and out of the barrier to find some of those things later. The whole front part of the house became a dusty mess.

Monday’s demo day arrived with a flurry of activity. The crew showed up while I was at work and began destroying things. Around 2:00 in the afternoon, my wife called. “We have a problem,” she said, which in contractor language means “Open your wallet.” I left work early and came home to a filthy mess of old plaster, piles of blown-in insulation, and visible studs which probably hadn't seen the light of day in over 100 years. The workers were ending their day, but the dust hadn't settled and I could barely breathe.

The problem was the roof. When the 2004 addition was built, a walkway had been constructed above the kitchen to connect the second floors of the old and new parts of the house (the kitchen was a one-story addition in the early 1900s). Half of the old roof had been removed to make way for the walkway and the other half had been connected to the walkway. The contractor believed the old roof was a cobbled-together mess which wouldn't pass code (as if there was any such thing as "code" where we live). One of the ancient rafters appeared to be split, causing an uneven roofline. They recommended we replace the entire roof structure, and do it immediately because the weather forecast was in our favor. They also suggested we raise the roof slightly, to make the exterior wall about a foot taller. This would allow more room to squeeze in a standard height sliding glass door. For another $7,400 we could literally raise the roof on the place. We opened our wallets.

Three days later, we were well into our garage/kitchen adventure. Cooking became very basic. If it could be grilled, microwaved, or was small enough to fit in the toaster oven, we ate it. But with one 15-amp circuit supplying all of the garage electrical outlets, we could only use one appliance at a time. After a few days of washing dishes in the bathroom sink, we quickly converted to paper and plastic plates and utensils. Our young daughters saw this change as a fun adventure and loved our new dining arrangement. Our indoor cat, Jake, was excited to spend time in a space he’d never been allowed to explore. Michelle, on the other hand, was less than enthusiastic. Being home all day, she took the brunt of the noise and dust and questions from the contractor and subcontractors. But she was able to see the transition of our kitchen every day, using her vision to make a change which would improve the layout beyond anything we imagined.

When the demo crew tore off the roof and raised its height, they also had to remove the walls of the laundry room, which shared the kitchen roof. This was not their original intent. Other than rearranging the layout of the washer, dryer and laundry sink, we had planned for the room to remain mostly unchanged. A higher ceiling altered that plan, and the laundry room walls would have to be rebuilt. When the contractor crew ripped out the old walls, the kitchen suddenly became huge. Michelle called me home from work to express her inspiration. We could relocate the laundry room and have a larger, more open kitchen space. The contractor suggested we go with a cathedral-style ceiling and open it up even more. But where would we put the washer and dryer? Michelle reached her hand to mine and led me to a small room in the old part of the house, where our never-used piano was stationed amongst random junk. “We’ll put it here.”

I had mixed feelings about this. The piano room was part of the original 1899 portion of the house. Shouldn’t we just leave it alone and preserve some history? “Do you want a museum, or a home?” was Michelle’s answer. She was right. The space wasn’t being used for any practical purpose. All we needed was plumbing, and then we’d have a new laundry room twice the size of the old one. The contractor had already planned to re-plumb the old laundry room, and agreed they could move the plumbing to the new location at no additional cost. A $7,400 problem had turned into a nearly priceless solution.

Now would probably be a good time to explain another important part of remodeling, kitchen or otherwise. The universe is filled with television shows portraying homeowners tearing up some part of their house, under the pretext that they are operating on a “budget”. Based on my experience, their definition of “budget” apparently means either the labor or the materials are free. I had compared our plans to what I was seeing on the various fixer-upper shows, and roughed out a “budget” which would prove to be laughable, after receiving contractor bids. All in, we spent about twice what I would have expected from watching those silly shows, and that was after we scaled back our dreams a bit.

Three weeks into the project, the outline of our new kitchen was taking shape. The contractor’s crew had framed up the roof and ceiling, leveled the floor, relocated windows, and readied the project for subcontractors. At this point we entered a new stage of “the process”: Waiting for stuff to happen. During the time the general contractor’s crew was onsite, every day I came home to something new. Then the project went into slow motion. We waited for electricians, then plumbers, drywallers and painters. We waited for a guy who did nothing but install the insulation. Another guy specialized in trim. There may have even been a doorknob guy...I can’t remember. During this time, the cabinet maker would not even fire up a table saw until he could take final measurements, and he didn't want to do that until our new garden window was installed, which was on order and weeks away. The countertop guys wouldn't take measurements until the base cabinets were installed. Days would pass with no activity. Thankfully, Michelle’s patience was running thinner than mine, and she was on the phone with the contractor almost every day.

The handoff to subcontractors wasn't the end of our time with the primary crew of workers. One day the crew foreman asked if we realized our chimney was about to self-destruct. I was indeed aware, but this potential problem was filed away in a distant part of my brain labeled “Deal with after catastrophic failure.” The chimney ran along the oldest part of the house and was not attached to a fireplace or anything else of value. So we negotiated a side deal. Two of their guys would come out on a weekend and take down the chimney, patch the eave, pull off the asbestos siding and replace with cement fiber board to match the newest part of the house. All we had to do was paint the siding, which by contractor error was actually done at no extra cost by the exterior painting crew. It was money well spent.

By this time the contractor crew had become our acquaintances, to the point that our timid daughters (ages 5 and 2½) would almost speak to them using words. The crew foreman showed up one day with a battery-powered ATV that his grandson outgrew. We had a similar ATV in the barn, so the girls didn't have to fight over it anymore. We gave the crew fresh eggs from our little army of chickens and ducks, along with a case of Mexican beer that would have taken years to finish off at my casual rate of drinking. When they were gone, I missed their constant activity and the gifts they left in the dumpster parked in front of our house (let’s just say their version of scrap wood was not the same as mine). I developed a bit of job envy, watching them start a project, finish it, and move on to the next one. They solved challenges using their wits and basic math, and got some exercise while they were at it. Unlike my line of work, they could describe theirs in a single word understood by all.

Over on the other side of the house, we had perfected our cooking and eating routine as best we could. Nutritional sacrifices were made, and we did our best to keep the Dixie brand in business. After a few weeks of washing pots and pans in the bathroom sink, we resorted to a garden hose in the driveway. The clothes washing situation was better than expected, with the washer running regularly in the garage and the dryer consisting of about 100 feet of clothesline strung across the barn lot. Once the laundry room plumbing was ready, the contractor installed our new washer and dryer, and that routine went back to normal.

By the middle of September, I could finally walk into the kitchen and see…a kitchen. More than that, I could sense an eventual end to “the process”. The arrival of granite was a wonderful sight. Then came a sink and running water. And finally, working appliances. Small details remained, but by October the cars were back in the garage and we were cooking, eating and socializing like a normal family. I took on some additional work in the laundry room, hanging off-the-shelf cabinets and installing a laminate countertop. Once completed, we could finally catch our breath and enjoy what we’d spent a small fortune and a large chunk of sanity putting together.

With time to absorb our creation, we could assess some of our decisions:

Garden Window

Honestly, when Michelle suggested this, I thought it was expensive and unnecessary. After it was installed, I liked it a lot. During the day the sink is well lighted and we can see through the window in all directions. We’re not growing a garden in there yet, but it does open up the space.

Vinyl plank flooring

This might have been the most researched decision of the whole project. We wanted perfectly smooth floors, so that when the girls spilled food or the indoor cat barfed, it wouldn't end up seeping into a knot hole. We chose a woodgrain plank style, but the designs are endless. The manufacturers can make this stuff look like just about anything. It is heavy, and glues to the floor. The downside is scratches – it doesn't take much to etch a permanent reminder of temporary carelessness.

Countertops

We knew this would be the first and last countertop decision we’d make in this house, so it had to be right. When we visited a local granite warehouse, a dark “leathered” slab stood out, and we knew we’d come to the right place. We toyed with the idea of a butcher block island, to preserve the country charm of our home, but then saw the leathered finish on a granite style which somewhat resembled wood. I was fearful that having a texture on the surface would make cleaning more difficult, but they wipe up spotless every time. We've had several visitors ask what the countertops are made of. Most don’t realize they’re granite.

Cabinets

We went with a local builder, for two main reasons. First, they were willing to size the cabinets to whatever dimensions we needed. The home improvement stores were limited to what their contract builders were willing to build. Most often, the widths were available in 3-inch intervals. That may work well in new construction, but not as much in a century-old space. We were also concerned that if anything were measured incorrectly, we’d be set back for weeks waiting for replacements. Many of the contract builders were located hundreds of miles from the home improvement stores, and lead times were pretty long to begin with. As it turned out, we did have an incorrect measurement, and the builder had to remake a small base cabinet. A few days later, all was corrected.

The second reason we chose the local builder was because they happened to have a sample cabinet door on display from a recent job, which was exactly what we were looking for – color, glazing, panel style…everything. We saw it, declared “Exactly like that!” and we were ready to go. I asked my brother-in-law, a former cabinet maker, to review the pricing, and he replied “It’s not terrible.” Good enough for us. As I'm updating this page in October 2021, I can say we're a bit disappointed in the durability of the paint. Anywhere it's possible to attract moisture (mainly around the sink area), we're seeing paint flake off near edges.

Second Guessing

As with any major project like this, we would have chosen to do some things differently:

Dust Barriers

Don’t rely on the contractor to set up dust barriers or protect the things you want to come out unscathed. Whatever you don’t want damaged or destroyed, get as far from ground zero as possible. Our guest bathroom was in the path of destruction, and the door got banged up a bit. We also should have better protected the wood floor in the dining room, as that was the path from the kitchen to the front porch, where the workers entered and exited the house. It was a well-traveled path.

If you need to set up a dust barrier with plastic sheeting, make it so you can get in an out easily. Knowing now how many times we needed to get inside the barrier to retrieve kitchen items, I’d have bought my own FastCap magnetic-close system. I used a FastCap “door” the following year with a bedroom remodel, and it worked very well.

Designing on the Fly

Had we known in advance the laundry room would be relocated, we would have designed the island differently. With a larger space than we originally planned, we could have reshaped the island or enlarged it.

Lighting

We should have put more thought into lighting placement. When the electrician was ready to install the recessed lights, we didn’t have much of a plan. We had him spread out the recessed lights evenly across the ceiling, which was ok, but we had to replace some of them with gimble-style heads so they could be aimed toward darker areas. And for sure, we should have put a light directly over the sink.

Too Many Outlets Are Not Enough

If the electrician suggests 5 electrical outlets, double it. You can never have enough.

So there you have it. From start to finish, this was about a 3-month project, and one we would never choose to do again. But the results were outstanding, and it turned the house into a complete gem. This would not have happened without Michelle and her unending patience and great ideas. I am so fortunate to have her in my life!!

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The Most Popular Room in the House

When it's time to change the kitchen

The Great Kitchen Remodel of 2017

It's Nice to have architect plans

We were ready to get started

So ready, apparently, that we took no "before" photos. This one shows the kitchen as it was when we bought the house.

Tiny Island

The island would grow considerably with our new plans.

Built-in Cabinets

These cabinets were probably 75 years old. We stored many things here, but they weren't part of our plans.

Demo Days

After the dust had settled

Gutted

The old porch

Clear path

The cobbled-together roof

Plaster & Lath

No Laundromats for us

Attic above Kitchen

The Garage Kitchen

Settling in to the disruption

When Plans Change

That $7,400 was the best money we ever spent

This is what we saw with the walls removed. With a cathedral-style ceiling , the transformation was almost unreal.

Budgets

Making Progress

We Raised the Roof

We also leveled the floor. In the days when part of this area was an outside porch, the floor was about 7 inches lower. The old laundry room and entryway were raised to the same level as the rest of the kitchen.

Insulated

We elected to have a cathedral ceiling, which made the space feel even larger.

Drywall

Those guys were good.

Exterior Work

This photo shows the higher roof line. Without that, I don't know how the contractor would have squeezed in the sliding glass door.

Paint

This was the first time I ever paid someone to paint my house. It was worth every penny.

Garden Window

Expensive but pleasant.

Flooring

Vinyl plank is the real deal.

Cabinets

This was the first set. We ordered a lot of cabinets.

The Rest of the Cabinets

Yep. A lot of cabinets.

Panoramic View

Trim Work

Just in time for Halloween.

Glamor Shot #1

The dishwasher was the only old appliance we kept. Wish we'd bought a stainless.

Glamor Shot #2

We turned this space into the largest kitchen we possibly could.

If Only We Enjoyed Entertaining

We could pack a lot of people into this room.

Cleanest It Ever Was

The island does tend to be a junk magnet.

Appliance bargains

We began looking for deals about a year before the project started. We were able to rough in the new refrigerator into the old space and at least use it for a time. The rest of the appliances sat in our shed for several months.

Sliding Glass Door

This should be mandatory for all decks.

Wide Entrances

We were able to make the entrances into and out of the kitchen extra wide. No more busted knuckles carrying laundry baskets.

h2o

I almost cried the day I came home to running water.

Remodels: They're Nice When They're Done

Not To Forget the Laundry Room

It was pretty important, too.