kitchen

After months of living in a half finished kitchen, we're finally doing something about it. Initially, we planned on keeping the existing cabinets and sprucing them up a bit by painting them white. I slaved over several days sanding, primering, and painting those cabinets. I didn't love the end result but we were going to live with it anyway. We figured that with new hardware and new countertops, you wouldn't notice the imperfections in the cabinets.

Once we tore down the wall dividing the kitchen from the living, we needed to rearrange the kitchen layout so we cut off part of the countertop to make room for the massive fridge. The tiny 1.5'x2.5' chunk of countertop we cut off weighed about 40 pounds because it was a layer of plywood, chicken wire, concrete, then the tile.

We decided that with such a heavy countertop, there's no way we'd be able to save the lower cabinets without completely destroying them. I was fine living with the older cabinets, but there's no way we were going to live with those hideous tile countertops, especially after we'd already cut a piece off. It was time to make a firm decision on what were were going to do. We decided it was time to look at new cabinetry.

Getting a new kitchen is definitely bittersweet because we didn't think we'd end up renovating the whole house and it's expensive, but we're so happy because we're be able to design our dream kitchen. Everything will be new, clean, and it will be gorgeous.

We wanted to be cheap, but not IKEA cheap. Come on, we all know that after putting together an IKEA piece of furniture a couple times, it falls apart. Several pieces in our house are from IKEA and we're trying to get away from that. We don't want to look like we live in an IKEA catalogue.

To make a very long story short, back in February we met with Lowes and they came out and measured for new cabinetry and countertops. We had our eye on our the modern flat panel board but it was considerably more expensive than a less modern looking one. But it wasn't in the budget so we went with the transitional style. When the saleslady showed us a 3D design of our kitchen, I loved it at first because it was better than what we had. But I wasn't in love with it or the price tag. It was at our max budget, not including the hardware or any appliances. The order was ready to be placed, all that needed to do be done was hit the place order button and we'd have a new kitchen. But it didn't feel right to me, I kinda got a panic attack because it was a lot of money for something I didn't love. I couldn't place the order and neither could Eric.

So we headed over to IKEA just for the fun of it because Eric was really reluctant about the quality of IKEA's cabinets after the lady at Lowes bashed on them right and left. I mean, we only have one thing to compare what the quality of our kitchen would be like...our current IKEA furniture. We've taken our Malm bed apart so many times, I think this is the last straw before its done for. We've passed the kitchen section millions of times, but you see it in a different light when you're actually shopping for it.

We actually liked the cabinets because they had a more modern feel but didn't want to spend bucco bucks on a kitchen if it's going to fall apart a couple years down the road. I chatted with the saleslady, Katshia, and she spent a good hour with us answering each and every one of our questions/concerns about their product. She demoed everything for us and showed us how well they hold up. I was 100% sold, ready to forget our bid from Lowes and go with IKEA (we looked at Home Depot too but we found that it's even more expensive than Lowes). Toward the end of our conversation with Katshia, she said on March 2nd they are offering 20% off your entire kitchen. What? Um, sign me up. I was 120% sold. It was the beginning of February, I guess we could wait a month. Lowes can't touch IKEA's prices.

This definitely sweetened the deal for Eric but he still wasn't sold, and was skeptical during our whole conversation with Katshia. So we came home that night and hopped on the computer to read reviews, that's how we buy everything, based on reviews online. It didn't take us long to read tons of reviews, blogs, etc, about people in our same situation...debating between a kitchen from Lowes or Home Depot v. IKEA. Every single person that we read about online went with an IKEA kitchen and they explained why.

Now here's the kicker, IKEA's cabinet lines came in 3rd (third!) overall in Consumer Reports, behind the top two premium brands. We were shocked. That sold it for us because we base many of our decisions based on Consumer Reports. They made it easy for us. Glad that hard decision was over. Now we can worry about actually planning our kitchen, starting on countertops, cabinets, handles, etc., all over again. At Lowes I felt too rushed, but at IKEA we had all the time in the world since we needed to wait around for a month for the special.

We decided that we wouldn't install the kitchen ourselves, for many reasons (Eric is handy but it still took him a couple hours just to put our dresser together), and called the company that IKEA outsources. They were so pleasant to work with, I knew this was the right move. Two weeks after I called, the owner of Artisan Installations came out and designed our kitchen. I drilled him with more questions about IKEA just to make sure we were going with the right company, his answers assured us ten fold. He said there is a 25 year warranty and since this IKEA has been opened, all he has been doing is installing IKEA kitchens. He deals with the warranty issues and the only problems people have are small things, and no one has ever returned an entire kitchen (like the Lowes saleslady said). He spent more time with us than the Lowes saleslady and gave us a better design layout too. You could tell he was more experienced because he thought about things the other lady didn't. Overall, he really wanted to give us a rad kitchen.

Oh, and with all of the savings combined, we were able to upgrade all of our appliances for about the same price Lowes quoted us for cabinets and countertops alone. If you're gonna do it, may as well do it big. Do it right.

A week after he came to our house we met with him and came up with a very similar design. After about 5 revisions, this is what our kitchen will look like:

The installation started this week. We are so excited to actually have a full functioning kitchen.