It'll Look Like a Whole New House

We have big plans, right away. Big plans mean lots of planning, and that feels like it's all we've been doing all week.

The kitchen has been taking up most of our time. Everything has to be torn out in order to put in new subflooring, so we're faced with a completely blank room. We're on the hook to pay for new flooring, per our latest addendum to our contract. An evening trip to Home Depot confirmed that linoleum sucks, tile is cold and doesn't have the right look, cork and bamboo are expensive, and regular hardwood (oak) is just right. We're in a bit of a time crunch, which led us to opt for pre-finished wood flooring; they can just slap it down and we're set to go. Currently, we have a small pile of samples sitting in my car -- they'll take a trip to the new house this weekend to figure out which one matches. It'll be just like an episode of American Idol, except without all the bad singing. Or production quality. Or celebrity judges. But you know, otherwise, exactly the same.

We've also spent waaaay too much time this week looking at the IKEA website, walking around the kitchen displays at IKEA, playing around with the IKEA kitchen design software, drawing endless diagrams of our kitchen, etc... According to Consumer Reports, IKEA cabinets are excellent. They're much higher quality than all other cabinet brands in their price range, and everyone we've talked to who has them, loves them.

Evan and I both really like the "Adel" cabinet fronts (seen here in brown). We'll get them in white. At left is a non-colorful rendering of how the kitchen will look, once finished. Imagine yellow walls and hardwood floors. And a view of the backyard out that window. There will also be a small cabinet above the fridge, which I couldn't add in the IKEA software for unknown reasons.

Evan looked far and wide, and found Value Stone, a local dealer in "granite slab countertops at wholesale prices." Of their selections, I think "Uba Tuba" fits our kitchen design the best -- we'll only need three slabs, which we'll then have to get finished (hopefully by our contractor!).

We also bought a dishwasher. Old school house had old school dish washing: by hand. Evan and I agreed long ago that a dishwasher was necessary in our relationship.

The far left corner of the kitchen will also be the home to our new tankless water heater! It's a small box, the size of a VCR or TiVo. It mounts to the wall, and has the added feature of not being a large tank full of water that leaks on the floor. We plan to hide it behind the cabinets, but configure the cabinets in a way that still allows us access to the water heater when we need it.

Our electrician will be in on Monday to install the wiring for the tankless, as well as upgrade all the wiring in our house. As you might recall from our inspection, our electrical situation was nowhere up to code. We're getting upgraded service (more amps!), and new wiring throughout the house, and much needed grounded plugs.

So, while we won't have a complete kitchen when we move in in a week (gulp), we will be able to plug things in and have them work. Yay!