Kitchen Remodel - Day 1

Today marks the first day of our kitchen remodel.  I don't know if I would exactly call it the first day, since we have been prepping for this for the last couple of weeks.  I feel like Joey and I have been packing and unpacking and packing and unpacking since August.  Once we get stuff in a room, we end up packing it all up again for one thing or another.

Our kitchen is pretty old. I don't even know if anything has been done to it except layers and layers of stick on floor tiles and really pretty wallpaper trimming on the top.  We both knew that we wanted to redo the kitchen, but that was one room we had no interest in doing ourselves.  We have pretty much redone everything in our home by ourselves but this is one DYI project neither of us had interest in.  Originally we thought we would just gut the entire thing and start from scratch, but after working in the kitchen for a couple of months I kind of liked the layout. I mean, it's a small space and there is only so much we could do with it. After some thought we decided that we would leave things pretty much as they are and update them.

We have gotten a lot of advice on what we should do, but one day we were in Home Depot and were approached about cabinet refacing.  They would come in and in a week redo the facing of our cabinets and put in new countertops.  One week!  That sounded pretty appealing to both of us!  Now so many people have told us to avoid Home Depot, but I have to say that the entire process, so far, has been pretty great. They came in, measured our cabinets, gave us advice for adding drawers, etc. and had a variety of option for us to choose from.  We went with natural bamboo for our cabinet doors and drawers and Silestone for our countertops. Each step of the way the folks from Home Depot have been really friendly, helpful and professional.

Over the last week we have been getting ready for them to come and Joey painted the entire kitchen. We know we are going to have to retouch a lot of it, but having it done ahead of time means to don't need to worry as much about getting paint on our new cabinets.  He did a great job and the kitchen is already looking better!!

This morning our contractor, John, arrived. I have to be honest and say I have been really nervous about this, however once I met John I was put at ease.  He is a super nice guy and I got a good feeling about him from the minute I met him.  As the day went on it got better.

Throughout the day, John has gone out of his way to help me with any questions I might have and even taught me how to do a few things on my own.  Once he even called his brother to help me with a question I had about an electrical outlet.  He's totally explained everything to me and is really including me in the process.

By the end of the day our kitchen looks like this:

It's a little scary, but let's see what's in store for tomorrow!