My wife and I had the brilliant idea of renovating our kitchen ourselves. There was a two fold reasoning behind our decision. The first was the money factor. With finances tight, we couldn't justify paying over ten thousand dollars to have new kitchen cabinets made for us and then installed. Secondly, I have the skills which allowed me to build the cabinets myself along with most of the tools I would need to do the work. So late this past summer, I embarked on building the lower cabinets for our kitchen. I decided to do only the bottom to start with to make it more manageable and also to allow us to get the dishwasher in more quickly (there was no dishwasher when we moved into the house and we figured with a baby, things would be a lot easier with one). Every piece was designed, measured, cut, and built to suit our kitchen. I found that building them myself, we could save enormous amounts of money on materials. For the cabinets cases, I used birch hardwood plywood (3/4" vs. 1/2" normally used) and cherry for the faces of the cabinets. The wood for the bottom cabinets didn't cost that much overall, but when I saw how much work went into building them, how much time and effort it took, I understand why they cost so much to have them made by someone else. It took me a few months just to build the bottom cabinets, but it was definitely worth it. To further save money on the project, we also decided to pour a concrete counter top instead of buying a stone or cheap laminate. If we tallied up the price, the concrete counter top we still have to pour will cost just a little more than a laminate.
Well, this past week was demo and build week. We ripped apart our kitchen, sealing it off from the rest of the house and living off of grilled food, a toaster, coffee maker, and microwave. Let me tell you, having a 5 month old in the house while doing a kitchen renovation is not the easiest task. Combine that with two dogs and a cat and living quarters are tight. But we managed to get most of it done in a week (including refinishing the floors) and have a mostly functional kitchen now. The most important part of the whole ordeal is that the dishwasher will be finally installed today. The only thing that allowed us to get the kitchen re-done, by ourselves, in a little over a week was the help of family and friends who came and helped. My mother graciously offered to come up whenever we needed her to watch our son so both my wife and I could go toil in the kitchen. Also, one of my friends ("Wave" Smith) came up and helped rip out our kitchen floor so we could restore the hardwood underneath. That perhaps was the hardest part of the whole project, ripping up the layers of linoleum and sanding down the hardwood so it was smooth. While the hardest part, it was also the most rewarding in that we found intact newspapers underneath parts of the floor dating back to 1927. I guess they had used the newspapers as either insulation or padding and had put them down whole. Despite a few nail holes here and there, you can actually still read the paper, open up to different sections and see what was happening in the world at that time. They also had one section that had a color illustration on the front of the paper which was quite amazing. It must have been because the papers were sealed in between layers of wood for close to a hundred years that they were preserved so well.
In any case, our kitchen still needs more work to finish things up, but it is once again functional. There is a dishwasher that works and a kitchen sink that is more than 6 inches deep (our old kitchen sink was a cast iron utility sink with a tiny drain). I still need to build the doors for the cabinets and make all the drawers, but at least it is well on its way. The next huge project, which might not be quite as bad, will be to build the upper cabinets and replace those. But one thing at a time. And before anyone asks me if I can build them a kitchen, the answer is no (unless you pay me a ridiculous sum of money). While I enjoyed this project for our house, it is not something I would necessarily want to do on a continuous basis. My cabinets are simple, nothing ornate or detailed, just simple wooden cabinets. Even the doors that I have yet to make will be flat, no recessed panels or any of that jazz. The only detail I am adding to the doors will be a strip of walnut in between a large section of cherry in the middle and a thin strip of cherry on the outside. But in any case, that's my story for today, a kitchen renovation not gone horribly wrong, but not necessarily the easiest thing done either. What will make it worthwhile in the end will be the satisfaction that I built the cabinets myself and that we saved a boatload of money, probably close to ten thousand dollars when all is said and done. I know not everyone has the skill set to do projects on their own or the wherewithal to get involved in large projects like we did, but any small work you can do around the house on your own helps out. Till tomorrow, happy renovating! (or not)
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