Kitchen Update

After a very slow couple of months (during which I began to wonder if this project was really going to get off the ground, or not), there have been quite a few developments over the past week, with regard to our kitchen renovation project.

We finally got our kitchen designer/neighbour to sit down with us last Saturday, and we asked some pretty frank questions about timelines. She assured us, however, that she'd checked with the suppliers and we should be able to start this job on schedule, by early October, and complete it before the holidays. Needless to say, with a baby on the way, completion has suddenly become much more critical. There is no way I am coming home from hospital with an infant if my home is still a building site - and I was prepared to delay the entire project by a couple of years, if required, to prevent this happening.

However, things are looking good. Last weekend, we reviewed three new floor-plan layouts that our designer had drawn up, and chose the one we liked best. The overall plan is to shift the working space into what is now the little pantry room, after the wall between it and the current kitchen gets knocked down. The new kitchen will be galley-shaped - I'd hoped we could do a U-shape, but it turns out we haven't enough space. But a galley is quite efficient, so I'm happy enough with that. The remaining space (where the sink and oven are located now) will become my desk/sewing area, and a peninsula/bar area with storage. It's a very nice plan, and I'm excited to see how it will turn out.

The next steps now are choosing a contractor and a cabinetmaker. Our neighbour is considering three contractors at the moment, and will be asking them to quote on the job very soon. Also over the next couple of weeks, I need to decide which of three local cabinetmakers to use - or whether to chuck all that in and go with an Ikea kitchen!

In the interests of getting started even earlier, I think we are going to plan to set up our "camp kitchen" at the beginning of September, down in the basement laundry room - where we will do our cooking and washing up while the work is being done upstairs. It already has a laundry washtub, with hot and cold running water, so we'll set up a table and chairs, our little bar fridge, the microwave, and a hotplate, which should keep us going for a little bit. Once that job is done, then there's no reason why demolition work can't begin. A. is thinking about doing this himself, with a couple of assistants; they will rip out the old cabinets, take out the old appliances for disposal/resale (we are only keeping our current dishwasher), tear up the tile flooring (we hope to save the wood flooring), then take down the walls. Whatever work we can do ourselves will of course save us money - plus, I think A. is quite looking forward to bashing things with a sledgehammer. ;-)

Originally, we had been looking at a start date of 5 October (the day we return from our holidays in Europe) for this job. But if we could get the demolition work done before we leave, then there's no reason why the contractor couldn't come in and start working while we are away (with our neighbour to supervise things - we will only be a phonecall or email away, after all).

So, things are definitely looking up. Very good to be able finally to start making some concrete plans. I will doubtless start a Renovation Diary here, chronicling the delays, cock-ups, and other woes we will inevitably encounter. But the end result will be totally worthwhile, I'm sure of it!