Are We Crazy?*

Last weekend, my husband and I decided to get out of the house, so we headed to Home Depot. It's sort of one of those places that we both love to go, and we love gathering ideas for our dream "if we had all the money in the world we would do this to our house" list.

We started talking about that again, and somehow we ended up talking about the kitchen. Which, for the record, is the room most in need of a makeover. We've done SOME updating to our house over the last three years (new paint, new light fixtures in most of the rooms, replacing all the brass door knobs with brushed nickle, etc), but the kitchen really hasn't had any love.

So, in one of those fantasy moments, we started talking about what we could do to our kitchen. We don't live in the NICEST neighborhood in town, so we're not exactly wanting to go high end. We would never see the return when we went to sell the house. And what we realized was that for what we want to do, it really wouldn't cost THAT much money.

So, we decided maybe it's time!

We picked out a few things, decided what could work for us and what couldn't, what we could do and what we would need help with, and came up with a number of what we would have to spend to update our 1996 kitchen. All in all -- it wasn't that much of a shock.

So, we are on Mission: Kitchen Remodel.

One of the ways we plan on cutting expenses is to just refinish our current cabinets. They are not an outdated style, but unfortunately they have multiple layers of paint. Stripping these down to
the bare wood is going to be time consuming pain in the ass. I'm NOT looking forward to it. We also plan on replacing the floors with a newer laminate instead of tile, and then replacing the countertops. And of course, new paint & new, stainless steel appliances.

Within the next couple of days, I'll take some before photos so we can get this party started. I imagine that this weekend will be filled with lots of paint stripper. I plan on having lots of wine on standby. I'm going to need it.

Hopefully, this won't take more than a month to do. Our kitchen is small, and the majority of it we can do ourselves. The appliances will be the last thing, and those may have to wait a while. But luckily, I get a HUGE discount through work (working in the construction business is WONDERFUL sometimes!) but they will by far be our largest expense. We'll have to save a few more pennies for that.

I can't wait to share everything with all of you! Stay tuned!!