A new year. Time to look back!

With a whole year of projects coming in the year ahead, I thought it would be fun to look back on my very first renovation. Oh, the innocence! Not mine, of course, but my poor husband who was convinced to undertake this task. He's older and wiser now, and makes me hire a professional. But, it was kind of fun...

Come with me, back to the year 2003. We were bought our first condo. It was a gem. Well, really it was cubic zirconia glued to a tin foil ring. This was the kitchen:

This alcove held the wet part, and across the room was the stove:

It was charming, really. Until you looked a little closer and realized that the cabinets were made of painted plywood and the counter top was surplus marble floor tile. We won't even get into the fact that all the black and white tile that lined the room was plastic. Pink plastic that had been painted. It does not get better than that.

So, we tackled what we could and decided to get some actual cabinets in the alcove. Demo and putting up new wallboard took one loooong Saturday.

We found this really sweet wallpaper under there, too!

Then we had a week where we waited for the plumbers to move the pipes, which had been in a pipe chase next to the sink, back into the wall.

Once that was done, the next Saturday it was cabinet time!

That corner lazy susan there sent me to the ER, but no, really, I'm fine now.

Then it was time for the trim work and the counter tops. We went for soapstone, our big splurge. I'm glad we did, since we got to discover how much we hated it. (Wet spots! There were always wet spots in various stages of drying out!) We put the old sink back in and the old knobs back on. And, bob's your uncle, a respectable kitchen was born!

 

Total time, 3 weekend days. If you don't count the follow-up work of painting and adding crown molding and oiling the soapstone. Total cost? I think it was around $4,000.

 

Comments

[Cedrick Finly]

Time flies by so quickly, indeed! Well, looking back, this year has been one of the happiest and most tiring years of my life. Happy, because my wife gave birth to our first son, and tiring because we had to do some major renovations in our house. Now I'm looking forward to 2012!