Reflections on Remodeling the Kitchen - Part 3

We have spent the last 3 weeks without our kitchen.  In retrospect, we were really without our kitchen sink.  We missed the stove once when she brought over a take-and-bake pizza and we couldn't heat it up but that is the only time that I'm aware of that we missed the stove.  

We had the fridge in the dining room so that was easily accessible and the microwave cart was easily to get at to heat up our frozen dinners.  I can truthfully say that I don't mind eating off paper plates and using plastic utensils but it is a waste to throw them away after one use.

We got cabinets last week, counter tops and flooring this week and tomorrow the plumber will be here to hook the water back up and the new dishwasher will be delivered (now I can wash the plastic utensils).  We will finally be DONE.

As I think back over the experience and if I ever do anything like this again, I will hire a general contractor or, in this case, a good handyman would have done the job nicely.  Examples of things that would have been caught early on are when the counter tops were being installed, we discovered that the sink that we bought would not fit in the cabinet that had been installed.  It was a 32 inch cabinet and we had a 33 inch sink so no matter how the guy tried and jammed, it wasn't going to fit or it wasn't going to fit properly.  A general contractor would have seen this problem before we ordered the cabinets.  One issue I have is that the designer helped us get the sink so she should have caught. it.

So instead of a double sink, we have a slightly smaller single sink which will work just fine.  So rather than waiting for another cabinet to be built and 3 weeks more without a kitchen,  we will be settle for a single sink.  My biggest issue is the lack of communication between designers, the measuring people, departments and installers at the big box store that we bought everything from.  If the designer would be the people who did the measuring, everything probably would have worked out fine but there were too many sets of eyes in the process to work out nicely.

However, the kitchen did turn out quite nice and it is a great improvement over our 50 year old metal cabinets and linoleum floor.  It is bright and cheery and I will try to get a picture of the bare kitchen before it becomes cluttered.

I hope you all had a wonderful week.

Jerry