Rainy Day Projects…

It’s been raining hard the last week. Very hard. We’re hoping it will be done with by the weekend, because we’ve got a big project to tackle. It’s a three-day weekend and we’re planning on working on the kitchen.

When we moved in, we knew that we’d eventually need to remodel the kitchen. Unfortunately, remodeling the kitchen would require about $10,000 to do it right. It’d involve replacing all of the cabinets and appliances and would be quite the undertaking.

So… instead, we’re going to do it Trading Spaces style with a budget of about $500. Since the big remodel probably won’t be for a few years, we just want to spruce it up and make it look decent for now. The first step began last weekend, when we pulled all of the cabinet doors off and started pulling off the ugly mouldings the former owners added to the doors. We’ll need to do a light sanding and then we’re going to add some flat mouldings to the edges of the doors, sort of to turn them from flat panel doors to doors with a little detail. Then next step will be to paint all of the cabinets white, rather than the yellowy white that’s on there. Then we’ll paint the walls and then we’ll add new hardware���hinges and knobs. Some final projects, which might not fit into our current budget or timeframe, include new countertops, and new sink and a new over the stove microwave/vent deal. We’ll have to see how we do on budget to decide whether those will have to wait or not. Down the road, we’ll probably need to replace the refrigerator and the dishwasher, which are a different color than the stove… not to mention they’re pretty old. All in all, we feel confident that we can accomplish this in three days.

Let you know on Tuesday how it all went and maybe even have some before and after photos to share. That is… if it stops raining.