The War of the Kitchen....

We are in the process of  renovating our kitchen.  We have been
in this house for 15 years and it waaay past time for this kitchen update!
 I'd like to share the history of this project with you, just so you know that interior
designers have personal decorating issues as well....


All Started with this....

(via)

Don't we all want to be Martha Stewart?
Or at least have a "Martha Stewart" Kitchen?


So I went out got all new appliances...

Here they are installing the refrigerator.....

Little did I know the havoc this would cause...
This guy mentioned as he was installing that it was his last day
on the job, umhhh, wonder if he was as careful as normal...




My cabinet guy removed the cabinets....

We took out the cabinet over the peninsula and the soffit over the sink....
Original plan was to remove all upper cabinets and replace with cabinets to the ceiling,
paint the lowers, change out the doors and get new countertops and backsplash.
After all, we had planned to move several times and it could happen this year,
 didn't want to put a ton of money in a kitchen we would be leaving, right?
 A facelift would suffice!  Notice the way the left cabinet is ripped out?
(True confession, it is still this way!)



Here's What happened next....
Things were not moving as swiftly as I had hoped.
Summer came and it was beach time, so I packed up the kids
and decided I would deal with the kitchen when I got back in the fall.
We had a lovely summer at the beach house!

 Thomas and Hiller with their friend, Lee, all three decorated with seaweed wigs!



In August, my husband decided we needed to leave the beach early and
 take a little road trip to Chicago before school started.
 I left the beach kicking and screaming and headed to a Cubs game with my boys.

We had a fun time in Chicago, seeing all the sights, but when we returned to Charlotte,

 Our refrigerator waterline had burst and our downstairs was covered in water. My
slight renovation had now become a big one!  Now we had to replace
 flooring and the works, so I decided to gut the kitchen!




In comes Service-pro  and puts down these handy pads all over the place
to draw water out of our hardwood floors to try to save what we could.
It was a very hot, loud and irritating two weeks of this process.   

We finally settled with insurance in December, so we decided to wait til the new year to begin work. When the new year came, so did the snow, ice and rain.  I couldn't imagine new floors, and all of that muck with dogs, so I decided to wait til spring.  Spring came and went in a flurry, so our new date became June when school gets out!  Here we are again with the beach beckoning...This time I am going to face the music and get this job done!  I'm making progress!  Will share the updates with you in another post!

You would think as an interior designer, the process would be easy for me, but it has been quite the opposite!  I have so many ideas running around in my head, it is hard to commit to one look!  It is actually a bit more complicated than that.  I know the look I want, but I have to consider so many things.  First and foremost, I have to consider resale or do I?  We could possibly move! Do I try to design a kitchen that will appeal to the market, or one that appeals to me?  Those are two very different kitchens!  Secondly, I do have a client to please....my husband!  It's funny, but for some reason, a husband who has been married to an interior designer for 15+ years begins to believe that he knows more than me....Oh well, yet another client to win over to my ideas....I love marble countertops, he likes granite....I want a banquette, he wants a chair, I want a wall of ceiling to floor cabinets, where everything is hidden, he likes the catchall desk....So who won?  Time will tell, we are still in the process.
I look forward to sharing with you...