Ad Was Recipe for Cooking Up New Kitchen

I started my kitchen remodel with an ad ripped out of a magazine, thinking I would duplicate its look in my home. This story is about how my choices changed along the way to reflect what I could afford, how easy it was to accomplish, and how much anguish I was willing to ask my husband to go through.

I worked on the remodel design for almost two years with my architect brother (don’t hate me, I just got lucky). We came up with a wonderful reconfiguration that not only gave me the big, beautiful kitchen of my dreams with endless counter space, French doors, an overhead pot rack and an island/breakfast bar, but streamlined the laundry room and doubled the size of my bedroom closet as well.

My husband, Scott, was willing to let me be in charge as long as I kept him apprised of my plans and “the bottom line.”

We had the plans drawn up and sent out to bid. What we thought was a $20,000 remodel priced out at $36,000 without the appliances.

And we were foolish enough to send our plans to one of those fancy European cabinetmakers whose products look like simple country style, but their bid came back at $75,000 uninstalled. After I got over being mad at them for being too expensive and being depressed because I couldn’t have everything I wanted, I sharpened my pencil and got serious about whittling down the costs.

I learned a lot about compromising and looking for alternatives; things we could live without (skylight, plate rails) things we could substitute (less elaborate cabinet doors, paint grade wood), and things we could do ourselves (demolition, painting, tile setting).

We even managed to trade services with a local supplier to get solid-core countertops installed at virtually no cost. The kitchen was beginning its metamorphosis from an imitation of an ad to an extension of our home and ourselves.

July 26, 1991: I spent the day getting our permit from the City of San Diego. And with this, the first line item on our budget quadrupled. We had heard they were cheap, but ours was $550. The eloquent counter clerk said “they went up.”

July 27: We brought out the sledgehammers. It took three full days for our two 18-year-old nephews to help us knock down and carry out the debris. The electrician and the plumber each doubled their estimates upon seeing what was under the floors and inside the walls.

Aug. 19: The framing, the rough plumbing and electrical were all ready to pass inspection without a hitch. Scott spent a day filling our truck with insulation (he learned to go to the home stores early, to beat the crowds and get the best service), bringing it home, and filling the walls. I joined him for a hot and dirty day of filling the ceiling before the drywall went up. By Aug. 22, that had passed inspection as well.

Sept. 3: The cabinets were delivered and painted in our garage. While I was away at work they were hung in several creative but inappropriate configurations before we got them in correctly. The detailed shop drawings supplied to the cabinetmakers had never gotten into the hands of the installers.

Originally, we had specified oak cabinets and French doors. During an early cost-cutting phase, the cabinets changed to paint grade wood, to be painted white. I still envisioned the French doors in oak, but Scott and our crew assumed that they changed along with the cabinets. We realized this after they were installed, and it would have been a big problem to change them, so I’ve learned to love them in white.

Scott accomplished hours of valuable tasks: meeting the contractors, inspectors and repairmen, patching exterior stucco, putting in baseboards. He swears I don’t understand what a personal hell he went through.

I do remember the night we realized, during dinner, that the washer/dryer was scheduled to arrive in the morning, but there was no floor in the place it was supposed to go. Scott had two choices, rig up lights and build the subfloor that night, or get up very early, and try to have it done before the deliverymen arrived.

To make things even more stressful, our original budget hadn’t included the thousand-plus dollars we spent at the local builders supply stores, covering these near daily projects that came up.

Sept. 12: Our most annoying oversights showed up after the cabinets were installed. The ceiling lights looked off-center after we put cabinets on only one side of the room. The light that should have been inside the entry was on the ceiling. The light problems were easily remedied.

The one that drove us crazy turned out to be this; the oven had a hood over it, and the ceiling had a hole in it, but nothing connected the two. We needed ductwork, and something to conceal it. Scott, who by now had proven himself very resourceful and handy, set out to resolve this himself. He spent hours at the do-it-yourself stores but could find nothing like what we needed on the shelves, and found the help nonexistent or inept. Thoroughly frustrated, he surrendered the project to me.

I had a parade of contractors who came one at a time, each saying someone else had to do work before he could start. When the finger-pointing formed a complete circle, I turned to Scott again. He swallowed hard and re-installed the hood with some help, and rewired it himself. It turned out we needed custom sheet-metal ductwork fabricated, then the framer came out, the drywaller, and then we could get on with painting. This was a three-week ordeal.

We did manage some other progress while the hood project hung over our heads (pun intended). The solid countertops were installed, and I learned to lay tile. My design is a lot like the pattern we pulled out, but simplified and rendered in crisp black and white. It looks great behind the old Wedgewood stove, which Scott restored as lovingly as if it were an old Indian motorcycle.

Oct. 10: We passed final inspection, appliances installed, power on. We were crestfallen to discover the new washer didn’t operate properly, neither did the new phone jack, nor did the reconnected oven warm up . . . but these were resolved in the following weeks. We are still awaiting the arrival of our overdue light fixtures, stools and area rug. The final budget tallies up to $6,000 over the $20,000 we originally intended to spend.

Oct. 27, 1991: We threw our first dinner party, a toast for the architects. I was elated at how well the kitchen functioned, from bringing home and putting away the groceries to cleaning up afterward. It is sun-filled, bright and cheery in the morning and elegantly suited for entertaining. We agreed that, though it doesn’t look much like the ad we originally ripped out, the new kitchen is a happy synthesis of practicality, restoration, hard work and things we simply enjoy.