Joe and I spent a few days, after learning that our floors sloped too much to lay the laminate we wanted, deciding how we wanted to proceed. We figured we had two options - not worry about the slope, lay some cheap vinyl flooring and get on with our lives, or fix the problem, get the floors we wanted and be happy with the kitchen. I went home for Christmas thinking we'd take a few days and make our final decision. Well, my grandmother gave my sisters and me each a wonderful gift from her personal savings that allowed us some breathing room, and gave us the boost in the budget we needed! We had seen IKEA kitchen cabinets in our few trips to that fantastic store, and knew they'd fit into our budget. After playing with their kitchen designer software, we realized new cabinets were in fact affordable. Unfortunately, the closest IKEA to us is in Chicago, so we never get the chance to go.
Since we were in St. Louis for Christmas, we decided that on Friday after Christmas, Joe and I would get up early, make the 4 1/2 hr trek up to Chicago, and go shop for our new kitchen! We arrived Friday at noon, and spent the next 5 hours shopping, evaluating, checking out and loading all of the boxes for the kitchen into my dad's Denali. IKEA is able to keep costs low by selling stock cabinets that are unassembled, so we were able to buy an entire kitchen full of cabinets for about half as much as the next cheapest estimate we got, and had them with us the same day! We had to spend about half an hour just loading the car, figuring out the best way to get the two and a half carts of boxes to fit just right, but we managed with a little room left to spare!
The weather prevented us from heading back Friday night like we wanted, so we got up Saturday and headed for St. Louis. After a great party Saturday night celebrating Ashley and Mikael's engagement, Joe and I headed for KC bright and early Sunday morning. We spent Sunday taking out the dishwasher, sink, disposal and base cabinets. In the process we discovered that the previous owner had painted two coats of paint over wallpaper that was still on the walls, so I worked on tearing all of the paper off. I still have a while to go, but we're getting closer! We also started expanding the doorway to the small pantry off the kitchen, so that we can open it up and make it fully functional.
Today the flooring guys are here, fixing the slope in the floor that started this whole mess. Joe, a friend and I are going to work tonight on patching the plaster, stripping the rest of the wallpaper and getting the walls ready to paint and assembling cabinets. We're trying to document the whole process, so my next post will have a bunch of pictures that will have to be our "before", even though the floors and appliances were already gone!
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