We moved from McMinnville across the Cascades into our new house in Bend in mid-February. While no house is entirely perfect and the purchase of any house is a compromise, our new house was ideal for us in almost every way except for the kitchen. We bought on location and value for our dollar despite the sub-optimal kitchen, knowing that kitchens can be replaced.
The primary issue was that our kitchen was "designed" for looks by an interior designer of sorts and not by anyone with kitchen design expertise. I have to admit that in the professional photos below, the old kitchen looks good. Unfortunately, it did not function well as cooking kitchen. Ann and I set about correcting that just two weeks after we moved in.
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| Existing Kitchen, Looking at Pantry Corner |
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| Existing Kitchen, Three-Level Island |
We started with the design in March: Ann handled all the styling and décor decisions while I did the drawings for the new layout. Working with a "designer" at the local big box store, we ordered cabinets in April. Then over the summer, we collected most of the things we would need to fit out the new kitchen, from sink to stools.
After a lengthy battle over delivery dates during the summer, the cabinets arrived a month late in mid-September and we started construction September 19. We finished on November 1st. To minimize the time we were without a kitchen, I did about 80% of the work myself, including the carpentry, drywall, painting, half the electrical, and all the small stuff. We contracted the general labor for demolition, help setting base cabinets, half the electrical, the tile and grout, and all the plumbing. Ann did 100% of the décor.
Following is the saga of gutting the existing kitchen and building out a new one, a long tale that is broken into several chapters. It will come as no surprise to anyone who has ever been party to a construction job that we had twists and turns along the way. In the end, the renovation took a week longer than we desired, after a start date that was delayed by a month, a far better experience than many people have endured.
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| New Kitchen, Looking at Pantry Corner |
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| New Kitchen, Single-Level Island |
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