The Snowball and The Kitchen

You know that moment on Wednesday morning when you wake up, walk to the kitchen and upon entering, the first thought that goes through your mind is... "what was I thinking?"

I wasn't drinking last night.  But maybe I was two weeks ago when I thought starting the kitchen upgrade was a good idea.  In my defense, it was a very tiny, itty-bitty kitchen upgrade.  It has since snowballed.  I had a plan.  A plan to remove a soffit, paint cabinets, upgrade the backsplash and resurface a countertop.  That plan went out the window when we decided "weellllll.... if we're going to remove the plaster, we mightaswell remove the wall!" 

Famous. Last. Words. 

Before I break into all the messy photos and updates (spoiler alert: every surface is covered in plaster dust), I should catch you up first on the kitchen before we broke out the sledgehammers.  And even before we bought the joint. Here is what the kitchen looked like in the listing photos of the house:

I'm showing you these because, like any horrible blogger, I didn't take before pictures of the kitchen (!!!).

The kitchen is livable.  But it was definitely on the project list when we bought the house.  The kitchen is surrounded by four walls (it's hard to tell from these photos), and it's really closed off from the rest of the house.  The house has lots of windows and great natural light.  Except for the kitchen (and master bedroom, but that's not going to change).  The kitchen is was dark and gloomy and the aqua blue walls and honey oak cabinets aren't doing our tiny kitchen any favors.

Our first instinct was to lighten up the walls hoping this would help us live a little more comfortably.  If you follow me on Instagram you might remember a picture I posted of one of the kitchen walls.  The plaster walls in this house are in very good condition (no cracks or sagging) except for what humans did to it... scratches, knicks, and nail holes out the wazoo.

We patched the holes, sanded, and primed the walls.  Twice.  You can still see the blue bleeding through.  

It was at this point right here that I got a little anxious.  Justin worked late one night and I was bored.  I mean, if we're going to paint the kitchen, we might as well start our phase 1 upgrade!  We had a wedding shower right around the corner and I wanted to bring all of our lovely gifts into an updated kitchen.  Here is a summary of our phase 1 plan:

In addition to removing the backsplashes, trim, and cabinets, I also planned to remove the soffit.  I wanted more storage space in the kitchen and that soffit was taking up a lot of valuable space.  I planned to reclaim that space by removing the soffit, scooting the cabinets up the wall towards the ceiling, and install an open shelf below. Something like this, this, and this.

I got a little head start while Justin was away. The backsplash was gone before Justin knew what was going on.  You can't leave me alone with a hammer and a chisel.

Justin, thankfully, was on board.  The wedding is still on.  And by the weekend, the house looked like this...

Then this...

I called my drywall friend and asked him to come by and patch the soffit area and skim coat the damaged plaster.  Well... this happened instead.  

We always planned to do a phase 2 kitchen upgrade a few years down the road.  Phase 2 would consist of opening up that wall behind the stove.  11 o'clock on a Wednesday night after we removed the plaster I called my parents and asked their opinion of when we should open up the wall.  And then I posted it on Instagram and asked the facebook world if we should open this wall up now rather than later...  the response was unanimous.

We bit the bullet and busted through the wall. 

And are soooooooooooooo happy that we did!  

That space behind the stove will be a breakfast bar, giving us more counter space AND an eat-in kitchen. But the lack of wall now required that we swap out our appliances for a slide-in stove and an island range hood.  Let me translate that for you: our budget makeover required a new "budget".

We called our electrician and begged him to come over ASAP to run new electrical through the ceiling for the range hood. Our electrician was busy and he won't be here until this weekend.  We can't close up the ceiling or wall until the electrical is done... then appliances were delivered 2 weeks ahead of schedule!

Life has hit a big 'ol PAUSE button and we are stuck right here.  Stuck right at 'brand spanking new appliances' and a room that still doesn't have drywall.  I've been through renovation before.  I've been through a kitchen renovation before.  But I have never been through a kitchen-renovation-while-trying-to-renovate-a-whole-house-while-planning-a-wedding kind of renovation... so please excuse my overwhelmed state of mind (and possible plaster dust on a pant leg).

We learned very quickly how a kitchen renovation can snowball out of control. Sometimes things happen for a reason.  We didn't think we were ready to take on a project this big with a wedding on our horizon, but we both agree that this was the right thing to do.  We have a lot of other distractions right now and this will probably drag on longer than I would like.  But in the end, we'll finally have a place I would like to cook in.

My initial kitchen plan was simple and cheap.  Now, we'll be replacing counter tops and flooring so we need to make a big decision on these pricey items.  Decisions that we'll live with for a very long time... and so, we'll be living with  ^ until we can settle on a style and design.

What do you think? Did we make the right call by removing the wall?

Mary