Planning a Kitchen Layout

Or should this be titled, “A Kitchen Cabinet Post That Somehow Turned Into a Post About My Stove Obsession”?

I thought I’d give you a bit of an update on the Trilevel and how the kitchen is progressing. Mind you, we are much further along in our renovation now, but I haven’t had a whole lot of free time to write about it. The last time we talked, we were getting floors put in. But all the while, I was planning our kitchen. So here’s the story of the kitchen!

We had originally purchased a set of used cabinets from craigslist with the intention to refit them into the space. I was so stoked about finding a full set of cabinets for $600 too. We moved all the cabinets around and sort of fit them into place to help us visualize how they would work, and they did fit pretty well within the space.

(This was January)

But I was also struggling with the fact that fitting these cabinets into this already small kitchen, though it would save us a ton of money, would really be wasteful. For one instance, we’d have to lose storage space in this entire corner just to be able to put that cabinet there:

Because the cabinets just weren’t fitting the space exactly right, there was going to be a lot of wasted space. And with an already small kitchen, that was proving to be a stressor in my decision making. The last thing we want is a small, and unusable kitchen, not only for our sake, but for resale value too. So we decided to hold off for a while on moving forward with the existing cabinet idea so I could do a little research and see how much it would really cost for us to get the right sized cabinets, really make it feel functional, and make the most of this kitchen.

I started getting super excited at the idea of having all brand new cabinets that actually fit. And I had this vision in my head of where this kitchen was leading me. Dark base cabinets, wood countertop, open shelving. Very modern farmhouse vibe. I had a crush on it and it was hitting me hard.

Just take a wander to Jenna Sue’s blog and tell me you don’t just drool over this makeover:

I about fell on the floor when I saw it. It’s like it came out of one of my own dreams. And it was executed to perfection. All the hearts eyes and hand claps for this woman right here. She’s my hero.

So, anyway…

The first place I looked at was Cabinets.com. They had a huge sale going on, and I liked that  could shop and research without inviting a salesperson to my house. So I measured out the footprint and started adding cabinets to my cart. about $9,000 later I had a full cart and all the cabinets for my kitchen, and my jaw was on the floor.

OK, call me cheap, but I wasn’t ready to see that number on what I assumed were discount cabinets. I’m sure they’re real nice, but I certainly didn’t pick the top of the line brand either.

So I talked it over with Brian. And we almost had ourselves convinced after looking at a few other online cabinet companies and talking with some friends that maybe this is just what cabinets cost. I was so close to pulling the trigger and just eating the cost, but I just had this gut feeling that it wasn’t right. So I waited. And waited. And waited. All the while these cabinets that were in my cart would go on sale, then go up in price for a few days, then go on sale again. And every time the sale came back around I considered buying them again.

Then one day I was just reminiscing on our last kitchen renovation. That one seemed to go so much more smoothly. We were able to reuse all the cabinets while changing the layout. We maybe had to buy one cabinet and replace a few doors. It was a beautiful renovation. But there was one part of that renovation that I was really sore about. It was my stove.

We purchased a new stove when we bought the house, so there wasn’t anything I could really complain about. But I just remember one day, long after our kitchen was done, I was chatting with my grandpa and somehow we got started on appliances. He has had this stove from 1954 in his basement since I can remember, and I told him how much I’ve always admired it. And his response was basically, “Well, you can have it!”

But at that point in our lives, I had to decline. We had just refinished our kitchen, and since the older stoves were at least 10 inches wider than ones they make now, it just wouldn’t have fit in the space. I was bummed at the time, but had completely forgotten about it until now.

At this moment, I’m really not even thinking about appliances, but more of how I can cut the costs of this kitchen renovation to justify spending this much on cabinets. I started doing searches for used appliances, then for vintage appliances because why not? Then it hits me. And I crossed my fingers that my grandpa still had the stove.

He still had it, and it was still mine if we could get it up the stairs. He assured me it still worked like a charm, too!

And so all of my kitchen ideas were scrapped, I froze any idea to purchase cabinets, the cabinets I already bought just wouldn’t work at all now, and I started over with this stove as my inspiration.

But it still took another two weeks before we built up the courage to test it out.