Our kitchen remodel started today. The fridge got moved into the living room where our temporary kitchen is. So far, he has removed almost all of the cabinetry as well as the wall oven/microwave and the stovetop.

The first unexpected problem has arisen too. Woo hoo. When he removed the dishwasher, which we were planning on keeping because it's not that old, he discovered that there has been a slow leak somewhere. The flooring beneath it is wet and there is mold or something growing around the casing of the unit. As it turns out, we have seen a tiny bit of water in the basement recently but it's right by a window and right next to our extra fridge and freezer so we couldn't tell where the water was coming from, and it was intermittent and very minimal. So the good news is we found the source of the leak. The bad news is it means we have to add a new dishwasher to the list. Yes we could try and figure out what's wrong with this one but I have zero faith that they'd be able to do that and I don't want to reinstall it only to have it fail soon after and damage the new kitchen.

One thing that is kind of neat was seeing the likely original 1964 wallpaper and the original floor tiles.

We have an appointment tomorrow morning to actually order the cabinets. We're also setting up a time to go to the appliance store to order the oven, microwave, and now dishwasher.

We met with the cabinet guy yesterday and dove deeper into the details of what will likely go where and what types of cabinets, drawers, and pullouts make sense for each. We also browsed hardware options and have a pretty good idea of what we like when it comes time to pick them.

At this point, we just need to clean out the kitchen and set up the temporary kitchen area in the living room. We've already done some cleaning out but can't finish until this weekend since we'll be using the kitchen until Monday night. I'm going out of town Wednesday and Thursday but once I'm back, we'll focus 100% on getting the house ready for work to begin on Tuesday.

I also need to clean a bunch of stuff from the family room where I do my reselling business. Materials are going to need to be stored there while the work is under way. I'll shift my focus to there once he actually starts in the kitchen. I also need to get back to cleaning out the garage. I had to pause that as I was prepping to take my next china selling roadtrip to NC tomorrow. There are currently 25 cases of china packed and stacked for that so with all of those in there, I couldn't really work on other things.

I'm sure the job will be super disruptive to our routines but I'm actually looking forward to it getting started. I'm just afraid of what problems he will discover along the way once he starts opening up walls and removing the existing floor.

We had already done one round of materials shopping but hadn't made any final choices. Today we went back to the countertop place. We thought we had decided on one last time but once we got home with the sample we decided it wasn't right. After browsing the warehouse again, we chose a new one for sure. Very different than what we had thought we would go with but we both liked it better. They even measured it and roughly drew out where the cuts would be made.

Then we went to the flooring/tile place and tentatively chose a backsplash, though we want to add some accent tile to that which we haven't looked at yet. And we made a possible floor tile selection. Until our guy tears out the existing floor, we can't be 100% sure if we can use porcelain tile or if we'll need to go with luxury vinyl.

We also made an appointment to meet with the cabinet guy again on Monday to start fleshing that out in more detail. We can't order anything until we have final measurements but we're pretty close to final now, close enough to start shopping seriously.

It is a fun process but also very stressful trying to visualize how everything will look once you put it together. You're only working with photos or small samples and things can look a lot different when an entire counter is there or a full floor.

Hi all. I haven't blogged for a long time but it occurred to me that the blog would be a better place to post about this than the forums.

We have been in our house since 1994. The kitchen was remodeled 2 years before we bought the place. Coming from where we were (a rowhome in Philadelphia) we thought the kitchen was great. Bright, roomy, lots of counter space, etc. After living here a while, we came to recognize some of the issues with it. The layout created a pinch point between the fridge and counter so we're always in each other's way. The previous owner did the work himself and used economy grade supplies so a lot of things just weren't done well and things haven't held up great. So we finally decided it was time to start fresh.

We have a good friend who does kitchen and bath remodels for a living. We've seen a lot of his work and know he does a quality job so we are using him. We've been refining the design and browsing materials but we're now getting ready to actually start the job. He begins on 5/27. We don't have the absolute final design quite yet because until he does the demo, he won't have exact measurememts, but it should just be minor tweaks from what we have.

We've looked at cabinets but haven't finalized those yet since we need the exact measurements. We looked at countertops a few days ago but want to go back for another look as we think we've modified what we want as far as color is concerned. We checked out flooring in a very general way but until we settle on the countertop we can't decide on the floor.

We've been working to clean out the cabinets and the basement storage area where things will go while the kitchen is under construction. We can't totally empty things out yet since we still need the kitchen for 11 more days.

I will try to remember to update along the way.