I thought I'd make one last kitchen update for now.
We've now been living with the new kitchen since Tuesday afternoon, cooking and eating there. Everything is great. The new stovetop and oven are much better than our old ones. There's a bit of a learning curve with the controls but nothing major. Just knobs for the stovetop and a touch pad for the oven. Microwave controls are a bit different too. We've run the dishwasher twice now and that's fine. Pretty simple controls that aren't all that different than the last one.
Today my wife and I spent a good amount of time bringing up items from the basement and putting them away in their new places. I'm sure we will shuffle things around some as we work in there and figure out our new work flows but things are mostly away for now. We still need to bring in a lot of the food items that got moved into our temporary space in the living room. Some have come in already as we've used them but the rest need to go too. Once that is done, my wife can start putting that room back together as it is her crafting room. I started getting the family room back in order last night. That's where I do a lot of my reselling business like taking pictures for ebay and packing china for Replacements.com. Having limited access to that space for nearly 2 months was lousy for business but I knew that would be the case. Time to ramp back up to normal.
All in all, we're happy with the remodel. I think the new space looks great. My wife even commented today after I posted before and after pictures on Facebook, that the old kitchen looked so bad. How did we live with that for so long? It's funny how you just get used to what you've got. When you walk into someone else's house, you'll immediately take note of things like that, but in your own home, it just is what it is and you don't even think about it. Now that it's all changed, though, looking at the before pictures is really jarring.
If you're thinking about a remodel and can't decide, just do it. It's a royal pain in the butt while it's happening but it is very much worth it in the end.
July 25th, 2025 at 12:43 pm 1753443805
I'm not even near completion but I second your advice already. Even as expensive as it is, upgrading the environment at home has always been worth it to me because it positively impacts my life every single day. It's more impactful than other large purchases like a car or a vacation for that reason. I wouldn't go into debt to do it though. I've got some splurges in my upgrade but only because I can afford to pay for them now - that wouldn't have been the case a decade ago.
Congratulations, and enjoy!
July 25th, 2025 at 11:25 pm 1753482324
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