Kitchen : How to Live Without a Sink

I've alluded a few times to the fact that during the kitchen renovation we were living without a sink.

But until you actually do it, I am not sure anyone quite grasps what that means.  We sure didn't.

I mentioned that our countertops took way longer than we originally thought which was the major player in this unfortunate way of living for awhile.  Regardless, it was not super fun but it was an adventure.

It definitely takes some adjusting. 

You know when you're cooking and you drop a crumb or crack and egg and go to toss it in the sink  Yeah nope, can't do that.

You know when you're cooking with raw meat and need to wash your hands quickly

Yeah none of that either.  

You know when its easier to just throw everything in the dishwasher.

Nope not that either.

Alas, we survived and I will share our knowledge with you!

(sweet, sweet sink and faucet)

I would also like to pat ourselves on the backs because sans being out of town, we only ate out twice the entire time.  

1.  Become friends with your neighbors

Thankfully we are besties with our neighbors and they graciously offered up their sink and dishwasher MANY times to us.  We are forever indebted.  I gave Alexis a gift basket at the end of our adventure full of hand soap, dishwasher detergent and all the goodies we had used up at their house.

2.  Grill

We grilled A LOT.   We love grilling so it wasn't a huge deal but it was definitely more frequently than we usually do.  Let's just say we ate a lot of turkey burgers.

3.  Get a dishpan

We had a dishpan of dirty dishes in constant rotation to be washed down the street or in the tub.  It was nice to have somewhere to corral all of our dirty dishes. 

4.  Crockpot

Along with grilling, we crock potted a lot.  I did my best to find recipes that did not require a lot of ingredients or prep work.  Not only was it easier, it lessened the nights I needed to cook.  

5.  Paper and plastic

Generally I really hate paper plates.  I think they are so wasteful and fall apart.  But during all of this I had to give in.  We (regretfully) used quite a few (that I then recycled), plastic silverware and plastic plates that could be later washed and reused.  The plastic plates and bowls were easier than banging our good dishes around.  

I am still not quite sure how we survived but we did but I will be happy to not do that again.

I am obsessed with our new sink so the wait was almost worth it.  

I am planning on a post soon with all the specific details of each item but for now our sink is from here if you're in the market. 

Budgeting for a Kitchen Remodel

Earlier this week I revealed our kitchen renovation!
Thank you thank you everyone for your wonderful comments!
We are still oohing and ahhing over it ourselves and so happy to share it with everyone!

Like with most things in life, these great things come with a price.

And while our kitchen remodel would have been more enjoyable had it been free, we were able to save money here and there and still afford to eat.

Considering my career (interior design), I ventured into this project with quite a bit of background knowledge and insight (but there is always more to learn).

Luckily for you, I am here today to share a bit of that knowledge with you and a few money saving tricks we used!

1.  Make it matter

A kitchen renovation/remodel (or any renovation for that matter) is generally a big and worthwhile investment for your home.

It is important to evaluate if a renovation you are looking at is beneficial for your home. 

For example we could have gone with full custom, highly detailed cabinetry for our kitchen. 

But for one, we cannot afford that and two, neither can our house or neighborhood.  

Whenever we do leave our current house, we would have not gotten our money back.

2.  Keep it simple

One way to keep costs down during a renovation or remodel is to keep the plans simple.  Once you get into moving walls, electrical, plumbing, etc the costs automatically creep up, quickly.

The layout of our kitchen is is what it is.  We were not interested (nor had the option) of moving walls or changing the floor plan in the kitchen.  We kept the layout the same and only swapped out the type of cabinets in a few areas.  This saved us a tremendous amount of dollars.

3.  Plan 

As I mentioned on Wednesday, we started thinking about this project months before it actually happened.  Large home projects usually require large amounts of money.  Mister and I knew this was on the horizon at some point so we began saving early on to help the costs not be such a big hit.  While I am not a proponent of building up credit card debit, I am a believer in using those cards to get points and then automatically paying them off in order to get points/rewards for later on.

4.  Space it out
If you can space out your purchases, it makes biting the bullet a little easier.
We staggered buying our cabinets, tops, faucet/sink and tile over a few months.  We would make one big purchase, pay it off and move on to the next.  This helped the costs not seem like such a tornado through our finances.  We caught wind that the cabinets that we wanted were going up in price so we purchased those but then had to wait about 4 weeks for them to be installed.  While we wanted everything done asap, this helped us save money.

5.  DIY (and lean on your friends)
While Mister and I knew that installing the kitchen ourselves was not an option (not even one that needed entertaining) we knew there were some areas we could tackle.  We are semi handy and love DIY around the house.
 One area in particular was the backsplash.  While we could have paid someone to install it, we figured we could do it ourselves and save a few dollars.  And dollars we saved!
We purchased the tile online from Overstock and were able to save quite a bit.  We also found the majority of our tiling tools on sale at Lowes.  And the most helpful was that our neighbor lent us his wet saw #majorsavings
Think about what you can tackle on your own and go for it! I feel even more proud of our kitchen now knowing that our blood, sweat and yes, tears went into it.

Overall we enjoyed the kitchen renovation process and love sharing about it.  Let me know if you have any questions!

I am linking up with Kait today to talk all things budget...head on other there to see some more fabulous budgeting advice!

Kitchen : The Reveal

I have been dying to hit publish on this post. 

This one has been a long time coming...months in the works.

Sometime around last Spring Mister and I began tossing the idea around of renovating a few things in the kitchen.   It started with wanting to replace the countertops which lead to a new sink and faucet which led to new cabinets and so on and so on.

Well, we all know how those things go, one things leads to the other and here we are...

New kitchen!!

Mister and I are OVER the moon about it.  

Obsessed.

But to fully appreciate the after, let's take a quick look back at the before.

Ouch.

Let's go back to the pretty

So much better!

I am planning on a few full posts laying out all of the details.

How we lived without a sink and water in our kitchen for 2 months,

the selection process with a resource list, the good the bad and the ugly of the whole process and what is located in each of those new cabinets.

Along with any other questions you may have!

(Mister surprised me with the Charlie jar!! We have been on the hunt for weeks for it!)

But for now, here is the short on the details...

We purchased the cabinets from Ikea, had a sub contractor (provided through Ikea) install them, countertops are Ceaserstone and backsplash is from Overstock that we installed ourselves.

Don't mind me I will just be over here finally cooking up a storm and chuckling at Floyd's Charlie treat jar.