Scott and I got down to business with that wallboard in our living area, but we still have a few important steps on our kitchen transformation.  There’s the structural engineer signing off on a plan and the local permit folks signing off on that same plan.  There’s implementation of that plan, and then moving on to more cosmetic issues.  Yeah, there are a few details left.

We’re still really excited about the project though (good thing!), and we’re trying to work on a few things at a time so we can finish the project in a decently timely way.  The beginning of “Phase 2” is ordering cabinetry so that as soon as “Phase 1” is complete, we can move forward with the rest of the project.

We aren’t planning to get all new cabinets, just new cabinets for the island, which doesn’t currently exist.  That complicates things a tiny bit, because we need some cabinets with doors and some doors without cabinets.

I measured and measured and measured again, and we went to a certain big box store (*cough*Lowes*) to get a quote, and the rep was super nice.  She did a plan for our perfect kitchen island, and called the next day with a quote.  We were expecting something like $3,000.  Maybe we were naive.

Regardless, we were wrong, and the actual quote was for $5,500.  Man.  I know that talking about money is messy and kind of private, but I wish that more sites I read would tell me exactly how much remodeling could potentially cost.  I’m trying to do my part for DIY remodelers everywhere.

What would we get for our $5,500?  We would get solid wood cabinet doors in a Shaker style and slightly off-white paint finish.  We picked the least expensive door option we could find in the style we liked.  We opted for the nicer construction option in base cabinets, since we want the kitchen to be nice 20 years from now, too.  A bonus of buying from Lowes is that we would be able to buy the same color of paint there to make painting out our old cabinet bases simple.  They would provide the hinges for the doors (nice, invisible from the outside hinges), and all of the extra doors would be custom-built to fit our current cabinet bases.  So we would only need to buy other door hardware (knobs/pulls) and plenty of that matching paint.  And maybe some of that awesome stuff that you paint on to strip the finish off instead of sanding.

The island plan is 6-foot by 3-foot.  I can share more details if you really want to know, but the basic info is that it has lots of great storage space.  It will hold a microwave, all of our big stuff that won’t fit into other cabinets, and a trash can to boot.  Oh, and there are bookcases along the back of the island.  Could it get any better?  Not for me.  Scott’s pretty nice to let me have new bookcases built in.

So that’s the plan.  And today, the plan is to go to three different cabinetry-selling places.  We’re trying one local cabinetry store, one store that sells cabinets and gives the profits to Habitat for Humanity (awesome perk!), and Home Depot.  We figured that getting a few different quotes wouldn’t hurt.  I’ll let you know who wins.