Ever since we bought our condo back in 2009 Joy has been plotting to redo the kitchen. Over the years the most time we spent at home seemed to be cooking and baking and the appliances we had just didn’t seem to do it enough for us. We debated about just buying new appliances but that just didn’t seem to be worth it on its own. So Joy spent all last summer saving up her pennies working at her second job and this year finally got to hatch her dastardly plan.
It started slowly with just thoughts and ideas starting with getting offered a free estimate from Home Depot for a cabinet resurfacing, which seemed like a good idea but once the lady came out to take our measurements and door options we were blown away by the $20,000 price tag!
The second option was the Ikea route with all their fancy store showcases and modern designs, but as we sat in front of their computer for HOURS trying to layout the kitchen and getting confused with the dimensions, we finally threw that plan out the window when we found out it would cost $100+ per cabinet just to be built and installed.
The third option was going through my mom’s guy who we eventually went with because we needed personal help with the project. He convinced us to just go with the Chinese cabinets ($2,200), even though we couldn’t really get the most modern design the price was just too good to pass up. He designed it all himself and gave us options that we really didn’t think of even after watching hours upon hours of HGTV. We ended up going with espresso cabinets and white quartz countertops.
The biggest changes that we’re doing is moving the sink to the right serving two purposes, giving us room to instal a dishwasher in its place, and give us more usable counter space for cooking. I always felt like we needed more counter spaces when we’re prepping because we need so many bowls and cutting board when making more of our elaborate dishes.
We also had just the right timing doing this right around Memorial Day sales and went to town shopping for new appliances. After going looking at Home Depot, Best Buy, Pacific Sales, Sears, we eventually went with Lowe’s. We ordered ourselves a Whirlpool Bottom-Freezer Fridge ($1050), Samsung 5 Burner Stove ($800), a Whirlpool Dishwasher, and Whirlpool Range Hood.
Lowe’s happened to have most of the lowest prices and priced match + 10% for once of the appliances as well. All reviews for products seem to be perfect or breaking down all the time so Lowe’s offers a group protection plan vs. buying a protections plan for each specific device saving some more money. They offered Free Delivery and Haul Away. Finally we signed up for their credit card so we could save an additional 5% off the entire purchase (or no interest for 6 months) since we were going to just pay cash anyways.
So after all is said and done our kitchen is probably going to cost us just around $9000.
