Yes, I’ve been absent! Apologies. Keeping up is hard. The main thing occupying my time the past couple of weeks, outside of the usual hanging with the girls, is making plans to remodel our kitchen in about a month.

It was actually sort of fun for me to go back and forth between Lowe’s and Home Depot, playing them off each other, watching as their quotes dipped lower and lower. When I finally started to figure out the intricacies of designing the cabinet layouts, it made me wish I had started the exploratory process a couple of months ago, so I could have fine tuned even more.

But I think we came up with a great design, and got a price we can afford. My haggling knocked almost $3000 off the total bid. Incredibly, we’ll be getting our granite counter from Home Depot. I know they are considered very expensive, but of the four quotes I got (HD, Lowe’s, Pius in Seattle, and Creative Countertops), not only did they give me the best price (arm-twisting + a convenient 10% off sale that started this week), but they also had a stone that I really loved. And the salesman was tenacious, kept in contact with me, and seemed determined to beat whatever Lowe’s offered.

The Lowe’s guy was nice, and their price point before discounts was lower, but it was impossible to get anyone on the phone over there. Pius had pretty good prices, but they seemed extremely disorganized, and the Yelp reviews were absolutely dismal. Creative Countertops was awesome, and seemed like they would have been great to work with, but of course had the highest prices of all and stated up front that they would not attempt to beat other quotes.

So the cabinets and counters have been ordered. The cabinetry will give us three or four times as much cupboard and drawer space (right now we have one usable upper cabinet in our kitchen. One!). The doors and fronts will be cherry hardwood, stained a deep bordeaux-brown. There will be a big wonderful island, where I will do most of my meal prep. The island will have an overhang on the back for a couple of bar stools for the kids. It will also have a pullout drawer containing our trash and recycling bins. This was one of the freebies I negotiated. I also got us free cabinet hardware (pulls), a free undersink cabinet, and a free tiered cutlery organizer drawer. Those four items were valued at over $1500. All I had to do was let HD know what Lowe’s was willing to give me gratis (in writing), and they matched it. La la la!

The counters will be granite, a dream come true. Only once for a brief period have I had a kitchen with granite — a rental in SF in 2003, when the landlord decided to improve the place a bit. Of course I moved out soon after to live with Brian. Anyway, we chose a grey-white stone with flecks and flakes of dark gray, bordeaux red, and taupe. It’s called “Powder White”. Good contrast and complement to the cabinets.

Floor: changing hideous peeling stick-laminate tiles to hardwood. Throughout kitchen, hall, and living room. Boo yah. Roomba will have something to do again! Bye-bye nasty living room rug.

Appliances: Found a gorgeous Whirlpool gas convection range on sale for 20% off at Lowe’s. Bought matching over-the-stove microwave for a steal. They will match with our refrigerator. I will not miss our pathetic ceramic top range, or the giant footprint of counter space our microwave eats up.

We’re totally removing and covering a window on the far wall. And replacing the over the sink window with a vinyl energy efficient one. The new window will be framed in wood to match cabinets, and have no curtains, to allow in the most light.

Installing a third bank of can lights in the ceiling, removing ugly dated pendant lamps.

Demoing the peninsula and decorative obstructive wall so that the whole space opens up. I hope to use the open space for a kitchen table. I dislike having a separate room for eating. Not sure how this will work yet since it’s hard to imagine this space without the huge peninsula in the way.

Oh and new paint on the walls. And a tile backsplash. Those are my projects for the next couple weeks: pick colors. Ugh.

I’ll post pictures soon.

So out of this whole experience I gained something. I realized that I would make a kick-ass project manager. I loved organizing all the details, doing the legwork, doing the research, making the phone calls, etc. This could be something I could do for money someday. Who wants to hire me?