Our 1963 Walk-out Rambler was designed during a period of American history which celebrated simplicity and function with little excess. We originally fell in love with our house 4 years ago the moment we stepped into the back yard. Every day, every season, we never get tired of looking out our windows to this...
The back yard is a peaceful respite and reminder of God's creation among the city/suburban structures. We renovated our basement shortly after moving in to create a home theatre experience. And we painted nearly every square foot of walls in our home. This brings us to our kitchen.
The kitchen is the heartbeat, central hub, gathering space, and main cooking ground for our home (and most others as well). As such, our kitchen was a functional space within our compartmentalized '60's rambler, but didn't live up to our vision of what a kitchen should be. Our kitchen was a disjointed room separating the rest of our upstairs space (dining room, living room, family room and entry foyer). There was no space to gather, the cupboards were poorly layed out, small and tired after 49 years of faithful use.
We had this project on our back burner (pun sort of intended) since we moved in and couldn't pull the trigger as we weighed how long we plan to stay in this house vs. the cost of a major remodel. We would occasionally discuss our separate dreams of our kitchen, playfully describing how much better a certain layout would accomodate guests or how advantageous it would be to have larger and more efficient cabinet layout. Eme and I have such a fun and natural way of communicating our similar visions we found it quite simple once our desires started becoming reality earlier this spring.
We decided to make the plunge in May and started our design and construction strategy. Again, this was a fairly natural process as Eme is trained in Interior Design and my role at Mortenson is to manage the Design Phase of our construction projects. This was directly within our wheelhouse! How exciting to begin the design process with a blank design slate with nothing in our way! Of course, we had a budget...dreams don't begin with a budget, but they need to end up within budget. We were excited to implement our design dream into reality!
Just like any construction project, the person paying the bills usually has sleepless nights and constantly worries about details. That was no different for our project, but probably amplified a bit as I acted as co-designer, structural engineer, superintendent, project manager, estimator, owner, and customer. What a list of responsibilities! With that in mind, my more than 40 hour work week schedule, spending time with B & C and Eme superseded us actually performing the work. So we decided to hand the demolition (minus floor), carpentry, drywall, and electrical reigns over to my Brother and his summer construction partner, Bryan. This was truly a wise decision as I have heard numerous kitchen/bath remodel projects severely straining marriages when one or both decide to tackle most of the work themselves. Eme and I could have performed about half of the project ourselves, but decided we trusted Jeff more and wanted to protect our relationship and time. Jeff and Bryan did an outstanding job!!
So, where does this leave us in terms of pictures and progress you ask??
- May - Design began (in our heads)
- June - Structural investigation/design
- July - Began demolition for 2 days at the end of July
- August - Kitchen torn up (no sink, stove, dishwasher, cabinets or floor)
- September - Sink (last major milestone) was plumbed the 3rd week of Sept.
- October - Finalize details (wood trim, final electrical connections, etc.), Final inspections
The total "intense" construction phase of the project was basically August 13 - September 24 (7 weeks). Not bad for managing a major kitchen remodel ourselves!
We are substantially complete, passed the final electrical inspection and await final inspection next Wednesday! Enjoy the photo progress of our dream come to life and stop on by...we would love to show you our new gathering space and central hub...and experience for yourself what makes our hearts beat when it comes to a vision of the kitchen remodel to our home on Rice Creek!
Prior to Redesign...
View from Family Room to the Kitchen/Downstairs
View inside the kitchen looking towards the family room
View from dining room into kitchen. There were 2 narrow entrances into our kitchen before. You can see our structural investigation spot above the built in cabinet
View from the dining room into the kitchen
View from the entry foyer into the dining towards the kitchen
I won't lie, during the month of August and early September we were getting to a dark place being without a kitchen sink for almost 5 weeks! But we made it through to the other side and absolutely love our new space!!
Stay tuned for progress photos. You didn't think you'd get to see the final product yet did you?
