So the deal was, we (and by we, I mean mostly my spouse) would do the demolition down to the studs. He'd rip up the floor, take down the cabinets, tear out the drywall and pull out the old electrical. Then, because he's got skills, he'd redo the electrical, swap the gas line for the stove from the south wall to the north wall and move the plumbing. Then C could come in and put everything in - floors, walls, ceiling, cabinets, counters and some custom shelving. We'd save some money and have that lovely feeling of accomplishment but a professional would be handling the part of the project that we'd have to live with long term.
This seemed like a perfect hybrid of DYI enthusiasm and we're-old-enough-to-know-better-pragmatism.
A little side note: we both work in human service fields so at the end of the day, we come home with nothing but stories (good and bad) consequently, we both enjoy projects that produce something - a knitted sock, a working overhead light, a canned jar of salsa etc...
First things first. We couldn't tear out a single thing until we ordered stuff to install (since stuff takes about 6 to whenever we feel like it weeks to arrive). So first, we had to order cabinets. But we couldn't order cabinets until we knew exactly what sizes we needed and we couldn't get anyone to design the layout unless we were also going to hire them for the installation.
The conversations with kitchen stores went roughly like this:
Me: Hi, we're remodeling our very small kitchen and wondering if you do design work for very small kitchens.
Kitchen Store Person (KSP): Yes, OF COURSE we design very small kitchens and we'd love to help you make your project a reality.
Me: Great. How much do you charge for design work?
KSP: Well, the price of design is included in the price of the project.
Me: We don't want to hire you to do the project. We're going to do a lot of that ourselves but we'd like to hire you to do design.
KSP:
Me: hello?
KSP: uh... well, we don't really do that.
Me: Okay. Do you know anyone that does?
KSP:
Me: Okay - well thanks anyway.
We couldn't go to a big box store for design because they only design with their products and C was now ordering better quality cabinets for a lower price at the localish cabinet place. (We value all the qualifiers in that last sentence.)
What to do?!
We went old school.
On a Sunday afternoon, during a particularly late, particularly heavy April snowstorm, we pulled out the graph paper and drew our own design. The actual drawings appear to have been lost or maybe we gave them to C to give to the cabinet people - either way, we can't find them. But we really hope they did the trick because our garage is full of cabinets based on those drawings (and C's let-me-just-measure-this-one-more-time OCD - which frankly, is an excellent quality in a contractor.)
This seemed like a perfect hybrid of DYI enthusiasm and we're-old-enough-to-know-better-pragmatism.
A little side note: we both work in human service fields so at the end of the day, we come home with nothing but stories (good and bad) consequently, we both enjoy projects that produce something - a knitted sock, a working overhead light, a canned jar of salsa etc...
First things first. We couldn't tear out a single thing until we ordered stuff to install (since stuff takes about 6 to whenever we feel like it weeks to arrive). So first, we had to order cabinets. But we couldn't order cabinets until we knew exactly what sizes we needed and we couldn't get anyone to design the layout unless we were also going to hire them for the installation.
The conversations with kitchen stores went roughly like this:
Me: Hi, we're remodeling our very small kitchen and wondering if you do design work for very small kitchens.
Kitchen Store Person (KSP): Yes, OF COURSE we design very small kitchens and we'd love to help you make your project a reality.
Me: Great. How much do you charge for design work?
KSP: Well, the price of design is included in the price of the project.
Me: We don't want to hire you to do the project. We're going to do a lot of that ourselves but we'd like to hire you to do design.
KSP:
Me: hello?
KSP: uh... well, we don't really do that.
Me: Okay. Do you know anyone that does?
KSP:
Me: Okay - well thanks anyway.
We couldn't go to a big box store for design because they only design with their products and C was now ordering better quality cabinets for a lower price at the localish cabinet place. (We value all the qualifiers in that last sentence.)
What to do?!
On a Sunday afternoon, during a particularly late, particularly heavy April snowstorm, we pulled out the graph paper and drew our own design. The actual drawings appear to have been lost or maybe we gave them to C to give to the cabinet people - either way, we can't find them. But we really hope they did the trick because our garage is full of cabinets based on those drawings (and C's let-me-just-measure-this-one-more-time OCD - which frankly, is an excellent quality in a contractor.)
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