The kitchen remodel is officially underway! We’ve made a timeline and a preliminary budget and I have some progress to share with you also.

We’re going to have a couple months of demo and prep work before anything goes in, but we got started a couple weeks ago. The first step was reinforcing the floor, which required spending the entire day in our crawl space. Which is about 3 feet tall. This is something I am NOT doing - luckily Xan is a total champ and he along with one of our friends have already done most of it. Next up with a little bit of demo - we’ve also taken out the closet and built-in shelves, and cut a hole in the wall to recess the refrigerator. This weekend Xan is roughing in the electrical, gas, and plumbing. After that we’ll install the cabinets, the countertop and lastly the backsplash.

We finally decided on cabinets - and they were delivered on Wednesday! We went with the Ikea Vedinge for several reasons, but mostly because we liked them the best. I had initially dismissed them because I thought they would look too modern in our 100-year old farm house. But for some reason I just couldn’t commit to either of the more “traditional” styles (the Bodbyn and the Grimslov, if you’re interested in those kinds of things). So, in the end we decided to go with the one we liked the most and trust that we’ll be able to make it work in the house. We both feel like softening the other elements in the kitchen will help the cabinets feel more like a blank canvas than any one particular style. We’re planning on going with a really pretty handmade backsplash and most likely some nice gold hardware. The last decisions we have to make are about lighting and countertop. I think those two elements will also help bring it together.

Small Kitchen Remodel Cost: Budget

Here’s a breakdown of our budget. It seems pretty detailed, but it’s actually helpful in making sure as many of the details are covered as possible. This is just our estimated budget, were trying to be diligent about tracking our expenses so we’ll have an actual at the end to compare it to.

As far as timeline, we’re being really generous with what to expect. Because we’re both working full-time and we’re doing the majority of the work ourselves we’re not anticipating it will be done until late summer. But, slow and steady wins the race I guess. Plus, because we’re putting the new kitchen in a different room so our current kitchen isn’t affected at all so we won’t be without anything.

I've shared some video tours in my insta-stories, checkout the "kitchen reno" highlights to see everything so far!