Remodeling a Kitchen, Part 1

After the holidays in 2014, my hubs and I had a discussion about our kitchen.  We had purchased a new natural gas, self-cleaning wall oven.  Over the past year it had been found to be seriously deficient in terms of size.  The interior capacity severely curtailed my ability to prepare anything in other than miniature-size baking and roasting utensils.  I was, to say the least, very disappointed.  I couldn't make my usual holiday cookie and treat assortment unless I prepared myself to spend several days or a week at the project.  I couldn't prepare a large roast or ham or turkey.  It was even difficult to bake a cake in a 13 x 9 baking pan because the oven walls were too close to the pan sides to effect even baking.  Only one small roasting or baking pan could fit in it at any one time.  Layer cake?  Forget it!  The web site that sold this oven contained photos of items inside the oven, all the racks filled up with pans and casseroles.  It was very foolish of me to believe any of that was real.  I wasn't able to see an actual wall oven on display because nobody displayed these items in their brick-and-mortar stores.  Capacity in cubic inch space, is stated as 2.9 cu.ft., with interior dimension as 17"W x 16"H x 18.5"D.  I learned the hard way.  Somebody erred in that description. The self-cleaning feature of this oven was its downfall, the walls were well over 2" thick, possibly even 3-4", all around the sides, back, top and floor.

As we discussed our various options, we came to the unfortunate conclusion that I would either give up family meal events entirely, give up holiday baking entirely, or decide on a plan to get a regular range in that small 15' x 8' modified galley kitchen.  (The wall oven that started all this is at the back left in the photo.)

Our kitchen before we began the project, Feb. 21, 2015.

We talked about removing 1 cabinet to make room for a range, we talked about switching around other elements of the kitchen, such as the dishwasher.  We talked about gutting the entire room and starting over new.  Weighing our options, that is exactly what we decided to do.

The blank slate, June 4, 2015.

We built our home in 1972, and over the 43 years we had made do.  We replaced counter tops twice, sink and faucet 3 times, refrigerator 3 times, wall oven 3 times. The original wall oven and the 2nd wall oven were neither one a handicap to my cooking and baking activities.  It had a good capacity for almost anything I wanted to use it for.  When I needed an especially large oven capacity, I brought up the electric roaster from the basement, placed it on the counter and prepared whatever I needed to roast.  I could place several casserole or baking/roasting pans in the wall oven at once.  If I made a proper timing schedule, longer roasting time items went in first and lesser roasting time items went in last to be ready as the meal was being laid out.

In summer, I canned and froze hundreds of containers of garden bounty.  Tomatoes, corn, green beans, apples and applesauce, peaches, pears, cherries, jellies, pickles, the list goes on!   I took this task very seriously, wanting fresh, unadulterated foods for my family.  I think my family enjoyed this bounty in the dead of winter when the produce at the store was tasteless and sky-high in price, and many of the canned goods were similarly tasteless and overcooked.

I attacked this new venture with vigor!  I found several planning sites on the Internet.  Chief among them was www.houzz.com and Lowe's Virtual Room Designer at https://lowes.2020.net/planner/UI/Pages/VPUI.htm?Lang=en-US.

Writing down our room dimensions and the placement of doorways and windows, I began assembling my room digitally.  I scoured Houzz for ideas, elements, tips, advice and photos.  Finally, 2 months later, in February, we were ready to discuss our renovation with professional kitchen re-modelers and custom cabinet companies.  Our first stop was at a home show in the South Suburbs of Chicago, Illinois.  We made appointments with 3 kitchen re-modelers to come to our home to give estimates for our project.

My next post will be about the experience of getting estimates and choosing a contractor.