After 16 years of hosting friends in our wonderful little kitchen, it’s all coming to a close. Don’t worry, it’s all good. We’re remodeling! Stay tuned for all the details as we rip out the cabinets and start the construction soon. With a bit of luck, we’ll be cooking again by late June.

Kitchen Today (May 6, 2008 – before demolition)

What to expect? Carole has done a fabulous design, which our new friend Sandy has put into a CAD program at Lowe’s. The first step will be addition of new windows all along the mountain view wall. We won’t be putting cabinets on that wall to ensure we have the best and brightest view possible. Next will come the cabinets, including a food prep island with a standup bar for our guests. We’ll be doing tile flooring and then rolling in the appliances, hopefully in late June.

Our Project Partners
General Contractor: Carole
While Carole was up in Coalville getting a building permit (yes, we got one) she pretty much took things over, as she can do, making lots of new friends along the way. At one point she asked if they could give her a hard hat – not just any hard hat, one that said boss. “There’s no question as to who’s the boss here,” said the permit manager.

Cabinets: Carole searched high and low for a good cabinet partner, settling on Lowe’s in Salt Lake City. Sandy has been absolutely fabulous in every way! Lowe’s didn’t ask for a penny to do CADs and a price estimate. There were great discounts available, plus gift card rebates. And the selection and price was as good, or better, than anywhere. We passed on a few candidates including our own local Home Depot (they wanted $100 before they would even talk to us about prices) and Chris & Dick’s (they wouldn’t bid to our specs).

Stove: We were going Wolf all the way and had great support from Roth Distributing in Salt Lake City. Roth holds weekly Wednesday cooking classes or product introductions that are fabulous in their concept kitchens. We were sold (also almost sold on Sub Zero). Wolf is great, plus the company’s in my hometown of Madison, WI. It’s hard to shop discounts on Wolf, though, as everyone is common rated. We wanted the Wolf dual fuel (gas range, electric convection oven). Lo and behold, we found one at the Mountainland Design’s scratch and dent store at 1123 S. 300 West in Salt Lake City. The crew there is fabulous, with great customer service.

Stuff For Sale
And, if you’re interested in the old cabinets, we have them for sale on Craig’s List. We’ll also be selling the Kenmore dishwasher, Kenmore side-by-side refrigerator, Kenmore garbage disposal, Magic Chef range top and Magic Chef oven.

Kitchen Today

May 12, 2008 – Checkout the window patterns on the back wall. The new Pella windows will afford guests with a wonderful view of the mountains.

May 12, 2008 – Later in the evening, the old “L” is gone. Notice the blue marks on the floor for the new island.

May 17, 2008 – This was one job we should NEVER have attempted – demolishing the floor. We did a great job when we laid the tile ourselves 15 years ago. But, we made significant progress before wising up and hiring the kids next door to finish it up. Here’s Carole in action with the power floor scraper (completely useless and waste of $50 rental). The tools of the trade here are simply a massive Johnson bar, big crow bar, brooms and Craftsman Wet-Vac.

Tags: kitchen, remodel

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