When I was planning for my kitchen remodel, Vel's detailed blog posts of her gorgeous kitchen remodel at Life & Home At 2102, were a great inspiration and full of valuable information for me. So I decided when it was my turn I'd share too, in the hope it might help someone else. I guess you could say I'm paying it forward...
Last weekend I finally packed up my kitchen in anticipation for our remodel!
I was so glad that last year when we thought we would be selling our home and moving I purged my kitchen of twenty-five years worth of plastic water bottles, mismatched food storage containers, and broken corn on the cob holders. (You know, all that stuff that sits in our cupboards and drawers, but we never use.)
It made packing so much easier to have that already done!
Before I started, I took photos of the contents of every cabinet and drawer, numbered them, and made a printout.
I packed each cabinet and drawer in separate boxes, then wrote the corresponding number from the print onto the box before sealing it. This way, if there's something we need later we can check the photo for the box number and get to it easily without searching through all the boxes.
Packing each cabinet and drawer separately and having photos of how everything was organized in the kitchen before the remodel will help save me time when I unpack, too.
Kitchen boxes are on one side of the living room, and the stove, dishwasher, and dining room boxes are on the other side. There's an aisle down the middle to the front door, and our crystal and silver is tucked under the sheets on every surface.
As you can see, our living room, dining room, and master bedroom are separated from the back of the house by the kitchen. Our contractor has sealed off the kitchen and dining room from the living room and master bedroom in the front and from the family room in the back, so we can't get through from one end of the house to the other while work is going on.
We spend most of our time in the back side of the house where my craft room is and my husband's office is anyway, and since we couldn't get in and out of our master bedroom, we decided to move into the guest room and live in the back side of the house while using the front half for storage during construction. We bought a small microwave oven and moved the fridge into the family room, and we'll be living this way for about a month.
If
we want to see the kitchen progress we have to go outside through the back door
and in through the side laundry room door. And if we want to go into the
living room to turn the heat up or down, we have to go outside to the front yard and through the
front door!
This is the taped off doorway to the kitchen that has to stay sealed tight to keep the construction dust and dirt out. If you've ever lived in a construction zone, you know that taped plastic only comes down upon pain of death!
We moved the dining room drop leaf table into a corner of the family room, and the refrigerator is in an opposite corner. (Tucker is indignant that we moved his bed temporarily for the fridge.)
The microwave is on the guest room dresser with dry food in the drawers below, and a few dishes are in an old cabinet we put in the closet beside it. Cutlery is in the bedside table drawer on the other side of the dresser. Believe me, I know, it's a weird situation, but it beats spending thousands of dollars moving into a rental during the remodel, and I'll happily eat sandwiches and soup for awhile to get a new kitchen!
The other bedroom on this side of the house is my craft room, and because of the unusually cold weather we've been having here in Boise recently, I've had to move the painting of the new kitchen cabinet doors in there. When I'm not out shopping for kitchen fixtures, I'm painting these doors. With a dry-to-the-touch time of four hours and a re-coat time of overnight for the oil based paint I use, it's a somewhat small job that's taking up a whole lot of room and time.
If you look closely, you'll see a few pumpkins in the white stand on the dining room table in the photo above and a blurry yellow mum outside the door on the deck. I'm afraid that's all the time I've had for fall decorating. I get a glimpse of all the beautiful fall decor on Pinterest as I search for kitchen curtain ideas, and oh, how I miss it! I hope to make up for it when Thanksgiving rolls around and I have a new kitchen.
So we're pretty cozy here now! Our temporary living arrangement reminds my husband and me of our college days living in tiny one room apartments, and it's kind of like camping out, too.
Dare I say romantic?
Well, maybe not quite, but we are so lucky to have enough space to camp out here snug and warm together in our own home.
To see our remodel plans and all updates just click here or on the My Kitchen Remodel photo over on my sidebar. Next update I'll be sharing the demo!
