After many months of deliberation and research for the kitchen including getting nine cabinet quotes and meeting with six general contractors (plus talking to another via phone) I think we are finally at a point where we are about to finalize who we are going with. Finally! The two last orders of business are checking the references for the general contractor and somehow getting the cabinets down in price. The two strangest experiences we’ve had while meeting with so many people? The husband and I spent TWO HOURS working on a cabinet layout with a really nice lady at The Cabinet Center in San Carlos, CA. Everything went well and we were thinking working with her would be a good choice since she was so nice, we just needed to see the quote. That was about a month and two emails ago and we just never heard back. Hope she’s okay! The second and way more strange event was spending TWO or more hours listening to a general contractor talk and SING to us. It was like being held captive in our own house. Apparently the guy likes to hear himself talk (and sing).

The first picture above shows the first version of the cabinet layout but I wanted the cabinets to come closer to the corner window and the removal of the wall wasn’t taken into account. This second picture shows the wall being taken out, another cabinet door on the right and a potential wine rack above the refrigerator (which won’t look like it is in the picture!). As you can see, the cabinet peninsula will not really have an overhang since we don’t have that much space but people will be able to stand there and we can still use it to serve. Part of the thought for that peninsula is that we wanted to come right to the edge of the existing wood flooring because it would be hard to fill/replicate the wood flooring if we left any space between the existing edge and the cabinet.

The moral of the story is that we are making progress. As for cabinet style, the cabinet guy we are working with will probably set us up with KraftMaid because it’s the cheapest option. We are trying to figure out what style fits in our budget best and then will pick a color after that. Here are two potential contenders (ignore the maple/cherry wood type and color):

These cabinets are about 3-4 times as expensive as Chinese cabinets that are filled with formaldehyde and chemicals. Bummer. Maybe we should just get the Chinese ones and a gas mask?

That’s the update for now. I’m hoping we will get everything finalized by the end of the month and then can start construction in May. By the end of summer we should have a new kitchen and new stove! There’s still a lot of work between now and then, though.