When we purchased our home back in 2011, we guessed a kitchen remodel would be in the near future. We had old nasty cabinets, vinyl floors, a dirty stainless sink, no storage (unfortunately the lovely wardrobe pictured didn't come with the house) and none of the appliances fit in their spaces. Little did we know that our kitchen remodel would be more of an "waaaay in the future" project and less of a "in the NEAR future" sort of project. It took us six long years to mentally & financially prepare for this extensive remodel. It would be the biggest DIY project we would ever take on together as a married couple. We knew we had to keep the budget under 10k, so hiring a GC was not an option for us. We had to be smart with our purchases and very wise about what we could sub out and what we needed to do ourselves. Now we all have our gifts, and I understand that gutting and rebuilding a kitchen isn't for everyone. Thankfully, I am married to handy, problem-solving type of guy (but don't ask him to balance a checkbook!) so we knew we could tackle some of the items ourselves.
When we had finally saved up enough money to build our dream kitchen, we still had some hesitations. Living without a kitchen wouldn't be easy for our family of four. What finally pushed us off the cliff was a mouse problem (ewww!) and a plumbing issue that caused water damage under our sink. We knew it was time. We did demo ourselves. If you are trying to pinch pennies in your kitchen remodel - demo is something anyone can do. It really was great stress relief. I thought about all those mice and just let that sledgehammer go to town on those cabinets. Ha!
The only items we subbed out were electrical (for safety's sake) and tile (for sanity's sake). We were able to find subs that did extra jobs on the weekends and were able to save a lot of $ that way.
Two months later, we had finally reached the finish line. We both have day jobs so that was about as quickly as we could move. We hit several roadblocks and had about an equal number of wins and losses. We spent probably 1k more than we budgeted just to cover all those late night Home Depot trips - not to mention we had to buy two sinks because we broke the first one! We are so still grateful we chose to DIY though, custom kitchens cost anywhere from 20-40k so the amount of money we were able to save by doing it ourselves was worth all the pain.
Here are the links for all of the the materials we used in our Mountainside kitchen! I'll be adding more detailed posts in the future - a post dedicated to all the custom items Jarrod built for our kitchen.
Cabinets: Ikea SEKTION kitchen cabinets in Veddinge White
Countertop: IKEA Barkboda Walnut Herringbone
Oven: Nutid Self-Cleaning Convection Oven
Stove: Nutid 4 element glass ceramic cooktop
Bar Stools: Blu Dot
Pendant Light: West Elm
Cabinet hardware: Ebay (I did a search for modern brass pulls, they ship directly from China. Not our ideal situation, but we were on a budget! We got ALL our pulls for less than $50)
Floor tile: MARAZZI Calacatta 12 in. x 24 in. Glazed Porcelain Floor and Wall Tile
Bar pendants: Fjord Rod in Black Matte by Cedar and Moss
Breakfast bar, faux beam, shiplap hood: These items were custom built by Jarrod (more on that to come)