Hello Ikeafans,

I've been reading this website for a few months now. I'm kinda doing things backwards and starting this blog now, when our remodel is almost finished. But, I will start from the beginning.

We knew when we bought our house 2+ years ago, that we needed to remodel our kitchen at some point. My husband and I are both huge IKEA fans - and see no problem with driving the 300 miles one way to Chicago to do a little shopping, and we were planning on doing an IKEA kitchen all along. But this spring we kind of accidently did some appliance looking and bought a refrigerator. And then a stove. Then a OTR microwave and dishwasher. So it was time for our old kitchen to go.

We refinanced our house, found out we had a much higher value (despite nasty kitchen), got an equity loan and tada! - kitchen renovation paid for! We have a motto that if it happens easy - it's meant to happen.

CHAPTER 1 - Our Old Kitchen

So, here is the very cluttered old kitchen...



The oven was horrible, cooked unevenly and you had to GUESS the temperature, partly because the oven was crappy, and partly because the numbers had rubbed off the knob. It was some completely non-standard size so I couldn't just swap out the knob. I tried.

The cabinets were thin, and I had to crawl into the corner cabinet to get anything in or out. And whatever didn't fit within the cabinets got thrown on top. Including all our chips - which sometimes took 2 or 3 tosses just to get a bag to STAY THERE.

But, the kitchen is huge compared to the horrible kitchen with 2 square feet of counter that we tolerated for 5 years in our rental flat, and the layout is great.



I bought the metal table for Ken (husband, then boyfriend) as his first Christmas present. You can also see Ripley, dog #1, and the fabulous meat poster I got in Austria.



We know there was a nice fridge here before they put the house on the market, because the hookup was there for the water and ice. At some point they replaced it with this. And we bought the metal cart cause we desperately needed a place to put things. It functioned fine, but it was UGLY.

AND......... here is a sneak peak of things today.


Stay tuned for Chapter 2 - Ken and Amanda Drive to Chicago and Buy a Kitchen