When we moved into our townhouse it had a terrible kitchen: there wasn’t enough cabinet space, the cabinets were terrible builder basic quality, the counter tops were made of cheap laminate, there wasn’t enough working space on the counters, the sink was thin gauge metal with a bad faucet and garbage disposal. The seller did install new appliances before we moved in, which we were able to salvage. We needed a change!
We had a stroke of luck when my parents decided to buy / renovate a house in Madison. The house had recently had a new kitchen installed, but the renovation plan called for substantial floor plan changes yet another new kitchen. We jumped on the opportunity to salvage cabinets, and got to work scheming. Our kitchen’s floor plan doesn’t leave much room for creative freedom - everything sort of has a natural place. We found ourselves with a large selection of cabinets (the Madison house’s kitchen was much bigger than ours) but having to solve the jigsaw puzzle of fitting those into a very particular layout. With a lot of measuring and some out of the box thinking, we found an arrangement that fit our footprint and which needed minimal customization / fabrication. We rented a 1 way uhaul truck, loaded up the cabinets, and drove them from madison to our house in Illinois. They sat in the basement for a couple of months while we finished planning.
We also decided to expand our storage space and counter space by adding an island. The island was to follow the footprint of an existing half wall, and so it had a very specific layout with non-standard sizes and angles. We decided to have these cabinets custom-built, and worked with some dude at home depot to work up a plan and place an order. The island was on the order of $2200.
When the custom cabinet order was ready, we got to work. We did the whole demolition and installation over the course of a weekend, with the exception of the countertops and backsplash. Kaylin and I did most of the demolition Friday night, a decent amount of the installation on Saturday, and Matt showed up late (naturally) Sunday to help with some finishing touches.
About a week later the granite company installed the countertops. And a couple of weeks after that we installed a marble backsplash. The counters cost a couple grand, the backsplash cost a couple hundred. The sink, faucet, and garbage disposal were another $500 or so. Overall, we installed the kitchen for < $5000, which was just incredible. Super fulfilling project. And as I write this in August 2022, it’s still in fantastic shape and is super functional.
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