There's a fine line between chaos and creation

Our kitchen has been done for a few weeks now, and it has been really hard to believe that we actually have a beautiful, amazing, working, brand new kitchen. 

Sometimes I would just sing the song in the title of this blog to myself, and realize how true it was. I would look at my house and think "CHAOS!!" but then something new would be done, and I would think "CREATION!!" It is funny how true that fine line thing is. 

It was SUCH an involved and annoying process that we never thought it would ever be done, times that we regretted even starting the process, and times that we thought we had made a mistake! We definitely learned a lot about home repair, that if you have the means to hire a contractor that takes care of the scheduling of work to be done, it is much to be preferred over the route that we went. Of course, we had so much to do that we wouldn't have been able to afford to do it any other way, but by far the most stressful part of the process for me was the constant phone calls to different companies, comparing prices, scheduling when workers can come, having to write checks to all of them. :/

As I said, it is so beautiful and functional now that I barely remember everything that happened. I hope I don't have to go through anything this big again for a while. 

This is actually progress! Once our kitchen was ripped out, we discovered that the floor underneath was rotten. This is new plywood flooring, the new electrical outlets that Justin installed for our dishwasher, the new gasline for our gas cooktop, new copper plumbing and extensions to move our sink down.

John was not thrilled that there was something new for him to do pretty much every night when he got home, from putting in outlets, to drywall, to painting. Like I said, it was stressful to have to have something specific done on a certain day so the next crew can come in and do their thing the next day. It was REALLY hard for both of us to depend on the word and skill of other people that we don't know. Luckily we were pleasantly surprised with everyone we worked with. 

Only half the boxes of cabinets. Thanks to Aunt Judy and my mom who had the kitchen all painted before they came in!

Starting to come together!

We liked our cabinet guys the best. They were funny and easy to talk to.

Cabinets are done, wood put in for the counters to go in the next day.

Where the oven will go.

I was passionate about my choice of sink, given that I was used to operating with a single, narrow bowl.

We tried to involve Owen in as much of the process as possible, even though I am sure he won't remember. I want him to grow up being in the middle of everything, learning how things work.  

Owen literally "hanging out" at Home Depot. We were there A LOT during this process.

I love watching John think and work.

 These are what the rest of the house looked like, as everything else was displaced. The living room functioned as our dining room, and the computer room functioned as a storage room/kitchen.

I wish I could say it looked this organized for the whole process. Unfortunately, the house was pretty much a pigsty.

Once the kitchen was done, we had to begin the lovely process of putting everything back. That was a bigger ordeal than I was expecting. I was so thankful to have lots of help!

Up next: putting everything back, and the big reveal!