Why??????
(1) crummy cabs were made of the softest pine (unbeknownst to us at the time!); their doors have been falling off for the past 13 years.
(2) whitewashed pine cabs in a kitchen that is open to the family room has put a real designing damper on the furniture that looks good in our family room. This time around we're going for darker cherry cabs.
(3) our island is too long; I have to walk around it and into the family room to get to my pie safe, which has been a real PIA for the past 13 1/2 years!
(4) main kitchen sink has been in the island and has caused people eating at or sitting at the island to get splashed when I'm working there. This next kitchen, NO sink on island!
*****15.5 hours until demolition starts and counting!

The kitchen just didn't fit with the rest of my condo. The unit is a condo conversion and the building is a bit under 20 years old -- and it was the original kitchen. So part of the reason involved aesthetics. Then there was the practical reason. The cabinets did not go up to the ceiling thus providing me with a lovely grease trap on the top of the cabinets since there's no way to vent to the outside.

The more important reason was that I really like to cook. Right after I decided to renovate, the oven adopted a two temperature approach to baking. It was either off or incinerating anything I put in it. It was, quite literally, a fire hazard. Either I could start replacing the appliances in a piecemeal fashion, or I could have the kitchen I wanted. I opted for the latter.

Primary reason was becuase the cheap 1981 cabinets were falling apart (you know its bad when one drawer falls down into the other). The insides of the cabs were the lovely stamped-on wood pattern (stamped directly onto the particle board) after 25+ yrs of use that particle board was NOT in good shape.

Secondary reasons: bad layout (only about 4' between fridge and stove was murderous during holidays), laminate countertop was looking pretty shabby.

Well, the first reason was the room was too darn small, and I was storing my piles of stuff on top of piles of OTHER stuff. Then, the cabinets were coated with grease when we moved in, and by the time I got it off the finish was coming with it. Finally, the old laminate counters were peeling apart. The major reason was finding out we actually had built up enough equity for a loan :-)

Emmie

We are working on our renovation right now...and besides the fact that the kitchen is 50 years old it really boils down to 2 words - NO DISHWASHER.

Oh gosh, why did we remodel the kitchen?

1) Functional layout. If you opened the dishwasher, no one could walk by. You couldn't open the freezer door and pull the ice bin out without moving the fridge first (almost impossible). The microwave was down low, meaning you had to stoop to reach it. No storage space - half of our kitchen was out in the garage. And FORGET buying a new fridge - the only way a fridge could go in and out of that kitchen was UP AND OVER the peninsula.

2) The range was 28 years old. It had loads of problems. One oven smoked at above 350F and the vent fan hadn't worked in years. It was a pain in the tush to clean. When it left, I did not miss it. See #1 about getting a new appliance into that kitchen.

3) The electrical in the kitchen all needed work. The outlets were not to code, but half of them didn't work, either! The plumbing leaked under the sink, causing the undersink cabinet to begin to rot.

4) Aesthetics: drawers broken, cabinet fronts scratched, tile countertops (!) where the grout was disgusting and the tiles getting chipped.

5) The kitchen was 28 years old!!!

DonnaR/CA

1. About 2 years ago, I began doing a very modest rehab/restoration of my 100 year old house, very slowly, and in stages. The kitchen was the only room on the floor that was in the same state as when my ex and I bought the house 20 years ago. As only the 3rd owner of this house, I would guestimate, from the age of the sink and appliances, to the wallpaper, to the extremely worn unfitted pieces to the one small sink cabinet with rotted wood and flaking laminate countertop, that it had been last remodelded somewhere in the 1940's. . . if then. With the rest of the house being spiffed up, it became almost criminal to leave the kitchen untouched.

2. What started off as a simple update has now morphed into a rather extensive remodel. I blame all of that on having discovered this GW forum and having become TKO in the process! So far, the kitchen is my biggest home improvement project yet. Just wish I had a clue as to when I may ever see its completion!

Why? Several reasons:

1) I discovered after moving in that when I put my dinner plates in the upper cabinet the doors wouldn't close. And these aren't large plates.

2) The only place for trash is under the sink, and there is only room for an 8 gallon trash can!

3) Not enough storage in general. Just to get by in the meantime I had to build some shelves under a peninsula that had nothing under it. (I suppose it was intended to have stools, but if you did that you would be sitting inside the kitchen looking out, and getting in the way of the cook.

4) the appliances are dated. The range only has two working burners.

5) The floor is crappy vinyl and shot.

6) The lighting is awful.

7) The cabinets are cheap builder grade, old, and the doors no longer close right.

We bought our house new 4 years ago. Unfortunately it was an inventory so we got to pick nothing. The intended owners selected color/cabs/everything that was not my choice and I hated. We got a great deal on the house and I knew the first time I walked in that I would be ripping out the kitchen and getting rid of the "frost" (pink) maple cabinets. We traded the brand new white appliances to an appliance store and got 50% which went toward ss appliances.

This started a snowball effect. From there, we had the taupe carpet and taupe tile removed from the 1st level and replaced with brazilian cherry. Then replaced the same pink cabinets in all the bathrooms.

And now we are selling (or trying to) as we build our dream & forever house.

Floor needing replacing then one thing led to another. Doesn't it always? When DH mentioned getting new cabinets, there was no way in hell I was going to decline :-)

Though we didn't change our kitchen floorplan, 100% of the interior kitchen is new including drywall and ceiling. Frankly, it really did need it so I was happy for our snowball effect this time.

Why did we renovate:

At 12:03 AM on March 9th the fire alarm went off in the house. We discovered that our garage was on fire. The next thing we knew....four hours later...we lost 1/3 of the house to fire and 2/3 to smoke and water damage. We loved everything about our house. We built it 10 yrs ago.

So, now we are in the process of rebuilding. The house should be ready by Feb 08...I know... OY!!!!

The hardest part (besides the obvious) is ordering everything from cabinets to granite to flooring to paint to handles, doors, windows, sinks, tile....etc. I thought it was hard purchasing 3 new cars in a matter of 2 weeks...but this is way harder. Too many decisions....way too many!!

http://www.mycommunity.com/town/Cedar_Grove/List_View/view.html?type=photos&action=photo_popup&sub_id=16811&photo_url=16811_5_fire83-7-07.jpg

I am so glad I found you all to help me get through this. I will post pics (hopefully) when I am in and settled.

Our 1930s house needed a lot of work when we moved in 3 years ago and we'd already spent quite a lot on deferred maintenance, updating mechanicals and such so the kitchen renovation was supposed to happen sometime in the misty future.

BUT! I just couldn't stand that kitchen!!! It had been redone in 1980 with dark oak cabinets, white tile backsplash, white tile counter on one side and white formica on the other. I hated those cabinets. They were the kind that were made to look like raised panel, with a router creating the "raised" part.

The countertops were damaged just about everywhere with chips and cracks in the tile and cracks and stains on the formica.

The drop-in cast iron sink was the worst. It had a huge round stain on the bottom. Evidently someone had put a scalding pot there. I tried everything on that stain, even scrubbed for an hour with pumice stone, but no matter what, no matter how much I cleaned it, it always came right back. It always looked dirty. Plus, it was big AND it had a tilt-out tray in front, which meant there wasn't even enough space between the back of it and the backsplash to wipe up water splashes. You couldn't even get your fingers down in there. A previous owner had solved that problem with a bunch of gloppy caulk back there. It was disgusting.

There was no place to put the trash except in front of the back door and most of the drawers were broken.

I complained so much about having to work in that ugly, dark, broken-down kitchen that DH finally said, take $10K and give it a facelift.

Okay, great! Now what can I do for $10K? I thought surely I can at least get a new sink and faucet, new countertops, and maybe one or two new appliances to start (I had an almond fridge, black-and-white range, black microwave and white DW).

But then, what's that going to look like? New sink and c-tops with the old ugly dark cabinets? So then we decided we'd reface the cabs. That's when we found out about the previous water damage that had ruined the sink wall base cabs. Okay, we'd have the carpenter build a new base run of cabs on that one wall and reface the existing everything else.

By the time I finally toted up the estimate on all that, DH and I realized we'd just have to go the whole route. We gutted the kitchen down to the studs. Demo began on May 5th and we're still working on it. It's slow going because I'm doing a lot of the work myself and I'm not exactly a ball of energy. But it's getting there. When I walk into the kitchen now, I don't have to lose my appetite.

We moved into our 1965 home 6 years ago. It had the original kitchen with dark dated ash wood cabinets, white tile (a few were chipped/cracked), country wallpaper, very minimal counter space, fridge was next to a main door therefore whoever wanted to walk in while the fridge door was open had to wait to get in the kitchen, the original cooktop pilot light burned out, so was replaced with a range thus leaving a big opening in the wall oven area which was to be a pantry (no pantry), very cramped with the eat in table, overhang cabinets which ultimately blocked views and natural light (needed a "deaf friendly" kitchen where we could see everything).

My Kitchen is now functional, loads of counterspace, open, very easy to use, easy on the eyes....can see into the family/dining areas, can easily walk in at any time...ahhh....

Thank goodness!

We waited 15 years to renovate the mess the previous owner had created. We renovated for 1.) better layout with prep sink, more storage, better use of space , 2.) worn counters, upper shelves broken, 3.) aesthetics (jury's out on this one because I really like mishmashed kitchens in old houses.)

The vertical boards nailed into the fronts of the upper shelves are bracing them because the previous owner hadn't nailed them into studs. We figured this out as the shelves started to tip downward and we realized the sheetrock was being pulled away from the studs. The counters were made from luan. They got very nasty over our first few years--the outer coating wore away and we were left with a grayish mess in the most worn areas. The only other storage was more open shelves to the right of the sink (you can see the dishdrainer in the before photo--sink was just to the right) and a base cabinet with 2 doors that DH found in the garage (from 2 owners previous--1950's?) that we stuck next to the fridge. The old kitchen was so cold (very leaky window above sink) that it would often be below 60 during the winter with the heat on full force. On really cold mornings I wrapped a wool blanket over my bathrobe and brought the electric space heater down from the bathroom and turned the oven on.

northwest corner before and after

{{!gwi}} {{!gwi}}

northeast

{{gwi:2109049}} {{!gwi}}

We were able to double our usable space by removing the woodstove and the ugly concrete chimney behind it, removing an exterior door and moving stairs to the basement.

Not seen in the "before" photos is the rough board DH nailed high up on the north wall to cover up the hole a rat gnawed while I was cooking dinner soon after we moved here (our barn was rented to a dairy farmer at the time--the rats left with the cows.) I didn't enjoy seeing its nose.

I look forward to reading this thread between innings during the baseball games tonight.

1. The 1850's house had 3 'kitchens', each consisting of a corner with a hot water tank, a large hanging sink circa 1920, & a gas pipe. Oh, I almost forgot that 2 of these areas had rotten floors.

2. After living in a cheap 'temporary' kitchen in the basement for 14 years, a real kitchen was overdue. After seeing some of the 'before' pics that others had, my temporary looked pretty good!

OK. I got a new reason.

The expense for the amount of alcohol that I needed to forget that I bought a house with such an ugly kitchen far exceeded the cost of renovating.

!!

Why? Where do I begin ... I guess with buying an old house!

Vinyl floor cracked, burned, cut, badly.

Particle board on cabinet bottoms bulging out from wet dishes.

Sink cabinet discusting; seems like a bad leak took a toll on it, fungus growing underneath a rubber mat I'm afraid to remove.

Laminate countertop was probably heavily abused too, especially around the sink. I could survive the cuts (to the countertop, of course), but water damage ... yuck.

No light on countertops, a ceiling light lighting my back both at the sink and the working area.

Range hood not working.

Old appliances, range oven without a handle (makes fun opening it).

Fridge opening the wrong way with screwes rusted so it can't be changed. Too big, too bulky, blocking natural light to the sink.

Paint peeling off at places.

Outles barely hanging in walls.

Poor use of space ... 30" range standing in 43" space, talk about free roaming ;)

But -- it's so much fun to take it down and put my own in, once I get to that point :)

Old kitchen was ugly and lacking in both the cabinet and the counter space. I actually had more space in the apartment we lived in (it was a very nice place I have to say) before buying the house.

Cabinets were "classic" builder's grade of the 1980's, with blind corners and all.

Shallow sink, split evenly in the middle. So useless.

Cream colored laminate that was not stain resistant at all.

No garbage disposal, and the side spray did not work.

appliances were original to the house (1987) and the coils on the electric range were uneven.

No pantry closet.

Once the fridge died, we started seriously planning the remodel. We got the nice replacement, and for a while the built-in looked really out of place!

Not enough light and not enough outlets. My house was built when all small appliances came with 6 foot cords, so I suppose 6 outlets was adequate back then.

Oh yeah, I guess the 60's white formica with the gold flecks is also a pretty good reason...

One look should tell you why.

{{gwi:2109050}}

OMG! I hope you are in the sunshine state. I bet you put down a glass of orange juice and can't find it.

We always thought we would be moving on so when DH decided to stay put until retiring we decided to do a whole house makeover. We have a great lot with acreage on top a ridge. The properties on both sides are absentee landowners so we have a lot of room and privacy and wildlife.
The kitchen had been remodeled in 1990 (we bought in 1996). It was small and cramped without a place to sit. The drawer bottoms were falling out. The dishwasher never worked and the oven burned everything on the backside. The vinyl floor had cigarette burns. The countertops were burned. The drop-in cast iron sink was chipped and I cut my hand so many times wiping around it that I was afraid to let anyone else near it. One corner of the formica countertop was broken and I cut my arm on that many times while rounding the corner. I have the scars to prove it. We all love the new kitchen but I think my grandkids miss the little fence that separated the kitchen from the living room. They could swing on it, walk on it and the short ones could walk through it. Anyone else have a fence around their kitchen??!!

"OMG! I hope you are in the sunshine state. I bet you put down a glass of orange juice and can't find it."

I actually grew up in Florida, but I'm now in Ontario, Canada. When I moved in with my spouse, it was painted like that. I would have NEVER chose those colors. It's taken 6 yrs to finally get rid of it.

OK, here goes:
1. needed a new floor and counter top
2. Well you aren't going to put that old faucet on the new counter top are you?
3. Granite and quartz didn't look right with the '80s oak cabinets, even though they were in pretty good condition. Ok, will have to spring for new cabinets, no sense in spend thousands on a fancy counter top and hundreds on a new faucet on tired looking cabinets, right?
4. What are you going to put for a floor? Well even high end vinyl was over 1000.00 installed, and the livingroom is going to look kind of shabby with that old carpeting with a new kitchen off it. OK, wood floors in the livingroom are something I have been meaning to do for years, better do it now.
5. Well, when you finally get around to opening up the livingroom and kitchen for a more open concept, which you have always wanted to do, won't those two different floors in the kitchen and living room look odd?
6. OK, better put hardwood throughout both
7. Well, once you finally get around to opening up that wall between the livingroom and kitchen a little, you are going to have a devil of a time weaving in new hardwood flooring that will match the hardwood that will have aged and darkened by then. OK, better get that wall opened up before I do the floor.
8.Well, now the staircase going upstairs that also still has the old carpeting from the livingroom in it is going have to be done. Since the floors and original woodwork in the house are light and my cabinets and preference in furniture is dark, what do I do with the stairs? OK, better use those to coordinate the rest of the house, have the light oak treads refinished from the carpeting, paint the skirts and spindles white and do the railings in a dark stain.
9. Better call the bank back and let them know I will need more money for that refi that will take 5 years off the mortgage...

10. Oh my, still a little over budget, but if I change the floor from 3/4" maple to 3/4 white oak, and put those hardwood floors in myself, and that estimate for the plummer seems way too high, and if I sub the work out myself, I think I can take almost another thousand off there, and the guy who is going to finish the floors might be on the high side, will find out who the neighbors used and if I can cut a little there and still have a nice job done...
    WOW, actually back within budget again, and can still pay the house off early...
11. Think I'll check out that kitchen forum I looked at briefly when I thought about remodeling last year...
12. Oh, oh, great ideas there, but looks like I am going to need more money again for all these things I didn't realize I really, really NEED, yes, honest NEED, NEED NEED...

Sue

Oh, this is fun!
1. My kitchen is way too small! It works well for one as I can reach every appliance without moving, but DH is tired of hitting his shin on the dishwasher. And we have to literaly clear the room to open the oven.

2. The cabinets are very inconvient. One blind corner opening is so small I have to send my 7 yo DD in (yes climb into the cabinet) after stuff that somehow got pushed to the back. She's not going to be this small forever!

3. The 80's "country kitchen" theme doesn't work well with my 100+ yo farmhouse.

4. The stained cream laminete countertop touches the wall in one corner and is an inch away from the wall in another corner.

5. Our current kitchen used to be the back porch and when enclosed wasn't insulated well. So when the temperatures drop below 15 degrees F, the insides of the cabinets freeze! Pipes below our sink (DH reran them inside the cabinet so we can at least get to them) will burst if we don't keep a heater running in the cabinet. And no food can be stored in the outside, unless you want it frozen!

6. One light in the middle of the room so at night you have to work in your own shadow.

I am here to get ideas of renovation without spending lots of dough! I truly miss my old kitchen!

Now I have this!

{{!gwi}}

I need tons of help!

Original house was built in 1937, kitchen had been "updated" at some point, but we don't know when...
- 2 electric outlets in the whole kitchen. Yep, TWO - one by the refrigerator and one on a wall. Had to unplug the coffee to plug in the toaster, etc
- WAY small, totally impossible for 2 people to cook in
- bad flow: the kitchen was the path between the LR/DR and the den, also the only entrance to the basement
- cabinets were literally falling apart - drawer front would fall off in my hand as I opened a drawer, cabinet doors were falling off
- any and all hardware was so old that it wasn't made anymore, so as handles or hinges fell apart, they couldn't be replaced

bump

I've loved reading the responses. I'd say I always knew we would want to update the kitchen at some point - though you may ask what's not to love about poor quality oak cabinets, white formica, and aging vinyl flooring. But to be honest I could live with all that. I really didn't spend that much time cooking in the kitchen and would wonder why all the home magazines used so much space showing off kitchen renovations. However, once I had my first child the 1 foot of counterspace near the stove and the other near the sink wasn't enough ... there was baby food on the dining room table because there was no storage in the kitchen. All the small appliances were in the basement. If I wanted to toast a bagel I would have to go to the basement to bring up the toaster oven ...which eventually ended up on the dining room table. If we wanted to use the dishwasher to wash the bottles (which it seem like there was a never ending amount that needed to be cleaned) the dish washer sounded like a 747 and it seemed like it was on the last leg. Then of course our families wanted to see their first grandchild and we would have to clear the babyfood, mail,and toaster oven off the dining room table or go out to eat... So while the kitchen renovation was a stressful time I am happy we finished it and are getting to enjoy it. I am still at 95% (that last 5% is the hardest) 2 years later but now am figuring out the best way to organize the cabinets, learning how to cook, and deciding on a backsplash. I will admit the dining room table is still a problem area but that touches a different forum - my 2008 goal to reduce clutter. Now atleast the food is in the pantry, the toaster is on the counter, the mail is in the desk area and the dish washer is so quiet you only know it is on because of the little red light.

When we bought our 1942 Cape Cod, we thought the kitchen was cute and liveable as it was. But then we found out that in order to add on to the house, we'd have to rewire and replumb everything. This meant gutting the kitchen.

We weren't too sad, it was dated (slightly remodeled in the 80's). And there was precious storage space. There was a chimney in one corner that took up a lot of space and no cabinets above the stove or fridge. Needless to say, we nearly doubled our cabinet space once we took out the chimney and put in the new cabinets.

But we tried to keep the 40's charm by putting in shaker cabinets that go to the ceiling like the old ones. And while it would've been cool to put in a reproduction linoleum floor, we chose to refinish the fir underlayment. It's amazing they used to use such nice wood underneath the linoleum!

It has been fun and exasperating at times, but it's turning out nice so far. We'll be glad when we're finally done. We've been working on it along with the rest of the house for 5 years, and have yet to move in. Soon, soon...

These responses are great! It is interesting to find out why people renovate. I actually got a wild hair when I passed by a granite place offering cheap granite ($35/sq ft for exotic) with a free sink and fell in love with a slab of Sienna Bordeaux granite. I figured we could redo the counter tops and get a 4" backsplash for less than $3500.

That started the process and one thing led to another and we are doing a minor renovation well above what my husband wanted to spend. It won't be like most of the beautiful renovations on this forum but it will be nice for us.

We didn't go with the cheap granite people, they over measured, said the Sienna Bordeaux was for one of the people who worked there and said I didn't need to pick out my slab, they would do it for me. Red Flag, so we went with a reputable GH/Kitchen Bath Designer.

ooh fun!
Mine are
Function
Aesthetics

mine is part of a bigger remodel of our downstairs. It's a 1950's cape and is just poorly laid out for 2007 living. My biggest beef is that my side entry door -t he one we use all the time is clear across the yard from the drive way. Driveway on the right of the house, kitchen and door on the left. That was the main push since we've been here 14 years ago - get that door somehow onto the correct (the right) side of the house. But our kitchen is old (remodeled probably early 80s) with very cheap paneling and not real cabinets (original cabinets made on site). The kitchen space didn't function very well either. While the kitchen size was pretty good,and I had a big run of counter tops, it didn't help - because I could prep food easy enough but then I had to drag it clear across the room to the stove or the fridge and there were no counters there. It just wasn't a good cooking kitchen. Not to mention that the traffic flow was right in the middle of the work area. We also wanted a screened in deck with a slider, so I found that by gutting the space and starting over (kitchen, bath, spare room) I could get everything I always wanted.

My Reasons:

1. god awful - ugly! (And yet we bought the place anyway).

2. Horribly out dated original 1966 cabinets and layout someone painted white and yellow with red apples in an ill attempt to brighten the place up.
Layout was totally dysfunctional.

3. Original avocado green wall oven on last leg. No counter space, cabs falling apart, laminate peeling, etc.

DH's reason: See Bob411's above!

And this was the entire kitchen!

Chain reaction.

First, the microwave broke (OTR). I was melting butter one day when suddenly I heard a loud pop, the bottom metal piece bent out, and the butter didn't melt. Microwave was a goner.

Went to the store to buy a new microwave and got free delivery if we bought two appliances. Well, we HAD been eyeing a new dishwasher for a while. Ours was a builder-special that was so loud you couldn't hear the TV in the next room when it was on.

So we bought both. Then figured that if we were going to replace the dishwasher, we should get that granite countertop we always wanted BEFORE it was installed, so as not to damage the granite when pulling the old tight, lopsided one out.

Once the granite was installed, I now hated my cabinets. Painted those white, installed new cabinet doors. At around the same time we redid the floors in the entire house, including the kitchen.

After all that we figured we'd just get a new fridge and range too.

Chain reaction. :)

Here is a link that might be useful: Kitchen pictures in kitchen album

Well, it started like this. In our previous house, all of our bedrooms were upstairs. The master bathroom shower was directly over the family room, and occasionally, I would be watching television when drips would fall into my chip bowl. Plumber #1 said it was the shower pan. So did plumbers #2-3. I started pricing out a bathroom remodel in a house I really never liked. I was 7 months pregnant the first time it happened and 3 weeks post-partum the next. So, hormones in a rampage, I decided we absolutely COULD NOT raise 2 kids in a house with no yard (previous owners had turned the entire postage stamp yard into a patio), no place to park (2 car garage was FILLED with DH's carpentry gear), a steep staircase, and a leaky shower. Apparently, that was only acceptable for raising 1 kid, lol. So I called my realtor friend and went out and found a big (approx. 2500 sq. ft -- big to me), 1962 split ranch on a giant lot with a 3 car garage. And bought it.

So, now I'm in a house that has an original kitchen with a Modern Maid (???) double oven that only has one element in the bottom oven that will sometimes light (no Christmas cookies this year!) and a dinky Kenmore DW, while renters are enjoying my lovely ss Bosch 6-burner cooktop, KitchenAid superba double convection ovens, GE profile MW, and Whirlpool tall tub DW. And the brand spanking new dual zone heating and A/C we put in last year while I freeze my britches off in a house with crawl space and antiquated duct work. OTOH, my shower may be ugly 1980s cultured marble, but at least it doesn't leak into my nachos. :-)

Because my wife told me to.

Good answer jab913. It is exactly the answer my husband would give.

I have always hated the tile countertops that the huse had when we bought the house. The cabinets though still in ok shape are the golden oak from early 90's. The configuration of the cabinets is not great. no lazy susans very few drawers, no pull outs and so on. We also want to sell the house in a couple of years and we knew that we would have to make atleast some changes before selling. So we wanted to do the remodelling now so atleast we could enjoy it as long as we are here and then sell it.

sarschlos - I'm laughing so hard at your story! Sorry!!!

Well...we started building a house, so eventually it's going to need a kitchen.

The kitchen has been my favorite and least favorite part of this whole process. I'm pumped at will (hopefully) be the final result. It just took a long time to get there.

And now i'm stuck on my faucet. And sink.

I call it "nesting gone bad." :-) Ironically, now that we have the nice big back yard, nobody but me and the dog want to play outside, and the dog is a 12-pound yorkie poo that was perfectly happy in the old postage size yard. :-) And DH has not even dusted off all those table saws and routers and stuff that we just HAD to make room for even when I subtley suggested he should build our new kitchen cabs so that we can afford the remodel. Conversation went something like this:

Me: DH, I really want inset cabs but they're very expensive. Maybe you could build them? You're very good at that. [see what I did here? we've been married 13 years; usually sugar helps] I'll paint them.

DH: Mmph.

Me: Look, here are two books on how to make cabinets. You're very good at teaching yourself how to do these things. You build furniture. You build computers. I think we could totally do this. One book is for frameless and one is for inset. You've made a beautiful cradle and a fancy hope chest. I think you can build boxes.

DH: Err, mmph.

Me: We could order the boxes and drawer/door fronts from this place called Scherr's. People on GW seem to like the quality; then you could put the boxes together and install them.

DH: (Holding baby like a shield) I don't think that will work with him around.

Me: We have a nanny during the week, and I'm home on the weekends.

DH: Mmph.

I think he's resisting because he remembers my "we can totally lay tile ourselves" bright idea of Summer '03. Boy, can he hold a grudge. :-)

My kitchen, although cute with extremely well made cabs was small with low ceilings and dark cabs.

The dining room was adjacent with a stone fireplace so it just made sense to remove the wall and incorporate the space as one and LIGHT cabinets.

Also raised the ceiling.

The difference is amazing and wonderful.

But, i do have to add that I may have never done it if my brother wasn't my contractor.

There were problems along the way but the outcome has been great; just a few more things to take care of and we will be done.

Have to laugh though, since we now have so much more space and so fewer children living at home. As others have said sometimes when you have young children you just don't have the money until they are older....except for those college expenses :

Why did I renovate? It was time...

1. Very little counter work space

• Was tired of always bumping into my DH at the sink while I prepped on the 2' of counter b/w the range and sink!

• I was also tired of only being able to have a couple of ingredients or tools out at a time b/c there was no room for the rest in my small prep area...I had to put away the first ones b/f I could get out the next ones!

Very little useful kitchen storage
Children outgrowing kitchen table area
Drawers starting to fall apart
Cabinet hinges starting to go (we had already replaced one and another went "bad")
Vinyl flooring was really starting to look bad
DR was cutoff from Kitchen by a 33" doorway and w/our children outgrowing the kitchen space where the table was and our realizing that we were going to have start using the DR for all our meals, we decided we needed to open up the DR to the kitchen (which we had always planned to do "someday")
Lighting was awful...very little light reached what little work area we had
Washer/Dryer area-turned-Pantry was just not very functional (18" shelves too deep, too much wasted space in front of shelves, wire shelving, etc.)

Everything finally came to a head when I bumped into the table (that was sticking out so it was only 12"-18" away from the counter & only about 6" from the oven door) with hot food from the oven and it spilled all over my recently set table and washed floor!!!! I pretty much lost it....I hate my kitchen!, I yelled.

The rest, as they say, is history...I began looking around for KDs and cabinets and had pretty much settled on one and gotten my design.

Then, while researching appliances a few months into the process, I stumbled on GW just before vacation...I spent the next week at the beach split b/w the ocean and the computer! I posted my first question regarding quartz countertops that very week. Then, while anxiously awaiting replies, I saw all the design help that others were getting. I read the comments, etc. and realized that the design I had gotten from my KD was definitely not "the" one!

Old timers, you know the rest... the hashing out of my design over two separate threads spread out over a couple of months. It's only b/c of everyone here that I have a GREAT layout. Now, if we can only get these pesky issues resolved!

Let's see:
House built in 1925.

Kitchen remodeled in 1969 - dark faux wood particleboard cabinets, yellow/green laminate countertop and integrated backsplash.

Kitchen updated in 1990-something - backsplash crookedly tiled over to match bad tile job on walls, rangehood installed, dishwasher installed (questionable plumbing job), ceramic tile floor installed over 2 inches of concrete over masonite over the original linoleum tiles, cabinets painted cream using the cheapest paint roller available, ceramic tile floor covered with polyurethane...seriously!

Purchased house in 2004 - drawers busted, shelves missing from base cabinets, countertops scorched, view from sink cabinet to basement is blocked by random bricks, appliances just gross!

Renovation in 2007 - new cabs, flooring, electrical, appliances. I'm happy!

Favorite picture of old kitchen:

Our house was built in 1986 and we had all original appliances until 2006, when fridge and dishwasher had to be replaced. The oven finally started having problems in 2007, but it was the old GE hi-lo double-oven style with a top and bottom oven. They don't make them anyore and the wall behind it was unfinished. Since the backsplash came right up to it on both sides, but not behind it, we would have had to replace it with a regular freestanding or slide-in and come up with some kind of fix for the wall above it that wouldn't match the rest of the kitchen walls, so I talked DH into a whole new kitchen!

My top 3:

1) Kitchen sink had 2 holes and was working on a third. Cabinet below was of course damaged. Floor also damaged / falling apart.

2) Hideously ugly. Press and stick lino in shades of brown with flowers, really bad stain job, mis-matched knobs and pulls, really bad paint job, tan tiles with brown grout for countertops.

3) It was filthy from years of neglect. We had to break out the heavy-duty stuff and scrub top to bottom. That actually started stripping the aforementioned bad stain job.

We didn't take and "before" shots but these show some of it:

the tile counter top:
http://picasaweb.google.com/leatherfemme/MysteryVeggie/photo#5091224477064586754

cabinets, knobs and bad paint job:
http://picasaweb.google.com/leatherfemme/Wedding/photo#5093822369637952418

scary floor:
http://picasaweb.google.com/pdianne/BathTime/photo#5134069563111927842
(and a couple of our kids)

I love these stories and seeing the pictures. Here are my reasons....

Don't be fooled by the black dishwasher and stainless steel sink, they were just as bad as the original appliances from 1969 that my inspector told me still were in great shape in case we decided to live in the house/kitchen as is for a while (you should see the rest of the house). What you can't see is the burn marks on the counter and the built in Seal-O-Meal on the wall.

Yea, we had a lot of wallpaper to strip and popcorn ceilings to scrape along with removing the wood paneling (at least it was the nice wood and not the plastic stuff. LOL!) New kitchen is coming along and I'm happy to say it will NOT have any dark wood or avocado color.

OW! OW! OW!!

pdxgal, You hurt my eyes! You should have had a warning before posting.

Planned on removing red white and blue wallpaper with red and blue roosters when I moved in, but all of that become OBE. Then the cooktop started going out. It was so bad I was playing musical burners. When I decided to replace it, I found that I needed to replace the countertop because the cuttout was too large for any new cooktop. And the story goes, on and on and on, and $$, and $$$, and $$$$. But I'm glad I did it. Besides, SS looks better than Harvest Gold any ole day - LOL!!

gng

LOL Kitchenkelly! You have no idea how ugly the house is/was. Floor to ceiling wood paneling, velour wallpaper, shag carpet, etc....The list is endless. The ONLY thing we are keeping in the house is the layout and the hardwood floors (refinished).

My answer is why I'm planning to renovate - someday. Honestly, my kitchen isn't THAT bad. It was one of the big pluses to the house when we first looked at it, but now we see the drawbacks too. House built in 1945 and at some point they added on to the back of the kitchen and renovated it - best guess would be late 80s, maybe early 90s but who knows? We've done some stuff out of necessity like a new stove and dishwasher, so it won't be a complete renovation with all new appliances or moved walls.

1. Just because I'd like to have my own style - whatever that may turn out to be.

2. Because everytime I have family over, everyone ends up in the kitchen and I don't have room to sit them there! Loved the breakfast bar attached to the wall when I first moved in, but now I wish it had more seating space and the back of the kitchen behind it wastes a lot of space. I'd love a seating island but am still trying to figure out a way to make it fit in the room without making the aisles too small.

3. Inefficient layout that we may or may not be able to improve, depending on how much we decide to spend. Room is long but narrow, with sink, dishwasher, majority of cabinetry on one side. Doorway to DR, stove, narrow cabinet and fridge are on the short wall. Stove is on an inside wall and doesn't vent outside - but that's where the gas line is, so improving that would also add the expense of moving the gas line while making the working space rather more inefficient, by moving the stove very far from the refrigerator as well as further from the sink. A real quandry. There are so many stumbling blocks in trying to plan this kitchen. A double door on one wall for laundry/utility closet and the radiator/garden window/back door that take up all of the back wall are all limitations in what we can do. We can't expand back or out, either.

4. I'm lusting after granite. Currently have formica laminate which is starting to show the scratches. And I dearly would love to have a tile backsplash since I'm a real tile/stone lover!

5. Hate my floor! It's tile, just not one I would have ever chosen and the grout is UGLY.

6. Cabinets starting to show wear and storage design is pretty basic. They still look pretty good from the outside though, so I have some time to work on a plan!

7. It's nice to dream!