I had to chuckle to myself as I read these posts. My hubby and I have built 3 homes in the past 25 years. The first two took about 2 1/2 years each to complete. We did everything ourselves. When I say complete, I have to confess that we had plywood floors when we moved into them. The building process is much more time consuming than most people can guess. Therefore, the question from a lot of friends is "when, are you moving in?" OR "how are you coming along with the house." When we got to the second build, DH had heard enough of that question so he started telling everyone that "we are right on schedule". The look on their faces are priceless. The same person will never repeat that question. On Memorial Day we took a few days off. An neighbor asked DH the usual question and DH told him " Joe, we got ahead of schedule and had to take a few days off!!. Try that approach. It does add a bit of humor. A neighbor across the road from us said that he and his girlfriend were watching us lay brick and laughing to themselves because we are so slow. But he said that after they thought about it a while they said that they would not be able to lay brick if a gun were pointed to their heads. We have been building this 3rd home for 3 1/2 years. We have inside trim to do and some landscaping to finish. We are in our 60's now and this will be the last home because the physical labor is getting to be a bit much. I can say that when its all done you will be far ahead of most people and you will never have to wonder just what is in the walls, etc. Take your time and try not to let it get the best of you. Keep your eye on the goal. You will never regret having a home that you built and that is paid for.

The contractor sent over one of his guys on Saturday to finish the pantry shelves - we had to get mad at him on Friday over not finishing for that to happen. He did a good job, and was done shortly after noon. The cabinet maker came as well, and got us to the point where we can put everything away. He did take a few pieces for refinishing. Also, we had an appliance mover come, and move our new freezer from its temporary home in the basement to its permanent place in the pantry. We spent the rest of the weekend loading up the pantry - twice. Once to get everything in, and once to re-arrange a lot of it. We also got almost all of the dishes put away. Granite is supposed to be installed on Tuesday, but we're just about completely back in the kitchen. I'll be posting some progress pictures on my thread later today.

Good Golly! We have RTA cabinets from The Cabinet Joint and they are beautiful. I certainly have not had the experience as the above poster. My husband is an engineer and woodworker and he says they are just as nice as his parents custom made Amish ones (those are 40 years old and still look like new). We had originally decided he would make them, but I got tired of waiting- job tripled his traveling recently. I have been thrilled with everything we have gotten from them. I have heard foreign RTA are a different story; however, I do not have any experience with them.

I forgot... I do have a few in progress photos. The one where one of our sons and I are standing next to the island was immediately after hubby had just made the waterfall cut and we were propping it up so he could see how it fit. LOL! That was such a nerve wracking day! LOL! We had paid all this extra money for walnut boards that were long enough to pull this off, and we couldn’t afford to mess it up. Hahahaha! The entire kitchen project took about a year total. Hubby worked entirely from our garage and driveway. He also took off an entire summer because he finished up two masters degrees, walked for them, went on a short term missions trip to Ghana, and one of our sons competes a lot for his sport (springboard/platform diving) and there’s a lot of travel for it, especially in summer as that’s the main competition season for him. But I was only entirely out of a functioning kitchen for two weeks (well, I used my laundry room and the grill out back during those two weeks) but I lived for quite a while without doors or drawers on my cabinetry... but my kitchen functioned during that time, which was important to me as we have five busy kids. The kitchen was an entire gut job though, we took down a part of a wall, moved a gas line, moved electrical, moved some plumbing just a little bit, added ventilation that didn’t even exist prior... it was a big job. The only thing hubby hired out was the fabrication and installation of our granite countertops. (Oh, and we paid for the 60” range to be installed because there’s no way to get into our house without navigating a staircase, and we didn’t want to wrestle that beast. We got a GREAT deal on that range though, it was a floor model and we got over half off on it and the hood... we couldn’t pass it up, and our neighborhood can support this kind of kitchen.) Actually, the cabinet around our fridge, hubby made that so the shelf comes out easily and the cabinet will eventually house a built in fridge like a subzero because that’s more expected in this area. We just haven’t found a great deal on one yet and that kitchen aid fridge won’t die, LOL! I included a before/after collage photo. People say “your kitchen before didn’t look bad,” but it was in horrible condition. The cabinetry was literally falling apart, and the layout was horrible to work in, we had no ventilation for the cooktop (and we do a lot of high heat cooking) and it was just miserable to work in because the layout was so difficult. My kitchen now is a dream to work in!