around the kitchen

Things have been so crazy around here that I haven't really had a chance to tell you about our kitchen "issues." It all started right after Thanksgiving when our dishwasher died- Nick likes to say I wore it out over the holiday. Anyway fast forward to what I thought would be a pretty quick trip to Lowes to get a new one when we learned that our current broken d/w is not a standard size, it's smaller. When we went to measure for a standard size we realized it wouldn't fit.

My first thought was to somehow just cut into the counter top underneath because we were only about a 1/4'' short height wise. We had our contractor friend come by to take a look when he very casually mentioned the fact that our giant cast iron sink wasn't properly reinforced when it was installed and as a result it's basically pulling down our whole counter top and causing it to sag- which explains why we're not able to fit the standard d/w. It also explained why water would constantly roll down the counter and all over my legs and feet while I did the dishes- it was't anywhere near level.

BEFORE

If you look closely you can see where everything starts to dip the closer to the sink you get.

From there it was basically a domino effect as far as having to replace things, the counter top has to be raised, it's attached to the back splash, the sink has to go because it's tiled right to the counter top etc.. you get the idea. So here we are almost 2 months later and last Thursday we finally got rolling on fixing everything up. We had always planned on remodeling the kitchen just not quite yet. Our hand was pretty much forced though so to help offset the unexpected cost a little we have broken it down into phases starting with the "sink side" of the kitchen. When we feel financially ready we'll tackle the cook top/ wall oven side and lastly the flooring {did I mention we also found out that our tile floor was laid incorrectly too and it's basically "floating" with only the grout holding it together. For love of DIY, these people were out of control!

AFTER DEMO

So here we are today we've been without running water in the kitchen since last Thursday but the guys are here today finally installing the counter this morning and now the sink and new d/w this afternoon. The back splash tile will start tomorrow. It's been a stressful and unexpected road but the results are really coming along! I'll be back later in the week to hopefully show you the completed new look.

GETTING CLOSER... hey is that running water and a working dishwasher?! woo hoo!

Have a wonderful day!