The Big Remodel: The Big Remodel, Defined

Welcome to my kitchen.
We've been in our house for 11 years, and there are a lot of things I like about my kitchen. Really! But there are a lot of things I don't.

Number one is the counters.

Besides the color (I know a lot of people like red in the kitchen, but I don't -- and let's not even talk about how much I don't love keeping tile - and grout! - clean) -- Besides that, there is the general lack of counter space. You are looking at pretty much my usable space. (and I don't count the corner as usable, 'cause it's not, even when I don't have a huge wheat grinder on in).

I do have this:

But as you can see, the little counter next to the stove is just a place to stack stuff.
And this:

Which is obviously being used as a desk.
This is one of my favorite parts of my kitchen:

and I'll be sad to loose it. I love how the cereal is right above the table, and I love the informal seating area. Plus I use the table as extra conter space.

But this is my very favorite part of the kitchen:

Which as you can see, is not really part of the kitchen at all (it's the dining room). There is a nice china cabinet on the other wall

which is my husband's favorite yard sale find ever. We'll be sad to see that go too (but maybe we can visit it at Pieter's sister's house sometimes. . .)

Anyway, we are finally getting to remodel the kitchen!! We've spent the last 4 months figuring out what we want, plus fiddling around with a refinance (who can resist a rate in the 4's!!) and now finally the time is here!!

Here is my plan:

We're going to knock out the wall between the kitchen and dining room, plus close off the doorway into the hall (it's to the right of the fridge in the second picture down). We'll replace the hall doorway with one into the living room, which will allow us to continue a counter all along that wall. Similarly, counters will line the other wall from the sink to the bay window.

This is a huge remodel -- way bigger than anything we've ever done before. And not only are we doing the kitchen, but while we're at it, we're going to get a real ceiling put in our basement, with better lights, and my son's room will have heating now (of course, we'll rearrange while we're at it). And of course, there's some electrical work to be done too. It's going to be big, so we're moving out of our house and into my mother-in-law's for a few months.

I'm not overwhelmed or anything.

Last night our awesome friends the Johnson's called us up and offered to come over and help us. Here are the before's and after's of the basement:

Before: