Back to Work

                                        Back to Work
Kitchen update:  met with our kitchen designer and tweaked the plans a bit.  Chose hardware, sink, counter top and faucet.  I really tried to go with my first impulse and not second guess myself.  I love what I have picked out and can't wait to see it all put together in my kitchen.  The gas stove and hood, microwave, and dishwasher have all been purchased.  When it came to appliances I pretty much tried to go for the mid price range, white and clean designs.  
      School starts in two days so I am putting together a folder of kitchen remodel survival recipes.  I have a hard enough time cooking when I teach full time and now with a gutted kitchen it is really going to be a challenge.  I did what I do when I want to find out information....I googled it!  And yes there were many blogs and sights with recipes for the kitchen deprived.  Many, many people have lived to tell the tale of their cooking during a kitchen remodel!  
     So what did I learn from this latest round of kitchen work?  Trust my instincts and don't second guess myself.  I know what I like.  Also, there is nothing new under the sun,  somebody has been thru what I am going thru and  
I can glean some good advice (recipes) from them.

Here is a keeper recipe I found and tried:
Pulled Pork

pork loin
root beer
bottle of your favorite barbecue sauce

Put pork loin in slow cooker and cover with root beer.  Cook on low for 6 hours.  Take port loin out of the root beer and shred it.  Add your barbecue sauce to your shredded pork.  Serve on buns!

this is our latest favorite barbecue sauce...Rufus Teague Honey sweet!  Sooo good.

Gone Fishin'
   We interrupt this kitchen remodel to take a few vacations/staycations!  The above photos are my youngest son and grand-daughter fishing at our Lakefront park.  Even though I have a kitchen remodel in the works I know I will regret it if I don't take some time off for some R&R!   I have spent some time with my two beautiful grand-girls fishing and picking blueberries.  I have gone fly fishing with my special man.  I admit I did more reading than fishing but what a great few days we had.  Now it is off to southern Indiana with some family to live on a lake for a week.  As soon as I get back I have a meeting scheduled to keep this kitchen remodel moving.  Summer is going soooooo fast but I am so happy to be spending some time "fishin" or "readin"!  I guess the lesson to be learned is "take some time to go "fishin" or whatever your version of "fishin" is!

All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned During my Kitchen Remodel
 I decided to write about my kitchen remodel for the purpose of learning what I can from the experience (and maybe give you a little entertainment along the way too).  My last post I got a little distracted in telling the story of choosing my fabulous Italian kitchen designer and forgot to write about what I learned.

It's kind of like these shoes pictured above.  I went to the store because they had summer pajama pants on sale and came home with these really cute tennis shoes, aren't they cute and they go so well with jeans!

Focus, I could so get off track at this juncture.

The lesson from the last post I think is how important it is to listen.  Remember that saying about why God gave you TWO ears and only ONE mouth.  The kitchen remodel company I chose got the job because he really listened to what I was saying.   This listening thing is an unexpected lesson for me to come out of a kitchen remodel.  I am by nature a talker and  it didn't help that they named a doll "Chatty Cathy" when I was growing up either.  Where in my life should I be talking less and listening more?

The lesson I am learning from this post is FOCUS.  Do what you set out to do.  I am not so good at this.  I like detours, oh lets be honest I look for detours to take!  In a remodel it is so easy to get off track and there are some side tracks that need to happen.  For example, we are going to need to set up a little pseudo temporary kitchen in our dining room/living room area.  We don't have enough space so I decided to list the piano on craigslist since no one is playing it anymore and it would free up much needed space.  I took pictures of the piano and created the craigslist post.  No bites so I reposted it a few days later with a lower price and sold the piano!

Now that I have some more space I need something to use for temporary storage in my pseudo kitchen.  I remember that Will is using some wonderful plastic drawers in his closet for clothes.....if I finally get him a dresser which I have been meaning to do since his room remodel last summer, I could use those drawers.  Its off to Fred's Unique Furniture, the most awesome used furniture/lots of other stuff place ever!  Focus....focus....I could go on and on about Fred's. (fredsuniquefurniture.com)   We decide to drop off a desk to Fred's while we are there and earn a little money too.  We find a great dresser and put it in Will's room.  I now have 7 plastic drawers to use in my fake kitchen. Phew!

I started putting kitchen items that we use all the time in the plastic drawers.  That got me thinking about the meals we will make during construction using only the grill, crock pot and microwave.  I decided that I should choose 10-12 recipes that will be our staple menu for the weeks we truly have to rely on our fake kitchen.  By choosing the recipes I could better decide which items I needed in the drawers and which ones can be boxed up and put in the basement.  Talk about a challenge for focus...there are so many wonderful recipes online, there are even sights where they give advice for people cooking during a kitchen remodel!

I decided to go ahead and start boxing items I wouldn't miss.  Boxes???  My favorite boxes are from Uhaul and they have great packing paper too.  I could use moving boxes...

Enough....you get the idea.  Every step leads to two or three other steps to achieve my goal.  I have to continually remind myself what my original goal was.  Kitchen remodeling is going to seriously stretch my focus muscles!

All I Ever Needed to Know I learned During a Kitchen Remodel

I forged ahead and contacted a second kitchen company.  The first thing I noticed was how he listened for the first part of our meeting.  He asked questions about how I use my kitchen, how many people are in the kitchen at once and what my dream kitchen might look like.  He had heard of pinterest and recycled glass counter tops which I mentioned during our conversation.  He heard me when I said I wanted a cottage kitchen.  He was easy to talk to and got excited about my ideas.  He is Italian and talks with his hands.  When we got to flooring he suggested wood floors because they really fit with a cottage look but tile could work too.  Oh my, you mean there is more than one way to do things!  

After listening he told me he wanted to present me with an idea.  Not in two weeks, right there on the spot.  He sketched out a plan.  The biggest idea was pertaining to my window dilemma.  I have a big window that takes up a lot of one wall and one small window over the sink.  He preposed getting rid of the small window that faces the driveway and the neighbors house, the window without a view he called it.  The big window he suggested we replace but shorten, the window with a view of the backyard.  Then he moved the sink under the big window.  He included a pantry with pull out shelves which I had mentioned.  The stove and a hood where the small window had been.  It was like watching a puzzle just fall into place.  It made so much sense!  We met a week later with the drawn up plan, tweaked it to MY taste even more, asked many questions about the process and settled on a price point.  

The third company called and said they would call me back in a week or two...its been three.  Not a good sign.  So its time to make my choice.  Is is door #1 with its "one way" of thinking, door #2 with its "listen to customer"approach  or door #3 with its "we will call you later" philosophy.  

Of course its #2!  I have had my "Italian Kitchen Designer" (doesn't that sound Grossie Pointie) and a couple of the subcontractors in and it all looks like a go......except for that existing flooring issue????  Stay tuned!

All I ever needed to know....I learned during a Kitchen Remodel

All I ever needed to know....I learned during a Kitchen Remodel

I just have a feeling that the above title is going to be so true.  It is already starting and I might as well make the most of this learning opportunity.  Let me tell you about lesson #1.

I called up a well known kitchen remodel place to meet with their designer and get ideas and a quote.  That part is free.  I planned to meet with 3 different companies and was upfront about that fact.  The first company was in Grosse Pointe.  For those of you reading this who don't know anything about my area, I will give you a little side note.  Grosse Pointe has some really really beautiful homes and people with a whole lot more money to spend than me.  When something is expensive or over the top my kids and I say it is "Grossie Pointie".  The first designer was definitely "Grossie Pointie".  

I want a cottage kitchen, white cupboards, and a farm sink.  I want storage, storage and more storage!  I tell the designer guy this.  He asks me about the flooring.  I tell him I have been thinking about tile or wood floor.  He tells me,  "you can't do tile in this small space it will look too chopped up".  Excuse me, did you just say "I CAN'T do something".  This is my house and I CAN do anything I want, kinda scary that you don't realize this Mr. designer guy!

He starts talking to me about the kind of storage I want.  I tell him I am a pull out shelf kind of girl.  I do not do well with deep drawers which he keeps suggesting.  Deep drawers for me are like toy boxes, I put things in there and they get all jumbled up.  He says "you MUST have a combination of pull out shelves and deep drawers".  Seriously dude, again with the "MUST".

By the end of two meetings he had drawn up "his" little "Grossie Pointie" kitchen which would be like hundreds of others he has designed the RIGHT way...HIS way. He had deep drawers which he just knew I would end up loving and thanking him for later.  I canceled our final "free" meeting so as not to waste anymore of our time since I had decided against using his company.  When I returned a sample he had lent me he would not even acknowledge my presence.  

So lesson #1 is BE TURE TO YOURSELF AND DON'T LET SOMEONE TELL YOU THAT THERE IS ONLY ONE RIGHT WAY TO BE!

and maybe lesson #1b would be to watch how I word things when I teach.  Instead of words like "can't" and "must" which had such a negative response from me, how about words like "try" and "maybe".  Imagine if designer guy had said "you might want to try wood flooring to keep it simple and have it flow with the rest of your hardwood" (which another designer guy said and I totally agreed with that!)