We knew when we bought the house that we wanted to gut the aging kitchen. Our first meeting with the general contractor, custom cabinet maker and designer were the day of the home inspection in July. It was a good thing we got that early start because it was February before we could get slotted into everyone's schedule. The project last roughly 8 weeks from demo to completion. Though as of this writing, the stove was still MIA with a "not likely before August" delivery date attached. This...for an appliance we ordered in late September 2021.
Our GC was really good at getting all the subs lined up and in and out mostly aligned with the original timeline he gave us. It was hard to be without a kitchen - and have a worksite in its place - for so many weeks. Especially since the kitchen is in the center of our home. But we didn't eat out as often as I would have guessed. I did quite a bit of prep work in advance to have pancakes, seasoned taco meat, shredded cooked chicken and cube, ready to cook chicken breasts in the freezer, so we could make many of our favorite, quick meals easily. We had an Instant Pot, Air Fryer (which was rarely used), large capacity toaster oven (big enough for a weekly frozen pizza meal) or a 9x13 casserole dish, a microwave and an electric skillet. So....really the hardship was boiling water for pasta and the lack of a dishwasher. We did our dishes in the laundry room sink and mostly avoided using disposables.
The biggest changes in the layout are a freestanding stovetop/oven versus the wall ovens and the cooktop taking up half the island. Our new island is HUGE and has seating for 6, so we moved our kitchen table to the basement for a game table. We also gained a ton of storage with ceiling height cabinets, double pantries flanking the fridge, more storage in the island, and our old walk in pantry converted to a mudroom of sorts with a hidden door next to the new custom designed coffee bar.
Before from the MLS photos. I don't see to have many from the 6 months we had our things in it. This was also before we had the wood floors redone in August.
During (including our makeshift kitchen/prep area in the living room - complete with a plug where we could run either the microwave or the toaster oven but not both together - and the dining room that had to actually function for eating in addition to homework in addition to storage for the appliances that had arrived)
Our basement ceiling also had to be cut out for electrical and plumbing work. So the basement wasn't even a safe place to hang out for a few weeks!
After:
