Our Remodeling Project—The Beginning

Here is a photo of a portion of my kitchen. As kitchen’s go, it isn’t horrible, but we are getting ready to remodel it. I haven’t had the shorter cabinets in a kitchen since our house in Massachusetts, where we lived from 1991-1993. So we are tearing out the soffits in order to install the taller 42 inch cabinets. I’d like to go darker with the cabinet color, too, and replace the Formica counter tops with granite. Below is a photo of wood and granite samples. 

We plan to eliminate the desk and put in more cabinets and storage because we never use the desk. Originally, we weren’t going to do anything with the tile floors, but as we lived here I discovered that the tile never seems to stay clean. I miss the wood floors I had in Florida. So the only thing we’ve picked out is new wood flooring.

We were getting nervous about the flooring because a number of installers weren’t keen on wood for the Arizona climate. The extremely dry weather during most of the year and then the two months of monsoons don’t necessarily make for a positive experience with wood floors. But we’ve had others who say it isn’t a problem. Who is right? I guess only time will tell because we’ve already ordered the floor.

We’ve had a parade of cabinet, flooring and granite people through our house giving us prices and advice. My head is swimming, and we still haven’t made a decision on the anything except the floor. I’m not looking forward to the mess, but the end product hopefully will be worth the disruption.

What do you think? Do you have any experience with remodeling?