Kitchen Co-operation

As my father-in-law pointed out, I have not yet mentioned the kitchen at any great length. The primary reason for this was I couldn't find the pictures I took of the assembly and installation. But, they appeared, and so here's a little story about our IKEA kitchen.

We had all kinds of dreamy ideas of what we would do with the kitchen. Originally, we thought we wouldn't do anything at all, just leave it and live with it until we had the money to renovate - well - we couldn't and didn't. If it came down to only one or even two of the things that were dramatically wrong with it: cabinets, the plumbing the stove or the windows, well, we would have just kept it. But as you learn when you gut a house, these things never turn out the way you think they will. Everything had to be replaced. We had a leaky sink and old, old plumbing, drafty windows and an old stove, on top of it all, the cabinets weren't even real - they were shelves with doors screwed on to the front.

So it all went out to the dump and we started over. IKEA offered the best option for us because the price was reasonable and we wanted to install them ourselves (to save money). The only think we didn't do was to measure and install the countertops - we left that to the pros, who did it in about a day - it would have taken us a week. At least.

Jamie's family helped with the cabinet assembly - everything was delivered on a skid, packed flat in boxes. Robbie, Lucinda and Erica helped unpack and assemble and hang all the cabinets in one day (I had to go to my office to work - it was a Sunday!). Jamie and Robbie had them up and the kitchen pretty much complete by the time I came back. It was fabulous.