Kitchen Update: Sticker Shock.

So, you might be wondering… is Sarah still doing her dishes in the bathroom sink and gagging about it?

Why, yes, yes I am.

There haven’t been many updates because, well, there just haven’t been many updates. First, we were stuck waiting for information from our insurance about how much they would cover; even though we called them January 5th, it wasn’t until more than a month later that we got our answer:

$400.

Well, $900 but there’s a $500 deductible. So…

$400.

There’s our budget for new floors, new base cabinets and a new counter top. At this point though, we’re pretty committed to a new kitchen as we can’t really function the way things are now and we’re willing to put in a few thousand dollars of our own money to get ourselves something that works.

 

We took that knowledge and went to a very lovely lady working at what we’ll call a Big Box Home Improvement Store. We explained our situation and our budget (or lack there of); she understood and was willing to help us get as much information to our insurance company as we could.  Then we set out to design our small kitchen.

Nothing top of the line, but I had fallen in love with some cabinets at Ikea. We found some mid-grade cabinetry with a similar look. We picked a backsplash, a formica countertop, (nothing too fancy…I have relatively cheap taste) and some linoleum peel-and-stick flooring fairly similar to the type of flooring we had previously. All of the appliances are basically staying in the same place except we are going from two separate units for our cooktop and oven to an all-in-one range, which will require an electrician.

After many trips to Big Box Home Improvement Store, some re-scheduled meetings due to snow, and emails back and forth, we met this week for our final quote.

$17,000.  Not only is this not within our budget (keeping in mind it’s a surprise renovation), it has now taken a month and a half to find out that it’s not within our budget.  If we were able to sign on that week with no changes, Big Box Home Improvement Store estimated the project might be finished by the end of April.

So we sat with that for an hour. Had a beer. Planned a trip to Ikea.

For better or worse, it looks like a DIY kitchen is in our immediate future. And really, what could go wrong? We’ve got 4 children including a crawling baby, 2 dogs, 1 cat, I’ve just started working for myself, Jeff is just about to start afternoon rehearsals for his high school’s musical, and spring break isn’t for another month.  Why not sprinkle in a little DIY kitchen fun with a large helping of insurance company battles?

It just so happens that Hudson has been begging to visit the ball pit at Ikea, so today we’re taking the 1:45 drive to the land of meatballs and hoping we can shrink down that $17,000 price tag to something that doesn’t make me gag more than scraping oatmeal into the toilet.

If the Ikea SEKTION can’t come in under $17,000, I may just need a stronger stomach.