Lessons from a Reno

Brian & I decided to do a kitchen reno this past fall. Frankly we'd been talking about it for 5 years...and finally we decided to take the plunge. We worked with a good friend, who's a contractor and got started. 

This reno was supposed to be a kitchen reno. In the end it was a basement, kitchen, sunroom and back hallway reno. It blossomed out of control :)..but in a good way. Now we have an environment that we use every part of our space, we love it and we didn't kill eachother :)

So what did we learn?

1. Budgets are for the birds- We started with a budget, and we tried to stay within it, but we went over, everyone always does. We asked ourselves this question- will we regret this in 10 years? is it worth it? We weren't extravagant, but we didn't compromise (see #3). My interior design mentor told me that budgets were irrelevent at the beginning and she was right. 
2. It's all about the contractor- We were so blessed with our contractor. He is a problem solver, he could have taken the drawings to the letter of the law, but instead, he worked with it. He got it done. 
3. Don't compromise if you can help it- Maybe it's my interior decorating background, but I know when you scrimp, you get burned. One thing that made me crazy during the reno was the cost of things like knobs & handles. WTF? $15 per handle. NOT going to happen. So I sourced many many handles. In the end our hardware came from 3 different places, and on average cost $5 each. I could have gone with something subsstandard, but I would have hated it every day.  We bought soapstone counters, they were expensive, but marble was too high maintenance, and granite I didn't like. If I had compromised, I would have hated it every day. 
4. If it's bugging you, it's wrong- speaking of hating it every day. Brian designed & built our kitchen cabinets, from scratch. Dovetails, maple interiors, they are truly a work of art, and I love them. We fussed and changed, and edited and tweaked that design for months. We taped cabinets out on the floor, we agonized. But finally, when we made the final decision, it was right. It no longer bugged us. Now sitting in the kitchen is a joy. not a nagging regret. 

Stay tuned for a gallery of our kitchen reno :)