With October came the realization that we've been without a fully functional kitchen for SIX MONTHS. Holy cow!

In early April we discovered mold caused by an eroding old pipe (our house was built in the 50s, and had all the original plumbing in the kitchen), which drove us toward a kitchen remodel a bit sooner than we originally intended. So why are we here, a half a year later, and still not finished? I suppose you can always blame your contractor, right? Just kidding We are using someone who has worked with our families before, and knows what he's doing, but he's also verrryyy busy, so he wasn't able to start until last month.

We had been living with our little plywood kitchen since the mold was removed and the sink was reinstalled with the new, non-leaky pipes. We had our electric range, dishwasher, microwave and toaster oven, so we could do pretty much anything, we just didn't have nearly as much counter space or storage space as we did before the mold mitigation. Cooking was hard because not everything was in the kitchen and we had limited resources to work with, but it was doable as a temporary kitchen until we got underway with the new one.

Now we've been living without an actual kitchen for just a few weeks. We moved the old fridge downstairs, where it will continue to live since we're getting new appliances, and who doesn’t need a beer fridge in the basement? 😉 Our temp kitchen, while livable, doesn’t have all the things we’re used to having, like a dishwasher, an oven or a stove. We bought a one-burner induction stove (convenient to have as people who love cooking anyway), which I have successfully warmed food in and boiled pasta, but very much burned a batch of popcorn. We’ve also got a toaster oven, rice cooker, sous vide, crock pot, coffee maker, microwave, and an ok sink (no garbage disposal), plus these are all things we can use in a fully functional kitchen as well.

What have I learned (so far)?

I could probably have coordinated a bunch of this myself, without a contractor, but it’s nice not having to stay at home to meet with plumbers, electricians, and the like.
You always will spend more than you think. We signed a sort of maximum-cost contract, but there are clauses that basically say things can go up anyway, and they’re always going to find little things here and there (like the fact that our garage to kitchen door wasn’t up to code, so we needed a new door)
It’s hard to eat super well with a limited kitchen - I’ve been struggling to get enough veggies in my daily diet.
Things feel extremely slow, even though they’re totally going faster than I think. A lot of the headway is invisible, or even looks destructive, at first. Now that things look a little different everyday, I have more of a sense of progress, because I am a visual person. Also, taking down that darn plastic wall made a HUGE difference.

It felt like our kitchen looked like this for FOREVER, even though they were working around the clock everyday.

If you’ve got a partner (spouse, SO, boyfriend, hubby, whatever), you’ll find that you may care about completely different things. For example, my hubby helped pick out counter, cabinet and paint colors, but doesn’t care about the sink, faucet or handles. For me, the sink was a BIG deal because I HATED the sink we had, but he couldn’t have cared less. I, on the other hand, don't care about the texture of the walls as long as they're easy to clean.
Inspectors care about some things a lot, and others not at all. For example, we ended up needing insulation and a fire door because of code, but we’re not required to have a range hood. The more you know.

We’re a little more than 2 weeks out from being done (minus walk-throughs after everything is installed, making sure we’re happy and everything is perfect. Right now is a lot of waiting because a bulk of the work was able to be done before we could get a template done for our countertops, and of course we have to wait a few weeks between template and installation.