Kitchen Detour!

You *KNOW* it was bound to happen. Nothing can go perfectly - it just isn't possible.

As my husband was tearing apart our old pantry in anticipation of our new cabinets (which arrived 2 weeks EARLY and are sitting at the store!! What?), he came across this:



Now, I would have just cut the whole thing down in my renovation wisdom, but it was quickly identified as a pretty important stack of 2X4's - that hold up our second floor - under my son's room - over my kitchen.

DETOUR!

After hemming, hawing, hemming, swearing, staring, measuring, sighing, swearing and spending quality time with our neighbor who has also magically turned into quite the handyman, we came to a solution. Make a left hand turn.

We'll put a wall up at the big gaping hole and then create a built-in microwave/hutch cabinet around the corner in a new space we can create that doesn't risk our house collapsing:



But, in that discovery process we realized we can't use one of our cabinets because it is too wide, so today I ordered another one that's 6 inches smaller and breathed a sigh of relief. We may have to eat the cost of the original cabinet (and it may become an island one day so I'm not freaking out) but that is the price of do-it-yourself-kitchen-demolition-and-remodeling-with-absolutely-no-experience-doing-any-kitchen-contract-work...

In the meantime, the fabulous neighbor across the street has already wired 6 new recessed lights:



Installed all our new switches and outlets AND our new, smaller window:



It's true I sacrificed a wall of natural light, but at this point I'm ready for more storage. Glorious storage. Most of which will be delivered on Friday. Let the project move onward! Hubby's next job, cover up the pantry hole and drywall the rest - oh, and did I mention we're saving over $3,000 by doing all this work ourselves (and with the help of our neighbor who is charging us at 1976's rate). That may be my favorite part, yet.