The Beginning
Of what will likely be the project of 2021 - remodeling our kitchen and primary bathroom. I recently learned that it’s called the primary bedroom and primary bathroom, instead of master, which makes sense. Thus, we are remodeling our primary bathroom. Now you know too.
When we bought this house, the room I liked the least was the kitchen, but the rest of the house worked so well for us. The floor plan was ideal and checked every box except for having a beautiful kitchen. We always planned to remodel it if we stayed in the house long enough, and since we have been here almost six years, it’s time. We’ve talked about it, then balked at figuring it all out, and the cost, and the time, and just put it off.
In the Spring, we ended up turfing our backyard and getting a playscape and trampoline, and now our kids spend hours in the backyard playing. It has made us appreciate this house so much more, and that investment has brought so much joy to all of us. I think the pandemic has actually made us feel more connected to our house in a different emotional way. That connection makes me feel like I want to take care of this house to make it better for us.
I have a list of functional issues in the kitchen - there is no ventilation, only one oven, no space on the cooktop island to work, it’s dark. I have never liked the dark cabinetry and dark granite with no under-cabinet lighting. It’s very brown and I’m more of a rainbow person.
A couple of months ago, we met with a contractor to get an idea of the scope of what we were envisioning and the general cost estimate. We really liked the contractor, and they gave us an estimate. We’ve taken a little time and thought about it, and still feel comfortable moving forward. The contractor asked if we were planning to work with a designer, which to be honest, I hadn’t spent a lot of time thinking about, but after we discussed it, we decided to explore it further.
The minutia of choosing every drawer pull, light fixture, paint color, and conceptualizing how to make the kitchen work better for us was a lot to think through. It would be intensely time consuming as well as create a lot of decision fatigue for both us, and probably some disagreements as we try to imagine what our choices would look like when we were finished. Another point that was made by the contractor was that hiring a designer would be more expensive, but would help us be happier in the end. Either way, this project would be expensive, time-consuming, and disruptive, so we felt like if we are going to do something this frustrating, we might as well do it right.
I’m not an interior designer, or even someone who is very interested in creating interior spaces that are great. I sort of aim for a good-enough level of home and then I go read a book or play with the kids or work, all of which I enjoy more than couch shopping and restyling my shelves. I wish I was more interested in it, but I’m just not. I would enjoy it if someone else would do it in a way that reflects my taste though….
So we met with a designer today. I was nervous. What if she thinks our house is too disorganized and ugly to be worth her time? What if she thinks we have bad taste? I picked out an outfit that I felt really great in, and it’s been a long time since I took the time to choose something fun to wear since I mostly just stay home and go to work at the preschool, which doesn’t demand a high level of fashion. It felt really wonderful to have chosen clothing and accessories that made me feel good, like a feeling I had forgotten existed through the dreariness of the pandemic. That feeling was like a window to pre-pandemic life, reminding me of the joy of anticipation of meeting someone new, feeling like my best self, and enjoying choosing something to wear.
The designer and her colleague arrived, and we greeted each other in the entry of our house. I still felt nervous, but she was — really nice. Not scary. We explained our project, and she immediately made some good suggestions that hadn’t occurred to us. This was a fantastic sales technique - offering value right away. She offered examples of other projects and helped us see her vision for what to do in the kitchen, even suggesting things I didn’t think were possible but would really like to have.
She noticed my favorite art piece, and we talked a little about it. I talked about my love of color, but also my competing desire to be able to sell the house in 4-5 years and recoup some of the investment in the project, so striking a balance between something super personalized and something appealing to a wide audience of people.
We moved to the primary bathroom to talk about what to do in there. The bathroom is more straightforward because we imagine keeping the basic layout but updating the finish, which right now is the original bathroom to the house and looks really dated.
We finished the meeting and both Tommy and I felt like - yes, we should hire this person. I’m 99% sure we will, but we have another meeting next week with another designer. It actually feels similar to when we bought our first preschool franchise. We fell in love with Primrose, but then went through the sales process with two other competitors. That sealed our decision as the right one for us, by having that comparison.
The hard thing to imagine is that she estimated our project would take 3-4 months to complete. That is a long time to have workers and not have a fully functional home.