In the first few months, we decided to change the kitchen cabinets and counters and flooring. We changed the cabinets to cherry, and picked out some very interesting knobs and pulls. We also bought a larger refrigerator. The smallish 16-18 cubic foot one that came with the house seemed to be just a large dorm fridge. We purchased a much larger 24 cu ft refrigerator that has plenty of room for a growing family.
Working on the layout of the kitchen was easy. It wouldn’t change much. That made purchasing the cabinets pretty easy. We had lots of open-ended runs, which also helped make the layout easy. I could be off an inch and it wouldn’t matter.
We selected a garnet colored finish on cherry-wood cabinets. The cabinets are the normal special-ordered Home Depot cabinets with the Schrock label. The main point in changing the cabinets was adding a whole run of cabinets along one wall, and the matching upper cabinets. This would more than double our storage space in the same physical room.
The countertops I fabricated from 12×12 granite tile. The cost of the granite and the backer board totaled about $450 for materials. This was an inexpensive way of getting granite countertops without paying $3000+ for full slab granite. Also, if we broke a tile, it would be easily replaced.
For the flooring, we chose to use VCT, vinyl composite tile, the same stuff found in school cafeterias and hallways. We chose 3 accent color tiles to the base white tile. This floor has been extremely durable except that I should have taken up the subfloor and replaced it with plywood. The movement in the strip subfloor has cracked several tiles. The tiles are very easy to replace, and are very inexpensive, running about $0.50 per 12×12 tile. So replacing 4 or 5 tiles is only a few bucks.
