We found our Flipper Kitchen...

Saturday morning started out bright and early with.... drumroll please... DEMOLITION (AJ's favorite hobby... possibly more than running, but each are cheap forms of therapy). He drove to the Gloucester flipper and tore out the entire kitchen before 8am (I knew we were soul mates.).

Remember when it looked like this?

We found cabinets from IKEA that were the same style as ours at home (which we love). The price was cheaper, the wait time shorter (and by "shorter" I mean, the one hour we spent waiting in line to pick it up vs. the five weeks we waited for our cabinets from Home Depot) and the warranty was pretty great (25 years!).

Our cabinets are "Fayette" from the Thomasville line at Home Depot (pictured) and the ones we purchased at IKEA are Adel (said with a Swedish accent and last photo of the post):

Our Saturday morning (which turned into Saturday afternoon as well) was devoted to an IKEA trip... I like those a lot better than AJ does and could spend about 20 minutes in each room display. We met with a kitchen designer (which was a good thing because when I planned out the kitchen it didn't make as much sense as when he did it... who knew people look for dishwashers to be on the right of the sink because they are right handed? I wouldn't, as a lefty...). He helped us draw up these plans for the kitchen:

The space is very limited so we are essentially working with two walls... one for the sink and dishwasher and the other for the fridge, range and microwave. We tried to fit as many cabinets in as we could without it feeling too boxed in. It helps to have white cabinets in such a small space to brighten things up. The giant gray space to the left of the cabinets (below) is a door to the dining room.

Obviously I needed to document Drew's first trip to IKEA. He was a champ and slept through the whole car ride and then nearly the whole kitchen design, I love this photo.... what is cuter than a man with a baby (I mean, really... especially this man and baby. :))

Oh, and let me tell you the best part of the trip... when we get there we find out that if you purchase three appliances or more you get 20% off... we had already found the appliances we wanted from Home Depot so we just found comparable ones at IKEA (they are all made by Whirlpool, not some junky no-name brand). We were thrilled to save $400 on appliances but when we get up to pay we find out that it's 20% off the entire kitchen! Needless to say, we were happy campers... especially because we just ate gigantic lunch because they were having a special where you could deduct your lunch receipt from your bill.

After packing 94 items in the truck (can someone please tell us why each set of hardware is a separate bag?) we headed home... good thing we have nothing else going on in our house right now (note the sarcasm) so that we can fill half our living room with cabinets we are assembling.

Well, I'm ready to pass out so I'm going to publish this post and then roll over onto the pillow and fall asleep in 25 seconds. The fabulous AJ has probably assembled four more cabinets while I wrote this... I've never met anyone quite as speedy as him...
A Food PS: Anyone ever had Trader Joe's Mushroom Risotto? It's completely fab.