Without a Kitchen

My husband and I had planned a kitchen remodel when we moved into our current house. We spent several months planning and designing. It was supposed to take 12 weeks. It’s been 7 months.

Our kitchen went from this:

To this:

When we took the plunge, we knew it would take longer than the estimated time. But we didn’t expect that we would have to reframe a good portion of our house. Or regrade our backyard. Or put a new roof on. Or… so many other things.

You see, we live in a house that’s about 100 years old. It was bound to have some issues. We’re happy we found them and can fix these problems. I think we’ve kept pretty calm throughout the entire process, with a few meltdowns. But overall, we’ve tried to keep the mentality of “the big picture.” It’s easy to sound like you’re complaining during these situations, so we tried to keep that in mind when talking about it.

I wanted to share our experience of renovating our home and some things that helped me.

• I made a simple kitchen. As you can see above – a microwave, an induction hot plate, coffee gear, and gallon water containers (it was handy to have water close to the kitchen, and I’d refill these every few days).
• We aimed to order out once a week, go out to dinner once a week, and do pasta once a week. We basically stuck to this. Breakfast and lunch were easy, dinner was a bit more challenging because of space, timing, and a 2 year old.
• You know what’s worse than doing dishes? Doing a days worth of dishes in a tiny bathroom sink. Our contractor put a laundry sink in one of our bathrooms that we weren’t using regularly. It was not glamorous, but SO helpful at the end of the day when we tackled the dishes.
• This is obvious for people who work outside of the home, but worth mentioning – Get out of the house every day. This should be a general rule for life, but it’s especially beneficial during a remodel.
• Take people up on their generosity. Whether a neighbor offers to throw a few things in their laundry that day, a friend offers their kitchen to do some meal prep, or someone invites you over for coffee – say, “Yes.” Our very generous friends offered their entire (babyproofed!!) home to us while they were away for 10 days. We felt uncomfortable accepting the offer for a good 15 minutes. It was like a vacation. Bonus that it was in our neighborhood.
• A note on being Green: It’s really hard during this time, but I think we did okay. I recommend buying compostable plates and silverware for the times when you absolutely cannot do another dish in that little sink!
• You don’t have to make every meal elegant, but you can make a beautiful meal out of something simple. That feels special during this time. See below.
• I feel like I’ve said, “Keep things in perspective,” 20 times, but it’s worth mentioning again. There are things that I will miss about the last 7 months – I love that we have a small space to live in. While I won’t miss our makeshift kitchen, I will miss the cozy evenings in our living room that we rarely used before.

I hope those tips are helpful, and if not – here are 3 easy meals that we depended on regularly…

Avocado toast with and egg and everything bagel seasoning.

Salad in a bag. Yes, not super sexy or ecological, but have you ever used a salad spinner when you don’t have a sink… or water? I made it my own by adding some extra (bagged) lettuce and beans.

Stir Fry – Whatever vegetables that were easy to wash and chop (sometimes that was a bagged mix from the grocery store), an easy sauce, and beans. Bonus points for times when I remember cashews! We’d also make a batch of rice in the Instant Pot and used it for a few meals. Oh and that’s another tip – if you have one, don’t pack away your Instant Pot. We used it several times a week.

I’m excited to show you the afters as soon as the project wraps up! Coming up next will be some tips for going through a renovation with a toddler.

Question: Have you ever gone through a renovation? Any tips to add to mine?

P.S. To keep things transparent, here’s a pic of how I actually photographed one meal… with our cooler and bag of ice outside our front door. And a toddler asking his mom what the heck she’s doing.