May 11, 2006 – Originally published by CNC, Inc.

Kitchen Renovation: It’s All About Getting The Quotes

Over here at the Reilly household, we have decided to bite the bullet and re-do our old kitchen, ripping down walls, pulling out cabinets, replacing the old disgusting floor. It's exciting. It's also one of the longest processes that you'll ever go through, and I'm not talking about the actual renovation: I'm talking about getting the quotes.

"Okay, so I'll pull some quotes together today and tomorrow and we'll need to be moved out of the kitchen by Friday, I would guess," I announced to my family as they were silently trying to wake up over breakfast. "After I get these quotes today, I'll run over and pick out some cabinets and countertops, and lights or whatever, and we should be back in business by June!" My husband looked wary. "You think we can have this whole process started by this weekend?" he said. "Sure," I replied, storing some dishes in the broken dishwasher and hanging a dishtowel over a thumbtack in the wall. "They'll see how badly we need them, and bing-bang-boom! We've got ourselves a contractor!"

Well, bing-bang-boom didn't exactly happen - more like thud-scrape-sigh. I decided to begin by getting three quotes. I called the first number. "Hello!" a jovial contractor answered from his cell phone, and heard about my project and after he stopped laughing, he said he could maybe look at the project in the next few weeks. Next few weeks? The cabinets should be going in then!

The next contractor stopped by on a break from another project, and I waited expectantly as he looked around. I held my hand out. "Can I have that quote now? I am picking up my son from elementary school and I thought I'd look it over while I'm waiting outside." He looked at me sideways. "Quote? What kind of cabinets are you going to get? What countertops? What's your design plan?" I gulped, jingling my keys. "I was going to go with maybe a "French/country/art deco look in maybe an "L" shape in terms of the actual plan, and I want dark wood cabinets and light countertops, okay? Work that up into a quote for me, and we'll be good to go." Let's just say that I have several contractors in better moods than they were before they met me, based on the amount of laughter I have heard.

It became clear that I was going to have to do substantial homework before we could get this project off the ground, so I headed to both Lowe's and Home Depot where I walk around in a complete funk, and always come home with shrubs. We'll never have a new kitchen, but we will have the most beautiful, crowded front yard you'll ever see. I walked in with a ficus in a pot and my husband said, "Focus! You can do this! Go pick out cabinets so we can get a quote - from anyone!" I threw up my hands. "Do you know how many cabinets there are to choose from? About 10 million, and most of them look just like the one before! Do you know how many types of drawer handles there are? How many types of "tops of cabinets" there are? People are passing out from sheer kitchen stress over at Lowe's! You can get a quickie-divorce over at Home Depot now! It's stress! It's pressure! What's on Lifetime - Television for Women?" I trailed off, as I left the kitchen.

I then had a day or two where we were going to do the kitchen ourselves - rip out everything like true pioneers, install flooring like they do in commercials, run track lighting with a home-repair manual in our laps - but then we stopped inhaling helium and realized we could never do that; it would break us. Then, I went through a phase where we could live with our current kitchen as it is, forever. "Who says everything has to be so "new" or "useable" or "unbroken?" I asked my husband as I toasted some grilled cheese sandwiches under the iron. "Everyone wants so much now, that's the problem! Why can't we appreciate what we have, darn it?" I threw the sandwich over to my son, who tripped over the ragged flooring and sailed right by us into the den, and my husband said, "Press on. Go back to Lowe's NOW. Pick out cabinets and I'll take you for ice cream." I popped off my stool (actually, I fell off; it's wobbly.) "Why didn't you say so? Ice cream? We'll go with Kraftmaid's "Worldly Elegance" in dark cherry with the braided trim and the glass uppers, no blind cabinets, pewter pulls. Why didn't you say ice cream before?"

So, we have yet to get more than one quote, but I'm still trying. And being bribed with lots of ice cream. So far, that's the best part of a new kitchen!