⚙️🛠♨️ Kitchen Makeover Diaries ••• 9 years I’ve frolicked this space cooking, cleaning, & biting my nails in panic over home management issues. There are signs of wear that need to be addressed now without breaking the bank 💰 ••• I’m redoing the granite (chipping & cracking) (minus the center island, found a close match!), getting a new kitchen sink, garbage disposal, faucet (nearing breakage), stove hood, and ovens, changing the backsplash (current one has a bathroom feel), and redoing flooring! Phew! Samples have been finalized, stuff ordered, we start tomorrow, InshaAllah
••• I woke up at Fajar time (4:30am) 💤 prayed and got breakfast going. 😱Mom hyperventilating ••• “Admi anay wala hai, kuch kaam kar ke nahi rakha” ••• Extra oatmeal and eggs went in the fridge in case our stove is out of use for a day. Made the 10 o’ clock Chai because the stove was to be taken out! 🧽 Washed final dishes, transported lunch and dinner and all amenities downstairs to the kitchenette 🍳 and then ran back to take a quick nap before the contractor arrived 🛠 8:15 am I was up! 🥱 Not a morning person. I was delighted when school life got over! ••• 🧔🏻Brother arrives to show some Man Face ••• 9:20am work started! 🔧 😱Mom hyperventilating ••• 🧨Demolition 30 min: Granite countertops torn out, sink, faucet, stovetop pulled out. 😱Mom hyperventilating ••• “Aj yeh sara ghar tor daaleingay” ••• Next! 🔧🧰 New Black Galaxy 🌌 granite installation begins ••• 11:20am granite countertops are in the houuuuuse! 🤘🏼Sink and stovetop openings are being cut ••• By the end of the afternoon we had new granite installed! Sink was in! Everybody out! BSB song sequence 🎵
••• Chai ☕️ tou banegi! ••• That was the motto of the day! We’d been drinking microwave Chai for a day and night and for addicts like us it’s a bogus excuse! ••• 🥱••• So! Once my contractor was done destructing the drywall I put up a styrofoam board behind the cooktop and declared our Chai ki Dukaan open! ••• ☕️ ••• The drywall apparently was not supposed to come off 🤨 and the contractor had high hopes that the former tiles would come off like a Disney fairytale! ✨ Uhh ••• no! 💣 So now I have one more day added to the reno because he has to come back and do drywall.
••• so far so good! MashaAllah ✨ The Black Galaxy granite is such a brilliant black! My earlier one was a beautiful more textured black (retained that on the center island) ••• This one pulls you in! ••• The glittery specs are so fancy ••• The kitchen plumbing is back 🚰 God! The trash disposal was almost dead and nearing a nasty leak! Thank God it was changed! ••• We chose the Kraus Nolen faucet for the sink, super smooth! ••• As the cooktop was closed for half a day again, we were eating the convenient foods! ••• Dahi Baray (made earlier) and frozen stuffed parathay (store bought) catered to the perfect on the floor lunch in the absence of the dining table! The table’s a storage counter atm! Check it out! All you can see are the gryffin legs! Haha 😆
••• So we had a bit of a setback 🤯 Like with all Planet Abbie things, things have to go roll completely down the hill, faults in stars have to come up, ☄️and Armageddon has to strike before things begin to take off 🚀 for the better again ••• The granite guys did substandard work! Scratches, chips and cracks, unpolished, unsealed stone! ••• 🤬 We don’t accept low standards ••• No one should! ••• 🔥 Fired the guys! Hired a new, company (slightly expensive but credible) ••• spent a week finalizing porcelain tiles for kitchen floor and backsplash, and got back on track again thank God! ••• The toaster oven is still lounging with us! Haha 🤣
••• Demolition 💣🧱🧨 ••• It’s not fun to see your kitchen torn apart, drilled, jackhammered, and taken down ••• That’s what yesterday was like ••• 🔨Destructive! ••• 🚰❌The sink came off, faucet came off, trash disposal and dishwasher were unhooked ••• Floors were shattered, tossed, and torn ••• ⚠️Granite countertops were pulled off ••• The cooktops was disconnected and set aside ••• Complete kitchen shutdown until we get back! 🚱🛑❌ It’s disturbing ••• My makeshift kitchen is the basement kitchenette (more on that later InshaAllah) ••• Sara and I had bulk cooked and frozen stuff for the duration of this makeover! 🧠 Smart women in the houuuuuse! ••• We have some longer lasting items like Dahi Baray, Maggie, and Tandoori Chicken stored in the fridge for the week ••• I’ll show you my frozen goodies in a bit.
Living the camp style life ••• makeshift kitchenette in the basement, eating the frozen food stock, making microwave Chai ••• flooring has started Alhamdulillah ••• we’ve been on our nerves trying to manage the worker dudes! I had to handpick a Jockey underwear 🩲(not a promotion 😆) from the laundry sink after telling them not to use it (the sink) for dumping debris loaded mop water! Their idea 💡of securing the plumbing was taking their underwear off and stuffing it in the drain 🕳 Men are such geniuses 🧠 applause 👏🏻 •••
••• Flooring began 3 days ago 🙏🏻 Thank God! They started setting tiles ••• For 3 days they have been measuring, mixing thin set (cement), and setting tiles ••• 🧱Bit by bit it is coming together Alhamdulillah ••• I’ve been a case of nerves 🤯 The basement kitchenette’s the makeshift kitchen and that means taking two flights of stairs 💯 times a day for breakfast, second breakfast, elevensies, lunch, afternoon tea, supper, dinner, and midnight snack ••• 😎 ••• Patience is key 🔑 folks, to all that tests the nerves •••
••• Kitchen renovation tests you like those psychological thriller movies 👺where you’re stuck in a nightmare! ••• As my stove, washer and dryer sat in the garage (waiting to be put back), and I waited for new appliances (ovens and dishwasher) to arrive, I was thinking 🤔 “What was I thinking when I decided to do this?!” ••• Granite countertop became a star crossed tragedy as a previous contractor did shoddy work (had to be redone), and we were stuck in an extended doom project in the middle of a coronavirus 🦠 scare! ••• It took me 3 days to crack the formula for the perfect microwave Chai! ☕️
••• Summer moved on and the Moon looked beautiful! 🌙 It was a peaceful sight amidst the utter chaos that was going on inside my house! ••• The Black Galaxy granite countertop finally arrived! Took the team a few hours to haul it in, settle it over the cabinetry, level it, cut holes for the cooktop, glue the slabs in, and install the under mount sink we had purchased on Amazon! ••• 🥚 Meanwhile I mastered boiling the perfect egg (thank you Google) and Maggie noodles (that’s my brain 🧠) in the microwave! 📺 •••
••• As July ended, so did the kitchen renovation. The new flooring, granite, and backsplash look stunning. It’s remarkable what disappearance of grid style dark grout on smaller tiles, replacement with bigger and cleaner tiles, and a fancy chandelier can do to a kitchen ••• To me, my kitchen is the HQ of my house ••• This is where I have learned the therapeutic skill of cooking ••• This is where we celebrate festive occasions and family events ••• It needed a bit of fancy, needed a bit of warm ••• The old tile grout was breaking away in places, becoming impossible to clean ••• So when my brother moved out and we got hold of renovator people to do his stuff, we ended up redoing ours as well ••• Unfortunately, the team was dismissed from our project because they failed at granite and would have done a tile disaster ••• But alls well that ends well ••• We ended up finding a team of magicians (no less) to finish our fancy 😉 ••• Closeups coming soon in a kitchen decor entry •••
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