Introduction: New House? Check. Love? Check. Family? Check. a Usable Kitchen? Um...
About: My name is Kelley, and I'm a mom, wife, blog author, and lackey to three cats. I like donuts just a little too much, but I'm okay with that.
In 2003, we sold our Dream Home to pay off our son's staggering medical bills for his rare brain disorder. My heart was shattered--we had nowhere to go. But for him, for our future, we had to do it. And I swore to both my boys, we would have another house one day.
I'd promised. So we scrimped, we saved, and we never stopped hoping. And in February of 2011, the impossible happened. We fell in love, and bought and moved into our Forever Home.
The only catch? It was a foreclosure. A thirty-three-year-old, falling apart, dirty and disgusting bargain that was what we could afford. And we'd run out of money buying it.
Over the last six months, we've done all the renovation work ourselves. Purchasing only what we can afford, hunting for bargains at stores like Ikea and thrift items, we're making it ours, and we've made real progress.
There's just the little problem of our kitchen. The heart of our home is a, well, um...it's on resuscitation. Major resuscitation.
It's not all bad. Our appliances were scratch and dents we picked up for a song, but we like them.We bought the sink and most of the lower cabinets from IKEA already. (LOVE those Nexus brown cabinets!)
But without touching any more savings, we can't get the floor replaced so we can install the cabinets. Or replace the old upper cabinets or get the right doors for the Akurum pantry we found on clearance or curtain panels for laundry area or counters. (We're using a desktop we found in the IKEA As-Is department as our countertop now.)
But, oh, to have some stainless steel backsplash panels too...anything but the exposed wires and drywall we have now. The upstairs bath had leaked through the ceiling as well, so we need new track lighting. Heck, just working lighting would be wonderful, but I dream of the Barometer light.
It's not a lot that we do need-$1000 would be more than enough to finish our IKEA kitchen that we already started-but as you can see, we do desperately need it. We love our Forever Home. Love it. It was worth everything we went through to get here. But if we could just make the kitchen safe and beautiful and COMPLETE, well, that would be the icing on a very sweet ending.
I'd promised. So we scrimped, we saved, and we never stopped hoping. And in February of 2011, the impossible happened. We fell in love, and bought and moved into our Forever Home.
The only catch? It was a foreclosure. A thirty-three-year-old, falling apart, dirty and disgusting bargain that was what we could afford. And we'd run out of money buying it.
Over the last six months, we've done all the renovation work ourselves. Purchasing only what we can afford, hunting for bargains at stores like Ikea and thrift items, we're making it ours, and we've made real progress.
There's just the little problem of our kitchen. The heart of our home is a, well, um...it's on resuscitation. Major resuscitation.
It's not all bad. Our appliances were scratch and dents we picked up for a song, but we like them.We bought the sink and most of the lower cabinets from IKEA already. (LOVE those Nexus brown cabinets!)
But without touching any more savings, we can't get the floor replaced so we can install the cabinets. Or replace the old upper cabinets or get the right doors for the Akurum pantry we found on clearance or curtain panels for laundry area or counters. (We're using a desktop we found in the IKEA As-Is department as our countertop now.)
But, oh, to have some stainless steel backsplash panels too...anything but the exposed wires and drywall we have now. The upstairs bath had leaked through the ceiling as well, so we need new track lighting. Heck, just working lighting would be wonderful, but I dream of the Barometer light.
It's not a lot that we do need-$1000 would be more than enough to finish our IKEA kitchen that we already started-but as you can see, we do desperately need it. We love our Forever Home. Love it. It was worth everything we went through to get here. But if we could just make the kitchen safe and beautiful and COMPLETE, well, that would be the icing on a very sweet ending.