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The First Hiccup

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You know that saying "when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail?" I'd heard it, but I don't know that I'd fully understood it until today. Oh, sure, when I'm holding a hammer, I'm definitely tempted to use it to do everything from pick up my coffee mug to open a door to smash my kitchen. Just me? We're on day two of what I'm calling stage one demolition. Stage one is partially exploratory, to see what's going on under the cabinets, but the main goal of stage one is to get as much done in the kitchen as possible without disrupting the kitchen too much or us to use to sink, cooktop, and oven. Once we have a completion date for the cabinets, we'll be able to have a better feel for how to proceed with stage two, which involves us all moving downstairs while the kitchen is completely gutted.  Picture this: it's a dreary Wednesday, and our contractor was removing an ancient black box. I'm not sure what to call this bl...
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How It All Began

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I spent a little time thinking about trying to do a lot of the kitchen remodel myself, and I'm really glad we didn't end up going in that direction. Some of our friends are really handy, and while I'd describe myself as decently handy I'm not up to a project of this magnitude.  We looked around a little and chose to work with a local contractor who is very well-reviewed and whom we ended up really liking. When we started this process, we thought that the remodel would keep more or less the same floor plan. I wanted to straighten out the island (no more hockey stick), convert the entire back wall to pantry cabinets, and remove the uppers by the gas cooktop. That would have been fine, in a not-really-fine sense of the word. The kitchen layout is weird, and what you can't really see in this chaotic before photo is just how weird it really is. Off screen to the left are doors out to the screened-in patio, which is the main way we let the dogs in and out throughout the d...
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But WHY?

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 This is my kitchen. I like my kitchen, but I don't *love* my kitchen, and I spend a lot of time in here. About three months ago, my husband and I decided that we would do something terrible and wonderful: we decided to re-do the kitchen in our house! To be clear, we decided to hire someone to do it. I feel like this represents a lot of personal growth on my part, as my impulse is usually to watch a video of someone (competent) doing some crazy-cool DIY project, smash things with a hammer, and then figure out how to fix them later (or not). But I can hear you asking already: why are you taking the Hammer of Justice to a perfectly good White Kitchen? What even is a Hammer of Justice? As for the why, I have a few major quibbles with this kitchen. If you step back and squint, it's really nice. When you get closer and actually start using it, not so much. Quibble 1: Storage For having so many cabinets, the kitchen is remarkably short on useful storage. The cabinet below the cookt...
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