The beginning is not always where we expect

The beginning of our kitchen remodel began way before we had a plan or knocked down any drywall. It began with a house search.

When we began looking for a house to buy, my original parameters were: good kitchen, two bedrooms, and preferably a house with a wood stove.

I hate to admit this but I do not even remember what Colin's parameters were. I am pretty sure they included a big yard but that could just be my imagination trying to fill in the blanks.

Anyhow, we looked for about 6 months and the houses with my specifications were either tiny or way out of our $200,000 price range. (We were approved for $220,00 but we knew we could not really afford that.) One Saturday afternoon we went house hunting and decided to visit a place Colin had found on craigslist.com. When we first approached it looked great. The neighborhood was a combinations of some nice houses and some in need of a lot of TLC. We we walked in the gate we were both hooked. In the middle of the city we had found a country paradise that consisted of a thrid of an acre with 17 mature trees, rose bushes, and fruit trees. Keep in mind that we live in the desert of New Mexico.


But then we went inside. It was a disaster area. There was stuff everywhere. Piles and books and furniture and clothes and you could hardly even see the house. The kitchen was straight from the 1960s. The countertops, all 7 linear feet of them, were yellow with fruit and veggie tiles. The stove was a cool vintage Kenmore that did not work and the space to get into the kitchen from the dinning room was so narrow that I felt it was time for me to go on a diet. But I loved the yard and I could see that it had major portenial. We walked out and I told Colin, "I am scared to tell you how much I love this house." He replied, "Only because I love it ten times more than you!" So we bought it on the condition that the first improvement would be a new kitchen.