couple things i have been trying to remember to remember to write down and before i forget im writing them down.
you know how they always say make sure to bank on spending xxx amount MORE than you budget for..yea, DO THAT! couple things that you need to think through before you make big decisions.
a sink. no big deal right. like home depot has em. lowes has em. there cheap and pretty easy to pick out. so i thought. and how the heck would i know otherwise, ive never done this before (and i dont plan on ever doing it again!) probably the ONLY thing i was certain that had NEVER EVER EVER strayed from the plans in my mind over the course of the last 6+ years of dreaming of my new kitchen was that i wanted, no NEEDED a farm sink…and the biggest one ever.
aint she pretty??
(source: theinspirationroom.net)
i just love the look of them and one thing that my kitchen had before, that i actually did like, was a huge sink, except it was a double sink, and i never used the short side, but in total the sink was 33″. how could one ever even imagine of going from a 33″ sink to a 31″ sink! blasphemy! so again, i needed a 33″ farm sink.
when we went ahead and worked the plans for the kitchen i greeted the gentleman with a hardy “hello, so nice to meet you” followed by “make sure you design for a farm sink”. and we did. and then we started the project and we need to get a “the” sink. who knew there were apron front, under mount, a few other i cant remember…we determined based on specs what we needed, headed to the designer showroom to order her up. this genius, the one right here, the one who had all the answers and wouldn’t take “no” to the farm sink, never realized that said, although glorious and fabulous, sink costs about 3 times as much as a regular sink! oooohhh and add to it that i needed a color other than white..tack on another $160 bucks! but we budgeted for these things, so were were ok, but for those who need to stay on uber strict budget, check out these things first before your hit with sticker shock! oh and remember that things like this (especially in an off standard color) can take a million weeks to deliver. so when your contractor breaks it down and says “ok i need the sink here by xx date so we can measure for counter tops” and you haven’t even looked yet and you nearly faint when the store tells you that it will be 4 weeks out and you need it by tomorrow, plan accordingly (ps home depot was able to get it in 5 days, the fancy store said that would NEVER happen, luck was surely on our side, or she was just a not so nice lasy that wasnt very nice to us!)
(i cant wait for her to bw out of the box and in my kitchen!)
think along the same scenario for appliances. our plans were designed before we went appliance shopping…we had to get a larger fridge to fill the space, again luckily we had budgeted over our intended cost to compensate. we needed a vent hood, yea big deal right…the one made to spec for your cabinetry is about $400 more than the average, gulp.
my intentions of bringing you all along for the journey was for things just like this…things i never would have thought of, or ever thought would be an issue (who out there really thought a sink was so hard to come by, don’t lie…you were thinking like me, its just a darn sink and they sell em everywhere!) lay it all out before you go ahead with things you absolutely, definitely cant live without…and if they work in your budget, have at it…but you might find that by changing things up ever so slightly might save you a couple bucks and keep you from the over the budget surprise 🙂
tomorrow…updates and picking paint