Shh... Don't tell.

Because I can't stop indulging my masochistic tendancies towards home remodeling, we're slowing moving forward towards doing the kitchen.

And what's really funny is that our entire home remodeling so far- the living room, the closet, the basement entrance.. it all started with wanting to remodel the kitchen.

Of course the washer and dryer in the kitchen needed to be moved back down the basement where it rightfully belonged, which meant we needed to add an interior entrance down to the basement so we wouldn't have to trudge our frozen, naked butts outside through the cellar door to do the 3 weeks' worth of laundry that piles up in our closet.

And while all that was happening, of course, we needed to widen the entryway into the room where the door was going, and hell- why not make a closet too? And oh yeah, while we're at it, let's rip up the carpet and old wooden floors and lay a new wooden floor.

So after months of living in an "ET"-esqe plastic land covered in plaster dust and bits of lath, and walking around our own living room in boots for fear of tetanus, our house is now a nicer, cleaner, more happy place.

So why the hell would we mess that up? Because the end is just in sight!!! We can see the Eden of clean countertops, shiny new stainless steel appliances, gorgeous non-stained cabinets, and blissful drawers and cabinets with storage solutions that actually make sense. Sigh.

And here's the shh...don't tell part.... I think we're going to be able to do it for so crazy-cheap that it's almost like stealing. Mr. Home Depot quoted us $7,000-ish for cabinets alone.

Hah. I scoff at that.

Seriously. Have you checked out IKEA lately? Unbelievable.

So here's the plan. We're leaving current large set of wall cabinets up- refacing them with lovely glass-paned doors and giving them a fresh coat of paint. We're demo-ing all remaining cabinets and getting shiny new beautiful STAT cabinets from Ikea. I can feel the lovely auto-closing action already. Sigh...

That, combined with new floors, lovely faux-walnut countertops and some serious painting and trim work, we're are going to have the most gorgeous kitchen ever.

Ok. Fine. I realize it may not be totally smooth sailing. I know we may come on some snags, but right now, I'm totally riding the "this is going to be so flawless, painless, and awesome wave."

So there.