Assembling must-have materials for the kitchen

We're now only three weeks out from starting the kitchen, so we spent some time this week working on getting the remaining must-haves for the project: sink, furniture for the sink, faucet, vent hood, and floor tiles.

AJ's dream sink is a vintage double-bowl farmhouse sink, like the one her grandmother had. And my dream is to find an interesting old cabinet that we refinish and cut a hole in to fit the sink into. Our original idea was to spend some time going around to recycled building materials places, flea markets, etc. to see if we could fulfill our dreams, but 1) those sinks are in demand so will be hard to find and likely expensive if we did find one, and 2) the prospect of spending weekends driving around shopping rather than sitting in the backyard in the sun was unappealing. So this week, we cut to the chase and went to Ikea.

We got this sink and faucet combo:

The sink cost less than half what I've seen farmhouse reproductions going for elsewhere, so our budget is happy about that.

Done.

We also got this low-profile vent hood/extractor for a good price:

Done.

We went ahead and bought the cabinetry that's designed to go with them, as well. Mr. Bunkport is very clever and can make any random assortment of components work, but we want to have him in and out fast, so we decided to take the path of least resistance.

We picked the beadboard-style cabinet fronts:

 

And these porcelain and nickel knobs:

 

Done.

We also bought a set of these nickel rails for the walls, to hang pots and pans on:

And we bought this ivory-colored steel utility cart to replace the lazy susan corner cabinet that's going away. It will sit under or next to a worktable that we're replacing that bank of cabinets with.

We took the rails and cart home with us from the store. Everything else is being delivered next Thursday.

Here is an updated drawing of what things will look like (more or less...I can only get so far with this tool):

The table-ish thing in the corner is the one the cart will go under or next to, depending on what we finally decide. The height of the vent/extractor is just a guess right now -- it needs to be a certain height over the stove, but not so high that AJ can't reach it. Once we figure that out, we'll address the weirdness with the other cabinet being a radically different size.

On Saturday, I spent some time researching local places to get the 33 square feet of tile we will need to finish the floor when all the lower cabinets come out. We ordered the tiles for The Big Project from an online source. That ended up being a very rough experience: the site was frustratingly unclear whether you were ordering by the tile or by the box (10 to a box, it's the difference between buying 200 square feet and 2000 square feet), a company rep tried very hard to help but was ineffective, the shipment ended up going to a port depot instead of being delivered to the house and sat there for a week or two before we were notified, and the percentage of broken tiles was excessive so we have patches on the floor where the guy had to use a different type of tile to make up for the shortfall (we got a refund for the broken tiles, but those patches are irritating). This time, we're happy to pay a little more to avoid all that hassle. I should be able to submit the order on Monday or Tuesday, and have it arrive at the store for pickup in time for the start of the project.

Lastly, on Saturday, I also firmed up the final elements of the project plan, putting together a to-do list with dates over the next three weeks for our remaining prep work.

Here we go!