Kitchen Mini-Renovation Part I: Adding More Chaos To Moving In

Once we finally closed on the house, John and I knew that the first project to tackle was the kitchen. Now, I know what you're thinking: why renovate a brand-new kitchen? Well since the builder of our house didn't include the kitchen refrigerator as part of the house, we already knew we had one major appliance to buy and a few cabinets that we wanted to change. We thought about waiting to make changes to the kitchen but realized it would be much easier to do this before all of our belongings were moved in and placed into the cabinets. We already waited 6 extra months on the house so what's another month waiting to unpack the kitchen?

In this post, I'll focus on the cabinets and new appliances that we changed. In part II of the kitchen mini-renovation, I'll go into the changes to the backsplash, light fixtures, and butler pantry area.

Cabinets

Prep time: 20 min

Demolition time: 2-3 hours

Cleanup time: 1 hour

Before we could get the refrigerator installed, John did some cabinet swapping so that we could install a special cabinet to fit the drawer microwave, a cabinet for the garbage and recycling cans, and remove the cabinet above the range for the vent hood. The rest of the existing kitchen cabinets from the builder remained in place.

He managed to very carefully remove two lower cabinets from the countertop (thankfully without any damage) and move both to an empty wall in the kitchen, which we named the butler's pantry area. I'm glad that we were able to reuse these cabinets because the new butler's pantry area is where larger platters, extra dishes, and tablecloths are stored.

The first cabinet near the refrigerator was replaced with a special cabinet that would fit the drawer microwave we ordered. Most of the cabinet is meant for the microwave but there is a drawer at the bottom that stores our grilling utensils.

The second cabinet near the dishwasher was replaced with a large cabinet drawer for the garbage and recycling. I've never had one of these cabinets until now and I have to admit, it was one of the best decisions in this kitchen. I like having both cans stored away and not out in plain view.

The third cabinet above the range was not able to be salvaged. Originally, we thought we would save it and move it to the laundry room since there is a huge lack of storage there. However, as John was trying to remove it, he realized that he had to cut the existing top trim to free the cabinet. In the process, the cabinet was damaged, so we had to get rid of it.

Our cabinets are Fabuwood and we ordered directly from the company.

Appliances

Installation time: 1 hour

I mentioned that the builder didn't include a refrigerator in our kitchen (definitely weird since the range, dishwasher, and microwave were included). While appliance shopping, we realized that we would prefer to have a convection range over gas. The convection range is as powerful as gas but without the gas fumes lingering in your house. We ordered the appliances about a month before we moved in and worked with a local appliance store for the order. The order process went smoothly but the delivery and installation is where things fell down.

We spent about four weeks living without a refrigerator because the appliance store took two weeks to get back to us on delivery and installation. I was relieved when all of the appliances were installed because it meant we could finally unpack and more importantly, start making our own meals again. I would recommend reading through online reviews of a local store before making a large purchase on appliances. The store we used had a lot of recent complaints about the slow delivery and installation and it would have been wise if I read those ahead of time.

Our appliances are GE Cafe appliances manufactured in 2024.